the cover

nce

A FAMILY REWEAVES THE

Upon a

FRAYED THREADS OF THEIR

Mountain

LIVES ON VACATION IN

Summer

THE HIGH COUNTRY

Text by Peter Aleshire

Photographs by Fred Griffin He spilled from the overstuffed car and stood raggedly in front of the cabin. I clomped up the steps and opened the pinewood door to the log refuge for my battered, carweary, struggling little family. Sticking my head through the opened door, I noted the knotty pine, the one room, the small loft, and lack of a TV. Could we handle two weeks in such cramped quarters — with nothing to do at night?

They crowded past me into the small space of the cabin: Noah, then 12 years old and starting to need friends more than a father; Seth, 15, all awkward pride, unpredictable interests, and song lyrics I couldn't decipher; and my wife, Elissa, a painter seeking new footing following surgery and a confrontation with the possibility of death. And me: a middle-aged, newly minted free-lance writer obsessed with paying the bills without a regular paycheck. Lately I had found myself rushing from one project to the next, like a frightened man on an accelerating treadmill. So I thought that a couple of weeks in the Deer Dancer cabins on the outskirts of Alpine in the pines, firs, aspens, and oaks of the White Mountains might somehow weave together the frayed threads of our family. We'd been buffeted unceasingly those past two years, by illness, unemployment, and the demands of adolescence, but we thought maybe we could reconnect on that protected island in a sea of green.

If we could get any sleep and avoid climbing the cabin walls.

"It's cool," declared Seth.

"I like it," declared Noah reassuringly.

"Like, where do we sleep?" asked Seth, studying the sofa dubiously.

"It folds out," I said.

"I'm not sleeping with him," declared Noah. "He kicks."

"Make a bed on the floor with the cushions," I offered.

Elissa stood in the doorway and surveyed the room. "It's darling," she said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Lots of wood."

"No TV," she observed.

"No. No TV."

"No wall," she added, looking up toward the loft where the double bed crouched.

Elissa sleeps lightly - especially lately.

Of course we didn't sleep well that first night. Noah's cushions kept spreading apart; Seth snored like a team of chain-saw loggers; I woke every few hours and lay in the darkness counting assignments; and Elissa tossed and turned.

Manly art of fishing. Of course, they had their own ideas.

I told both boys that we would use the vacation to develop their angling skills. Seth rolled his eyes and insisted he wasn't going to kill any fish. Noah seemed dubious but potentially coercible. I roused him at dawn, and we headed for nearby Luna Lake, rippling with stocked trout and fluttering with birds.

We rented a boat and glided out on the mirror-smooth morning waters where I began to demonstrate to Noah the considerable gaps in my knowledge about spin casting. During one particularly vigorous effort, the front section of my pole took flight, landing in the water about 40 feet from the boat. Sheepishly I reeled it in my only bite. Noah watched, grin-ning broadly.

"Nice cast, Dad," he smirked. "Good distance."

Then I noticed three great blue herons standing in the reeds on shore, and we began a slow stalk in our boat. Next we discovered a black bird with a bright-yellow head, then some cinnamon brown ducks. I had brought along a bird book and binoculars, although neither of the boys had ever shown much interest in bird-watching. But Noah grabbed the book and located the picture of the cinnamon teal.

Soon he'd identified a yellow-headed blackbird, a pied-billed grebe, an American coot, a Forster's tern, a brown pelican, and even a huge osprey snatching a fish from the water. Another birder in a canoe then pointed out a bald eagle nest in a snag about 200 yards from the shore.

Noah seemed utterly happy although nothing had gone as I'd envisioned it. He seemed to revel in this exclusive time with me or maybe it was me, reveling in him. And so it went.

Day by day my plans unraveled, my leadership disintegrated, and the vacation improved. We began sleeping soundly, snuggling into the cabin, and wallowing in our time together. We missed the tel-evision not at all. The vacation veered unpredictably.

Elissa decided on the spur of the moment to paint a weathered abandoned homestead built 100 years ago and boarded up in the 1950s. I wondered how I would entertain a couple of teenagers for six hours, hanging around these decaying outbuildings with their rusting horse-drawn plows.

But to my surprise, the ruins fascinated Seth. He combed them like an archaeologist in King Tut's tomb. He found a room full of old shoes, a deer hide on the wall, giant wrenches, horse tack, and a hundred mysteries.

Seth refused repeated blandishments to take up fishing with a pole and a hook, but then we wandered down a long dirt road to the Blue River, and he waded upstream with a fishing net. Noah and I paused to build a dam of stone to create our own little pond, then picked our way toward Seth.

We found him stalking carp in one of the few waist-deep pools. He'd found that he could stampede them into his net by prodding them with a stick. He'd caught and re-leased five sizable carp. So we fished for carp until we got tired of that, lapsing then into a completely satisfying mud fight.

I located a succession of snags for Elissa to paint, but her interest kept shifting. She painted the dead outbuilding, then some gnarled dead cottonwood roots, then a startling blue bush, and then a vibrantly alive oak with one discordant dead branch.

Mountain Summer

Life and death blended in her painting, point and counterpoint, as necessary to one another as the snag is to the forest.

The trip gradually found its center on the Black River, to which we found our way along long dirt roads bordered by deer, elk, and monarch butterflies. Once a black bear ran across the road before us.

Again I made the plans then trailed along behind like an oak leaf on a lazy current. Elissa found a tree to paint. I began pulling fishing poles out of the car, but in the meantime Noah and Seth located a perfect log bridge crossing the dark, reflectinggreen, three-foot-deep Black River. They grabbed a couple of improvised quarter staffs and indulged in a Robin Hood fantasy. Shrugging, I dropped the poles and grabbed a camera. So we whiled away several hours hunting crawdads, wading, and playing.

At about three o'clock, I decided to get serious about fly fishing. So I rigged a dry fly and wandered upstream seeking riffles, eddies, and the hiding places of the wily trout.

After an hour of fruitless casting, I glimpsed three lunkers hiding under a bank, protected by a small tree whose branches brushed the water's surface. I spent a frustrating half hour entertaining the trout with my fly until I surrendered in disgust, leaving two flies tangled in the branches over their heads.

bank, protected by a small tree whose branches brushed the water's surface. I spent a frustrating half hour entertaining the trout with my fly until I surrendered in disgust, leaving two flies tangled in the branches over their heads.

I was nearly ready to drop my pole in the pond and swear off fishing forever when Noah appeared on the bank with a net.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"I just thought I'd help in case you catch anything," he said, smiling sympathetically.

I felt unaccountably heartened: He reminded me of me watching him on that horse. I realized he knew perfectly well I was an inept fisherman and a well-intentioned four-thumbed father. But there he sat with his sky-blue eyes and his encouraging smile.

At just that moment a fish jumped, dead ahead. So I devoted myself to casting, eager to show Noah that I understood his gesture and did not care at all whether I caught anything. So, of course, I caught a gleaming rainbow.

I played it over to Noah's position on the bank. He stepped into the water and deftly netted the struggling glimmer of a trout.

We stood there, proud of one another beyond possibility of expression.

Seth materialized on the bank. "You're not going to kill it, are you?" he asked.

With a whoop, I splashed him. He called me names, laughing. And I realized with a rush of relief that I knew how to be a father after all. It doesn't take wisdom, grace, or knowledge of knots. It just takes the bonding of adversity, laughter, and time.