Return to Coolidge

 Coolidge State Park. I just realized that we have not camped here in 13 years! That is crazy! We have come up here for the day many times. Several of these memories stand out. The last time we camped here was Memorial Day weekend of 2010. We had not booked anything in advance and had a difficult time finding something but after dark on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, we hooked the Cherokee up to the pop-up and drove up. Noah was four and Liam was seven. On the way here I can still recall getting emergency calls from truck drivers as we were driving past Echo Lake, because I was still working for GMH back in those days, but not for much longer.

Because as a family, we were always late, and we would always arrive after dark. I used to do this thing where I would set the camper up, unfolding the pop-up in pitch darkness, and I was excellent at it. Well, one reason might’ve been that I was being sort of sarcastic about how we always arrived after dark and showing off a little bit that I could do it just as efficiently in the dark as I could with light. The real benefit however was setting up, had we used lights we would’ve been swarmed by mosquitoes, so I would always wait until everything was buttoned up and Velcro’d up and we were inside before we ever turned the lights on. I am certain that even today eight years after we sold that pop-up, if you were to put me in the dark with it, I could still set it up to this day just as efficiently.

We went to bed pretty much right off as it was right around midnight. I recall hearing wolves that night, what an incredible sound. Donna slept in and I spent the first hour with my boys. I can still feel that morning today. Liam and Noah got Junior Park Ranger badges while they were here that weekend. 

As I think about all these details, I never regret having camped with them so much while they were growing up. I perceive that it gave them something that they will have for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps one of my favorite memories of coming up here for the day was in the spring of 2021. Liam and Haylie came hiking with us. Poor Haylie did not have shoes that were good for hiking and her feet were really hurting. Liam worked on some solutions, and in the end, he gave her his shoes and he hiked barefoot. What I love about this is it is so symbolic of how they are with each other, and always have been. No matter what they have to do for each other. They always do it. 

At the end of the hike, we cooked backpacking food up at the pavilion. Liam and Noah had the Biolite stove cranking away cooking things. When I see them do all these things, I realize that they’ve learned a lot over the years. Today, each with their own gifts, they run with it on their own terms. I cannot love and appreciate this enough!

Tonight, I walked up to the ranger station because there was free Wi-Fi up there, but no service, since I have my phone set to Wi-Fi calling, it worked out perfectly and I called Donna. On the way back, I made friends with my neighbor who was also walking back.

He emerged from the shadows on my right flank. We started talking. He is from Connecticut. Amazingly the conversation (I promise through no instigation on my part - really) turned to Asian food. What are the odds? He was on day 5 of a 7-day solo camping trip. He seemed like a really nice guy. (I am serious about the Asian food, I did not bring it up). As we headed back to our respective campsites, I learned he was my neighbor.

The silver halide forest

 Lately, I have been developing film that has been sitting for approximately 20 years. It was never our intention to wait so long. This is a great risk because film’s life quality expectancy is so much less than 2 decades. After researching online for the best option, I determined that Walmart development still seems to be my best option. Even so, there has been close to a four-week turn around on when my photos arrive from the drop date. Every roll deposited for processing feels like a piece of myself is lost, even though I have no idea what is on these rolls.

These rolls were taken at a time when we were in the transitional period of moving from analog photography to digital. The progression of resolution was slow. Somehow, with time marching on, some of the most substantive memory capturing was erased from our collective family memory.

So far, this round of developing has been from the 2003-2004 timeline. Liam’s first 2 years. The depth of the amazing life we were living back then is now coming to life with the arrival of every new set of developed prints.

There is an anomaly I have discovered with this exercise. Scenic photos, photos of butterflies or goats for instance no longer seem as important when it has taken two decades to develop a roll of film. How could we have known this?

I am doing my best to keep the momentum going by taking one roll to be processed each week. Back in 2018, I started doing the same thing. Back then it was a two-week turnaround. Currently, I have 2 rolls in process and 13 to go. I know that great treasures await as I cling to the precipice of hope that these all make it safely through. 

Much more to an old comfort

 Day four of Covid. I have watched half seasons of TV shows just simply to make them go away. But the real comfort is found in what I always do when I am sick. I watch old episodes of M*A*S*H.   Watching each episode is like finding pieces of myself that I have not seen in 40 or 50 years. Like a large glass vase that shattered into hundreds of pieces. These pieces of me lay on a desolate floor that is untouched by the passage of time. The theme music, sounds, and visuals were such a peg in the contemporary consciousness of who we were in the 1970s and 1980s. I have an associative memory.  My memories of every moment of my life are stored secretly in the things I was seeing and the sounds that I was hearing.  This causes so many things to start coming back to me. The shards of my young self are in these pieces of glass, the sounds, the images, and my associative memory take me back in time to my grandmother's house.  I can hear her talking with my sisters in the kitchen.  I can smell the food she is cooking.  I see my dad‘s and my mom‘s young faces. I feel closer to my 15-year-old self than I have in years.  I know deep down that I am given a second chance at a memory that I have not had of Dad or Grandma in decades. Of all the gifts one can receive, this is priceless. I don’t really know what I am going to find but I know that I look forward to it.

 An interesting observation regarding M*A*S*H back in 2020. I recall a Facebook post about the show. So many people chimed in with very heartfelt sentimental memories. One person replied, “I have never watched it and I never will. I do not think war is funny!“ Of course, I bristled at this statement. He was putting M*A*S*H down for glorifying war or making fun of the suffering. Of course, M*A*S*H was the exact opposite of that, and it made its anti-war statement with such craft. So I responded that had he ever watched M*A*S*H he would know that it was actually the all-time anti-war show. They used its incredible popularity to show the absolute senselessness of war. How politicians and generals mastered sending young people away to die in war and that outcomes were measured in mathematical equations. It showed the innocence of those involved, a stark human view, stripped free of all the facade.  In a television show that lasted 3 times longer than the war it depicted, the creators of this masterpiece had the opportunity to take war apart with molecular honesty. The angle at which its story was told was beautiful as well. The story shifted to interesting perspectives in so many creative ways, but over all, it was told by a bunch of people who never asked for any of this and had placed before them a conveyor belt of young boys on the edge of death. What came next was the incredible sacrifice of everything that made up these doctors and nurses in an effort to not lose another one. I can recall instantly two episodes in which the war was infiltrating their dreams. I have no doubt this would happen to me if I were in the shoes of those doctors. I once got to see one of these units in Saudi Arabia. They are actually called CASH units (Combat Army Surgical Hospital). I delivered a truckload of supplies from Log Base Alpha. 

I’m glad I responded to the Facebook commenter this way because I received a reply from him that said “I did not realize this. I will have to give it a try sometime.

M*A*S*H gave us so much and I have a feeling that as far as my own personal memories are concerned, it has yet to give more.  But today, I want to just say thank you for the sick day comfort it provides.  M*A*S*H is like a warm familiar blanket.