Summers are generally a good time of year everywhere, but I can’t think of a better place for a warm season than at 9000 feet in Gould, CO. Winter usually stretched itself into both fall and spring, and most of ‘spring’ was dealing with several feet of mud. And other than janitorial work there is no industry that functions well in wet dirt. My dad’s logging operation ceased and along with cleaning the KOA campground (which, in a way, kind of made sense because their public bathrooms served as our family bathrooms. How many kids grow up showering with retirees from around the world?), mom would finagle the most sub teaching jobs she could. It was typically not a very pleasant time in the Ewy household. Not only were bills mounting and the overall mood of things darkening, 
but every time you walked into the house you’d track in several layers of earth. This of course meant that as a kid you were constantly harassed for dirtying the floors. You could, of course, take off your shoes, but that would mean you’d just step in the mud that someone else brought in before you. My dad was notorious for stomping the largest amount of dirt. His huge steel-toed boots had deep valleys and ridges for traction and toted a measurable portion of the county. Fossils could develop in those things. My mom, a woman used to the spotless digs of her upper-middle class youth, and hoping for some semblance of hygienic responsibility from her own family, turned into a sweeping madwoman. She was like Fantasia but without the cool music. Coincidentally, I’d always hoped that when we all left for school and dad was off to work, that she did have some friends, maybe even cartoons that would keep her company. Typically, though, it was just her and some angry muttering as she beat the broom against the ancient and eroding linoleum kitchen floor. In the old Gould house the linoleum was a bluish –green with flecks of another kind of green. It was so old and worn that some of the floor’s original wood planks emerged from underneath. Beneath that old, wood floor was more dirt. It seemed to work itself up and into the house.
About when everybody was ready to break and eat the family pets, the runoff would dry up and the mud turn to dust. Summer. Where there had been six or seven feet of drifting snow sprouted the year’s budding hay harvest. The fields rolled out like quilts. Soft and warm, the irrigation turned the 800 acres of meadow around our house into a frog maternity ward. Catching tadpoles and ‘building dams’ became favorite pastimes. You could play all day, and at least my little sister and I did. My brother often got suckered into working with dad. Sometimes I’d go to work, too. Most of my duties included staying out of the way.
After a day in the dust and pollen kicked up by falling trees, we’d all go fishing. Now my father and brother are real, honest-to-god anglers. I’m not. I never was. I was the little brother who’d get lost in the willows. I’d get my lure snagged on a branch and drag my line for the fifty yards or so that it would give, and then spend the rest of the day alternately crying or hiding quietly from the mountain lion that we’d once encountered and I forever imagined was stalking me. My dad and brother were, and are still so inclined to catching fish, that like thirsty cows they could smell the water. They would not stop for my regularly scheduled battle with the bramble. They’d trek onward. As they’d disappear into the maze of shrubbery I’d at first let out a whining, on-the-verge-of-crying “dad, Peter!” Then realizing that A) weeping does not befit a true woodsman and B) Any noise I made would alert the mountain lion, I’d get to work quietly unraveling my tangled fishing line. After a minute or two that would get boring and, following a healthy rocket pee that usually entailed bug-blasting and some basic spelling, would embark on an afternoon of fort building or hole digging.
All was fun and games until the setting sun gave way to darkness and, in me, paralyzing terror. From a birds-eye view I’m imagining it would be revealed that I was ten or fifteen feet from my dad and brother, whose pleasant evening on the Canadian River was being assaulted by my verbalizing all the characters who showed up to play. The bad guys spoke in a deep, raspy voice which sounded really cool in my head. They talked a lot.
But back then the darkness meant total and utter futility. I would not be discovered. I was alone and was going to die.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 08:57PM 