Location\/occasion: Late summer of 1998, Branbury State Park, Vt., \u00e2\u20ac\u201c between Brandon and Middlebury, in case you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re curious, or have ever been there. Car camping. <\/p>\n
Husband: bad knees, needs electricity or at least a car battery to run the machine to help him breathe at night, but eager to see (and show the kids) the night sky without much light pollution, scared of heights, a worrier and a careful planner. <\/p>\n
Me: happy to assure husband I will \u00e2\u20ac\u0153be careful\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 no clue what that means. Generally my first thought when something goes wrong is, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What will I tell Lew?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Kids: 10 and 12. Not the least bit scared of heights. Quite agile. <\/p>\n
I think we stayed there two or three nights. Nope, must\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been just two; the car battery couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t last three. One evening, husband explained over dinner (with a Styrofoam plate) what a galaxy is and why the stars you see are all in our galaxy and in all different directions, but the Milky Way IS our galaxy and appears as a band in the sky. (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How could a star over there be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Milky Way?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thinking back to the thick plate helped.) Then he had us stay up until it was late enough and dark enough to see the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153teapot\u00e2\u20ac\u009d constellation (which spews steam which looks like it becomes the Milky Way (which I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen as well we could that night at any point since I was a kid in Western Mass.) and ALSO another galaxy (the only thing we could see which wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t in our galaxy) with the naked eye and also through the telescope he had brought. Great science lesson. (Is this why neither of them has any interest in science?) <\/p>\n
This was the next night or the previous night. I noticed the rangers were leading a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sunset walk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to a nearby outlook at say, 6:30PM. I wanted to go in the worst way, and the girls were interested too. Bad knees\/scared of heights husband couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Be careful. Do you have everything you need? Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let them \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 \u00e2\u20ac\u009d Of course, of course, of course not. (It must be safe; the rangers are leading it.) We got there \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 what, a few minutes early? No, must\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been a few minutes late? In any case, no one was there. But there was only one place it could be; Cat had been there before. So we started the climb. The first part involved a lot of boulder scrambling. I figured we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d meet the ranger and the group on the way up. Then there were choices and Cat had crossed that stream, gone through that meadow \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but the other way was the only one reasonable way to a sunset view. <\/p>\n
We finally got to the place where you could duck under just a few bushes and be on an outlook. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember \u00e2\u20ac\u201c was it a 45 minute climb? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it was over an hour. I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expected it to be more than a half-hour because I knew when the sun would set, and I figured the rangers would have planned for us to get there in time for the moment of sunset, let us admire it for a few minutes because isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it always best afterwards? and then head us back down, not wanting us to be hiking in the dark. We must have been just behind the group the whole time. We got on to the ledge\/rocky outcropping. The view was just incredible \u00e2\u20ac\u201c over 180 degrees with the color going from orange to deep blue; the layers of mountains in the distance each a different shade \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 just gorgeous. (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nice to be here without Lew worrying the girls will fall off. Hey, if we cross to that ledge we would be able to see better. Good thing Lew isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t here to be freaking out. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really quite safe \u00e2\u20ac\u201c steep but not unstable.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) It started to rain a bit, then stopped. People appeared from the other direction than I expected \u00e2\u20ac\u201c without a ranger \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we chatted for a bit and they moved on. It started to rain again. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hmm. The ranger group still hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come back and now that rock we crossed is wet and slippery. It must be closer back to the campground in the other direction \u00e2\u20ac\u201c where those folks came from. It would be a bad idea to go back the way we came \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to go up and over this bit and there were some pretty steep places other places \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a flashlight.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not at all sure that we ever found the right downward trail. If we did, we lost it several times. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t rocky and steep \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I was right about that. It was borderline swampy. It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem like it could get dark so fast but of course, we were no longer on a rocky outcropping. And where there had been a nice breeze before, now there were amazing mosquitoes. (Are you wondering about bug stuff? Look, we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bring food, flashlights, or rain gear, you think I thought of bug stuff?) We could hear people in the campground, but a very different part of the campground, and we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get to it for a very long time. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see my watch, so I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how long. <\/p>\n
At some point the worry shifted from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Will we get back ok?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What will my frantic husband do?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Then the realization hit that he \u00e2\u20ac\u201c bad knees and all \u00e2\u20ac\u201c would start up after us, the way we weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going down. Ultimately we did get back, and first I tried to find the rangers who (I was sure) would help me retrieve my husband. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when I found out that the ranger-led sunset hike had been the previous week (which also explained why the hike started as late as it had \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 sunset had gotten noticeably earlier since then). And no, rangers do not hunt for missing husbands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Location\/occasion: Late summer of 1998, Branbury State Park, Vt., \u00e2\u20ac\u201c between Brandon and Middlebury, in case you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re curious, or have ever been there. Car camping. Husband: bad knees, needs electricity or at least a car battery to run the machine … Continue reading