how to start a campfire

We couldn't find the lake and it was getting dark. The girl with bug bites on her arms about to hike down to the waterfalls we planned to visit the next morning said we could join her for a beer at the falls but she had no idea what lake we were talking about and she'd grown up in the area. If we never found it, she said, we could go to her mom's house in the valley tomorrow morning and eat pancakes with the family. We said thanks but we wanted to find the lake.

But then, driving and driving, we were down to one more hour of daylight so we gave up for the night and pulled into an old quarry where Alder trees and blackberry bushes were taking over. Someone had put together targets in the belly of the quarry, and there were empty shells all over the ground. We kept to the far edge, almost under the tree branches and pitched tents. I wandered into the trees with a hatchet to gather wood. There was a sound of water all around me, but no stream in sight in the thick forest that fell steeply away in to cliff sides and canyons. My feet sank ankle-deep into moss.

We built our fire inside a circle of stones already established by previous sharpshooters and campers, and we listened for passing cars. It was a forest shot through with old logging roads, barely maintained, and anyone might be passing by, hikers decked out in gear wanting only to experience some fresh air and quiet, or meth monsters reeling like zombies and seeking out human flesh and wallets. That's the problem with the outdoors, people are looking for quiet and an escape for all kinds of reasons.

The sun was gone and our fire made us feel safe. We watched it in silence and the night noises became familiar. That's when the live rounds started to go off. There was a firework bang and wood exploded. Sparks flew out sideways. I jumped about fifteen feet backwards. Then the forest silence closed in again while the campfire flickered and flamed innocently. We watched it. A fluke, maybe. Then it happened again. And thirty seconds later, again.

It took us about a minute to stamp out the fire and smother it with dirt and water.

The next morning showed us what the twilight and the approaching dark had hidden. The sun, already hot enough to make me sweat when I stepped from the shadows, picked out hundreds of unspent tiny bullets, glinting silver in the dust.

how to board a plane

It's almost a universal, golden and such, rule: When you are waiting for a plane, look around the boarding area and identify the person you'd least like to sit next to on the upcoming flight. Be as judgmental as you want: they are too large, too small, possibly smelly, possibly emotionally disturbed, loud, creepy, asthmatic, carrying a small child. Implore the God of your fathers, "Let me not be seated next to one such as this." End with an "Amen" as you were taught. For your Father in Heaven will listen, and then, as you stumble down the cramped airplane aisle to seat 18F, that person will invariably follow, hoist their carry-on into the overhead compartment, smile benignly at you, and say, "That's me, right there next to you."

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The pilot on my early-morning flight out of Omaha last week was a tall, thin man who looked exactly like his co-pilot, another tall, thin man, except the pilot wore glasses. He also looked like a man who used to be allowed to smoke in the cockpit and couldn't understand why the practice had died out. At the same time, he also looked like a man who had never smoked in his life and ate his weight in spinach every morning. He was, then, a pilot to trust, capable of being all things to all people, an everyman. The flight attendants introduced him as Captain Brian.

Some pilots board their airplanes like boozers, massaging the space between their eyes and stubbing their toes against invisible barriers. They pat at their stomachs and small smiles appear and disappear on cue when flight attendants make jokes. They drag their rolling suitcases like a ball and chain. They do not make you confident you will arrive at your destination alive. Instead you (I) have visions of terrible crashes when these pilots pass out at the controls over a mid-flight scotch on the rocks, of being stranded in the Rockies forced to rely on my fellow passengers for survival. Fellow passengers are the last people you want to ever have to rely on. Half of the time they look mutinous and needy and the other half of the time, they're asleep. Survivor-types do not sleep. One eye open all the time.

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I sat next to a guy cradling a bonsai covered in a plastic bag, a wedding favor, he said, as if apologizing. When we were coming into land, my ears wouldn't pop and my fever broke. He took one look at my sweat-covered, slightly panicked face (I kept yawning, trying to make my ears pop) and, shifting the bonsai, pulled his Kindle closer to him as though it could negate my existence.


At the airport before, TSA agents made an important announcement, "Will the person leaving their belt at the security check please retrieve it?" The TSA agents in Omaha are generally pretty nice (I swear one even called me "honey"), but it was clear from the agent's tone that if this man (or woman), this serial belt deserter, did not go claim the belt, the TSA would hunt him down and the rest of us would witness an execution by firing squad.