The Bucket List / Part 3

We awake to the gentle hum of the space heater. We check our phones, laying in silence, neither one of us quite ready to hop out of bed to brave the cold. Eventually we’re roused from the covers, me to use the bucket and her to get some more necessities out of the car. I drop my pajama pants around my ankles, laughing to myself as I stare out of the bedroom window directly to her neighbor’s porch… hoping that he is not currently doing the same.

When I’m done I grab a baby wipe and scrub my hands the best I can before changing out of my pajamas and into my clothes for the day. I’m sitting on the bed pulling up my thick socks when she walks back into the room, another bag in her hand. She tells me she’s going to change too then we can head into town to get some breakfast.

I leave the bedroom closing the door behind me as I walk to the big living room window and I stare outside, steam rising from the creek on the edge of her property, another light dusting of powdery snow on her deck, thick swaths of morning light bathing the mountain in warm sun. When she comes out of the bedroom dressed in her clothes for the day, I’m already packing the bong, seated at the table, the little space heater on at my feet. I shiver, a long chill running down my back. I pass the bong to her. She grabs the neck and rests the base on her leg, lighting the well ground cannabis in the slide before taking a long drag and passing it over to me. I relight the remaining week in the little bowl and inhale deeply, holding in the acrid smoke before releasing it to the room where it drifts to the window, swirling with the morning sun and the specks of dust we missed yesterday with the shop vac.

Back and forth we pass, staring out the window, listening to the creek babble and the mountain come to life with the day’s light. When we’ve had enough we turn off the space heaters, make sure her cat is locked in the bedroom, she grabs the filled bucket and we balance expertly as we slowly stand on one leg at a time, trying to slip off house slippers and replace them with our muddy boots by the door. I open the front door and we’re immediately met with the icy mountain air. I pull my jacket tighter around myself and do my best to quickly shuffle walk to the car, an icy capsule of steel and bags packed up and hurriedly stuffed into her car several days and some 800 miles ago. I slip the keys into the ignition, starting the car and turning the heat on full blast, the windshield is an icy blur. She has me pop the trunk and she places the bucket back there, securely tucked in-between the bags of her belongings, no way it can tip.

She opens up the driver’s side door, slides in and shivers in the cold car. We wait a few minutes as the air set to high begins to warm in the car and slowly thaws the windshield. When we can see she hesitates, unsure of how to get the car backed out of her precarious driveway, its tires sunk deep in the mud, but we’re soon out of the muck and slowly make our way out of her driveway and onto the main road before beginning our mountain descent.

We drive through the blue grey shadows of barren trees; through hollers with thick moss and long icicles clinging resiliently to the rocky walls; alongside the wide river - its water no longer the color of mud from the rain, but rather its icy steel grey color of late winter, changed only to a frothy white around the weathered boulders that interrupt its unending path to lower ground. Experts in our own routine now, we pull into the transfer station, quickly she tosses the contents of the bucket into the “Household Waste” dumpster and we’re off, me needing to ‘secondhand’ wash my hands just from the proximity to her dumpster toss. Soon we’re back at the McDonald’s where we file in to the well warmed lobby and to the back to brush our teeth with the all the luxury of McSinks. By the time we’ve brushed our teeth and used the toilets, I’ve washed my hands three times.

Out in the lobby we order the same as yesterday, thick bright yellow orange juice, egg McMuffins with bright yellow cheese and crusty edges, warm spongy egg shaped in unnatural squares poke out from the thick biscuits. We sit at the same bar topped table, a huge TV at the end of it, FOX News quietly gaslighting us from speakers. I can feel my blood boil, watching the talking heads clamor on about how great tariffs are for the economy. I’m mumbling under my breath, wondering if I can turn the TV to another station, she’s laughing at me getting fired up at the news; she can tune it out, I boil over. My rising anger is now only tampered by listening to one of the town’s residents, an older woman schooling her older bearded male companion about the dangers of fascism as he uses his straw to messily scoop the remaining bits of his morning milkshake into his open mouth, annoyedly scoffing here and there… me not sure if he’s annoyed by the milkshake getting all over his beard or in finding out that he’s been supporting a fascist. Either way now I’m amused and my rage has begun to subside. Even keeled she ignores it all, laughing at my ranting when we get back to the car… “FUCK THAT SHIT NEWS! Brainwashing the absolute shit out of this fucking country… what I need to do is download the universal remote to my phone… just turn this shit off any time I see it… my good deed to the world…” She’s smiling, she’s always so calm about life’s injustices. I have yet to get a hold on that.

“Anywhere you want to go before we head back to the cabin?” She asks…

And now I’m done with the studpid news on the stupid TV and the guy with his milkshake soiled beard and the old woman who shocked me with ther penchant for being politically informed… “Let’s check out the lake!” I say without hesitation, “I want to see how high up the water is!”

“Great idea!” She says. She tells me she hasn’t been up there in a while. We wonder if the water level will be higher or lower than it was in the fall. We’ve never seen the lake filled to its summer time capacity and we’re excited to see where it’s at.

We head back up the mountain, warm sunlight streams in through the skeletal mountain trees. We slowly round steep mountain bends as we navigate the ascending snaky road. We can’t remember exactly how to get to the lake when we come to a fork in the road. There’s a sign to our left for a marina and I tell her as she turns down that road that I don’t ever remember seeing a marina sign… she shrugs and continues on the narrow gravel road until we come around a bend and see the dark steely blue green of the lake, nestled in between steep red rocked mountain walls. “This isn’t where we went last time,” I offer, “But we should still check it out.”

Now we’re slowly driving down a white gravel chipped road, the lake a steep drop down to her left and the red rock cliff looms to my right. The road begins to narrow more and worried we won’t be able to safely turn if we drive down any further, she pulls off to the side furthest from the road’s steep drop, just in front of a very large pile of rocks. We hop out of the car, me realizing that the pile of rocks we’re parked in front of came crashing down from up above, now unnerved at how close the car is parked to the steep cliff wall but even more nervous about parking any closer to the lake… I take a deep breath and ask myself, “what’s the chance that a chunk of rock comes crashing down into the car… or us…?” When I decide that it’s probably right up there with gettting struck by lightning (or accidentally driving this car over the ledge and into the lake) I do my best to relax and enjoy my surroundings.

We are truly alone. The lakes here are like nothing I’ve ever seen before: they’re not the blue grey mirror in the midst of grassy swaths of gentle hills and the thick trees of the NorthEast but rather they look as if they were violently and recklessly clawed by some giant animal right out of the jagged red rocks and mud. The trees didn’t stand at the current water line but rather further up the impossibly steep banks, lined with waterworn rocks of varying sizes, colors and shapes before the terrain changed again high above us at the full summertime waterline where the husks of un-leaved trees took over in stands too thick to see through.

The steepness of the sloped lake bed made me feel unsettled. “You realize that when this lake is full that if you were to wade into it, that with each foot you traveled forward you’d be at least another two feet deep? This shit is STEEEEEEEEEEP! Can you imagine that? I’d be nervous af to swim here… no thanks.” She agrees with me. After coming here the first time, back when we found the place I was so enamored by the lake that I had to look it up… I was startled to learn that at its deepest point the lake’s bottom was some 440’ below the surface. Now we’re peering into the icy cold water, observing how quickly one lost the ability to see below the surface as one got further from the edge… I shivered from both the cold air and the thought of the water’s frigid depths.

As we make our way further down the gravel path we’re suddenly immersed in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic marina. There are no docks, just a few thick white ropes that have no discernible beginning or ends, snaking through the gravel where they disappear into the blue grey lake only to reammerge, tied expertly to one of several abandoned houseboats. Each houseboat is different and appears to have been constructed with varying degrees of skill by its respective owners. Each houseboat consists of a shack built on a floating wooden dock. They have windows, doors, porches, and ladders. Some of the nicer ones are outfitted with vinyl siding and a second story, others are more primitive clad only in bare plywood.

“You think anyone’s here?” I ask uneasy as we walk along the steep shores of this abandoned floating village tucked in-between the high red cliff walls of this crevice of the lake.

We stop to look and listen. Dead silence save for the wind gently blowing through the naked tree branches.

“I don’t think so,” She offers. But I can’t quite shake the feeling that we’re not alone. I think of my parents’ marina when we were growing up and how all the boats would be neatly wrapped in tarps and shrink wrap, up on thick blocks of wood, expertly winterized for the long months ahead. These houseboats however have all been left as if the residents never intended to leave for long, as if something had happened quickly, preventing the residents from carrying the futon from the porch and into the home for the winter… one cushion partially off the furniture, one good gust of wind from being tossed right into the lake; or the pile of vinyl siding, half the house clad the other half haphazardly tossed on the boat’s deck, where a few ends of the white vinyl pieces dipped into the icy lake, waiting for the owner to pull them back up to the safety of the dry deck.

“This is creepy out here… looks like everyone just left in some kinda hurry, doesn’t it?” I ask. She nods her head in agreement. We walk slowly to the end of the gravel road where it never really ends but rather meets the lake and continues without protest for who only knows how long, icily snaking under the cold water’s surface.

The first houseboat you see when you drive down the gravel road (up to your left).

We make our way back to her parked car, me quietly relieved that no large rocks have taken out her car in our absence; happy we never made contact with any of the lake’s summertime residents. We decide to look for the other part of the lake we had visited last time. This time we take the opposite fork in the road and soon find the old lookout point just above the boatramp. We’re alone again, but this time in familiar territory. We walk down the steep rocky bank, expertly traversing the precarious slope, stopping only to pluck interesting rocks from the bank before stuffing them into our pockets. It isn’t long before we’re tossing large stones as far as we can into the deep water, watching the little ripples and eddies unfurl from center before rhythmically ebbing to the far reaches of the lake. We marvel at how each stone’s throw sets a ripple that grows in diametet before reaching the opposite shore.

When we tire of collecting and tossing stones into the frigid water we climb back to the car then head to her cabin. Back home we decide to tackle the basement. All of her belongings are being stored there in a forest of cardboard boxes stacked several feet off the ground. We have to get the basement clean of cobwebs and sawdust, to clear a workspace and make an office for her. Slowly we’re taming the feral little cabin. But first I use the bucket and we sit again in the living room taking long drags from the glass bong before making our way to the chilly basement. We grab the shopvac and she begins to vacuum up the thick cobwebs and sawdust from the beams up ahead. There’s no rhyme or reason, she’s all over the place and I’m sweating… just watching all the missed bits of dirt and dust. “You want to do this, don’t you?” She laughs, sensing my building anxiety. “This is a job for OCD,” I laugh and she hands me the shop vac.

On tiptoes I stand and go down one inch of rafter, sucking up all the dust and debris before lowering the vaccuum another inch, obsessively making clean trails down each plank. When my neck and back can take no more, I grab a broom and begin sweeping all the dirt down. We’re coughing, she’s got a hankerchief tied around her face as she sorts through boxes, moving them here and and there, while I do my best to find a clean rag to tie around my face.

We manage to clean about a third of the rafters off before my neck too tired, I abandon that task and we move on to building her an office with her large metal Ikea cabinets dragged under the freshly cleaned ceiling. By the time the cabinets and desk are moved into place the sun is beginning to set, the basement becoming colder in the fading light. We shiver as we admire our handiwork, the beginnings of her house coming together… slowly but surely… we’re making it happen.

That night we head back to her friend’s home. Her friend won’t be there, she’s housesitting but she has offered her house to us, to stay there in her absence where we can enjoy a warm place to sleep, hot running water and electricty. “I’ll tell you one thing,” I say… “I already really understood and appreciated the modern convenience of not having to shit and piss in a bucket… ya know? Like maybe this lesson was for someone else… not me.”

“Got it,” she laughs as I head into the bathroom, closing the door behind me to undress for a nice hot shower.

That night we laugh about our sleeping predicament. We now have heat, electricity, hot food, running water… a toilet… but unbeknownst to us… her friend sleeps in a toddler bed. We are laughing hysterically wondering how one, let alone both of us are going to fit… I do my best to curl up as small as possible but my feet still hang over the edge. “Do you want to go back to your place or….” I ask… I tell her I’ll take the loveseat, she can have the toddler bed… but neither one of us quite fits on either. Finally exhausted, neither one of us wanting to drive back up the mountain in the dark, I take the toddler bed and she sleeps on the ground covered in all the extra blankets we could find…

“Quite the adventure, this is…” I laugh in the dark, my feet hanging over the edge of the bed.. “It’s something,” she chuckles from the darkened floor….

Final Part TO BE CONTINUED next week….