On a recent trip to California, four of us had brunch in my favorite restaurant in Murphys, which I had wanted to share with my good friend, Leah, who was finally visiting my old stomping grounds. For the first time ever, the meal was seriously disappointing.
We headed back to the Eurovan, which was towing my teardrop trailer so that my friend and I could each have our own comfortable sleeping quarters. I haven’t used the teardrop much, so I’m still not great at backing it up. When it started to jackknife, I opted to unhitch it and spin it around rather than jockey back and forth under scrutiny. I know having someone watch me shouldn’t matter, but the moment I have a witness, my dubious skills get worse.
Feeling rushed and a bit stupid for not being able to make the turn, I quickly hitched the trailer back up to the van. It can be hard to get the ball in the socket, so I double-checked. All good. I thought about putting the lock back on, but decided against that since we were going just half an hour up the hill and would immediately unhitch again.
Big mistake.
Less than a mile away, as I slowed to turn left, the trailer rammed into the van before the tow bar scraped along the street. The ball, somehow, had popped right out of the socket. Luckily, the only things damaged were the bottom of the Eurovan’s back door and my pride.
By the time we made it to Bear Valley, where I spent a good part of my adult life and where we would be spending the night, it was so late that we opted to split up. Leah headed up to the ski mountain to check that out while I took her pup and my two, and drove up to the meadow where I would spread my dog Sophie’s ashes, and visit with my parents and three other dogs whose ashes are already there.
Despite some threatening clouds and a prior week of afternoon thunderstorms, the sun was shining upon our arrival. My English cocker puppy, Moke, bounced through the crispy, end-of-the-season mule’s ears, his ears paralleling the earth at the top of each leap. When he finally got near after romping the length of the meadow and back, I realized he was covered with seeds and small burrs. Meanwhile, the other two dogs stood at the edge of the forest eating something that was probably deer poop but hard to tell at a distance.
I realized it was time to cut my visit to the meadow short. As we climbed up to the road, the two older dogs took off. Maybe because they’re brother and sister and have hung out together all their lives, they have that silent communication along with a propensity to get into trouble together. So, naturally, they didn’t respond when I called. That usually means they’re in hunting mode. Despite a poor track record on that front, they’re extremely dedicated and lose all ability to hear commands when hot on the trail of a chipmunk that has likely already ditched them.
I finally found them circling a small shed. Irritated, I bent down to hook up one and then the other, then whipped back up, bashing my head on one of the shed’s wooden beams.
On the verge of tears, I threw the pups in the van. “You are not going to hijack this day,” I exclaimed as I clambered back down the hill through the tangle of vines and thistles to a place where I could view the entire meadow. I took in and blew out a deep breath, thought of my parents, and the four dogs who now resided there, and tried to regain a sense of zen.
On the way back up the steep hill, I stepped on a log that spun underfoot. Down I went, my leg sustaining a seven-inch scratch. By the time I reached our camping spot, the streams of blood made it look much worse than it was. On the other hand, I’ll probably have the scar for a couple of years.
Had I been home, I would have holed up and tried hard not to move. But we were car camping at 7,000 feet and a couple of local friends would be joining us for al fresco wine and charcuterie that evening. Ever the hostess, I got things ready, occasionally dabbing at my wound. I hadn’t factored in that one of the visitors, the longtime community nurse affectionately known as Nurse Kathy, would insist on cleaning me up and bandaging the wound so generously that I looked like a Civil War casualty until the next morning when I unwound the two feet of gauze.
Once Nurse Kathy had fixed me up, she grabbed the high-end cabernet and equally high-end pinot noir, along with the crystal goblets, she had brought down. Leah, Kathy, my friend Nick and I spent the rest of the evening telling stories and laughing as we drank lovely wine, watched the orange-and-pink sunset punctuated with a rising crescent moon, and tried not to topple the rickety plastic picnic table we had found that swayed right and left as well as front and back.
And just like that, my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day turned into one of my favorite ones.
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