...And the Other's Gold (Part 1)

Make new friends but keep the old
One is silver and the other's gold.

How many people used to sing this song in elementary school?  Mr. Kakacek used it as a practice song for us when we were learning to sing rounds.  Perfect for learning harmonies and to listen to others' voices.

From this journey, that's what I reflected on most: hearing the golden voices that I don't get to hear very often.  It seems like every time I want to call or Skype or message or Facebook or any number of ways that the contemporary world communicates, I find myself distracted by something near at hand - usually the computer itself.  The other reason it's difficult for me to contact people audibly is probably psychological.  The simple attempt to verbally speak with my golden friends reminds me how incredibly far away I am from them.  For the psyche, this is a hard thing; painful, sometimes.  And if I know anything about human nature, we will do whatever it takes to avoid pain.  For me, that means I don't call as often, or write when I could.  Others lie (I do that sometimes), some run away and some will find replacement addictions to fill up their loneliness.  Good thing I don't feel lonely, and I probably never will after this golden trip.

Our drive from Grandpa and Grandma Matthias' house to Rockford was nostalgic, not just for the drive's sake, but in the way that Christine and I reminisced about landmarks along the way.

Driving east, through Galena, a beautiful old mining town constricting a capillary of river, we marveled at the beauty of the old brick churches, the colossal bed and breakfasts jutting from the sides of the hills and the quaint coffee shops lining the cobblestone streets.  There aren't many places like it and as we drove through, we thought - Why didn't we spend more time here?  It was only fifteen minutes from Dubuque?

After leaving Galena and wending our way up the sides of the hills to the flatlands of Illinois, Christine and I began to remember.  Time tends to erode memories of places; slowly it brings down what used to be large and intimidating to soft and almost vacant.  On the seventy odd miles to Rockford, there is very little to look at other than sparse blocky farm houses situated on miles of stark, dormant landscapes.  The beans have been cut off at the ground; the corn is sheared off just above the roots.  There is nothing on this drive in December that suggests how vibrant life is during the summer months.  Every once in a while we passed some Christmas lights strung haphazardly around various evergreen trees or naked maples, but for the most part we just watched mileage signs that said "Rockford 62 miles,"  "Rockford 54 miles".  That's the way life goes sometimes - you just watch the mile markers, impatiently counting down the time before you get 'there.'   But in those times of counting down, sometimes you run across memories like roadkill.  You've totally forgotten that you were there.

Like Apple River Canyon State Park in Illinois.

Halfway between Galena and Freeport, this little park sits off highway 20 about ten miles. The name of the park is misleading because normally when I think of canyon, I think steep cliffs, mighty river gouging out the bedrock, white water rapids - you know what I'm talking about.  But ARC (Apple River Canyon) is this beautiful little streamlike river that meanders through the green back country.  Christine and I went camping there once and we reflected with laughter. 

It must have been late September or early October; the leaves were changing, scintillating gold, orange, red and anything in between.  In was the best time of year to go camping, really, as long as it wasn't snowing, which in this instance, it wasn't.  We packed up our newly purchased pop up camper, one that slept six comfortably, since we were five, it worked out really well.  After putting the last of the supplies inside the camper door, we buckled the girls into their seats and sang our way to ARC.  When we turned off highway 20, we noticed the beauty of the landscape, harvest ready cornstalks, deciduous trees preparing to unload their stock like some arboreal pre-Christmas sale and acres of grass just beginning to turn crispy yellow.

When we pulled into the campground, we were overjoyed to see that only one other camper was there.  A few tents dotted the campground like warts, but we were so proud of our camper.  As they stepped out to see who the new resident was, we waved like a king and queens knowing that we'd have the best set up of anyone there.  We reversed our camper back into the space set aside for us, erected the pop up, and set our chairs out for a great day in the outdoors.  It was cool and crisp so we put on our warmer clothes and then looked around. 

Strange.  There was one camper and five or so tents, but everyone around us looked to be of Asian descent.  I waved to one of them: he didn't shake his head to the side, only looked away quickly.  I greeted another - same response.  Okay...  "Hey kids, let's go for a hike!"

We packed up the kids; Greta was only two at the time so I carried her in the packpack as she called it, then I carried the water bottles, the insect repellent, the picnic basket, four sets of sweatshirts and a chair.  Christine put the camera around her neck and said, "Let's go!"

After a few hours of watching the late summer flowers fade, throwing sticks and stones into the stream and laughing uncontrollably at the antics of squirrels fighting over nuts, we headed back to the campsite.  I placed my haul on the ground and stretched my back out with both hands on my hips while Christine made sure she secured the camera in a safe place.  Aaah, the camping life.  But then I noticed something strange.  All of our Asian camping neighbors were gone.  Their tents were still there, but it was getting dark and certainly they would be back to prepare dinner?

They didn't come back, which was fine, I guess.  The campground was ours, but then, somewhere after dinner time I began to hear gunshots - in the dark.  First thought - Red Dawn -1984: movie with Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, maybe you know the one where the Russians invade the United States for some unknown reasons and Mr. Dirty Dancing himself with a band of misfits somehow is able to fight off the entire Soviet Union.  I wanted to yell out "Wolverine!" but thought better of it because everyone else had guns and I had, well, I had a pop up camper.

From the woods our neighbors materialized.  Each one of them held a shotgun and at least two or three dead ducks.  They'd been out hunting mallards on the reservoir, illegally, if you ask me because I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to shoot ducks after dark, but who was I to walk up to my new camping friends and say, "Can I see your license please?"

As we, the Matthias five sat outside our camper, our Asian neighbors began to set up shop.  In the dim lights of their wiggling and strobing flashlights, I noticed that they were setting up some kind of propane torches.  I'm not talking the little kind you hook up to a camping stove, but the big ones that look like you could strap them to the side of a space shuttle.  It was good entertainment.  I thought that they were going to cook their supper (duck) and head off to bed like we were, but no no, they proceeded to fricassee their ducks.  I don't really know what 'fricassee' means, but I remember Daffy Duck complaining to Elmer Fudd about ending up fricasseed.  It means to fry, somewhere between saute and stew.  But in this case, our campground non-friends were blowtorching their prey. 

And it sounded a lot like when a hot air balloon inflates.  CHHHSHHHOOOOOOOSHHH.  As soon as that bad boy started up, the whole neighborhood came running with their ducks.  I don't know where all the people came from, they must have had a village in each tent and their tents must have been magical like Harry Potter's.  There must have been fifty people circling the Atlantis space shuttle thruster holding one hundred and fifty illegally shot ducks waiting for their turn to singe the feathers off the poultry corpses.  Lots of laughter and shouts in a different language.  I wouldn't have felt uncomfortable if they didn't have their guns resting against the trees outside their tents.  Fortunately, they were just interested in duckicide.

Well, okeee, I thought.  I can probably put up with this for a little while.  It's not like I'm going to go over there and tap them on the shoulder and say, 'Pardon me.  Would you mind turning off your jet engine at 8:00 so my daughters can go to sleep?'

They kept going until 4:00 a.m.  The blowtorch continued singeing ducks at regular twenty minute intervals CHHHSHHHOOOOOSHHH - Greta woke up multiple times asking in her sleep deprived, crying state, "Daddy, Daddy loud fire!  Loud fire!  Can put it out?"

"No, darling two year old.  Daddy is not brave enough to do that.  Ask Elsa."

Good times. 

Tomorrow, we'll find our way to Rockford, to the golden homes of golden friends who have been kept near.  A church experience I'll never forget, and stories remembered that hopefully will not erode again.