It’s a one-track town, just brown and a breeze too
Pack up the meat, sweet, we’re headin’ out
For Wichita in a pile of fruit
Get the loot, don’t be slow, we’re gonna catch a trout
— Bob Dylan from “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread”
(Author’s note: I have no idea what Bob was talking about and the lyrics are apropos of nothing other than I will be mentioning “trout” somewhere down the line.)
The past two weeks, I’ve been writing about camping trips with my old friend, Tray Norton (not his real name). During my days as a counselor with developmentally-disabled adults, in Sonora, California, 1981-1987, I accompanied different groups of clients on various camping trips in the nearby Sierras. The common denominator in most of these excursions was Tray. The only trip he didn’t go on was a horseback trip in the Emigrant Wilderness. Riding horses was not in Tray’s autistic wheelhouse.
On this trip, I was accompanied by a middle-aged woman named Becky, who owned and operated Tray’s group home, the rest of the fellows from Becky’s and a volunteer named Pat, who was not a client but probably should have been.
We were in a National Forest campground, a grassy 20-acre meadow, situated at around 7,000 feet, surrounded by towering slabs of snow-capped granite and through which flowed the bright, boulder-strewn North Fork of the Stanislaus River. In all the years we lived in Tuolumne County, I never tired of the jaw-dropping natural splendor. I was truly blessed.
It was near the end of our first day in camp. Becky and I had been busy getting the guys ready for bed. I was in my tent rolling out my sleeping bag when Pat stuck his head in through the flap.
“Well, this should be interesting,” he mumbled with a sheepish grin.
I had the sudden feeling that “interesting” was going to be insufficient to describe what he was about to lay on me.
“What?” I answered, sharply.
“I put a little ‘speed’ in my apple juice and Becky thought it was her cup and . . . she drank it.”
I made a groaning sound of anger and despair, then, “Damn it, Pat, if you have any of that (expletive deleted) left, I want it tossed in the fire pit and I mean NOW!” I was furious.
Pat did as I’d instructed and I kept a watchful eye on Becky. I was sure she’d never encountered amphetamines before but whatever she was feeling, she appeared unaffected although she was a little more talkative than usual. I wanted to strangle Pat.
In any event nothing seemed to come it and I relaxed, other than shooting Pat the “stink eye” every time I looked at him.
I’d brought my fly rod and the following afternoon, Becky invited me to take an hour off and get some fishing in. A short time later, I was standing in the Stanislaus, casting a size 16 Adams into the upstream riffle where I’d seen a large trout rise, when I spotted Tray.
He was floating on his back astride a large silver air-mattress, drifting slowly downstream with the current, occasionally spinning around in one little eddy after another, keeping up an endless conversation with himself interjecting the “discussion” with various buzzing and zizzing sounds.
I said “Hello” as he floated by me but he seemed oblivious to my presence and rattled on with his interior dialogue. He appeared to be in control and the river wasn’t deep so I went back to my casting.
A moment later, I glanced downstream to check his progress and noticed another fisherman. What he must have thought, seeing a very pale, bearded young man floating on a luminescent mattress in the North Fork, I could only imagine but it cracks me up to this day.
Later in the day, Becky and I were preparing dinner when we began to wonder where Tray was. I was just about to go look for him when he strode into camp. His air mattress was draped over his shoulder, torn and deflated.
“What happened to your mattress, Tray?” I asked when he sat down next to me. All he said was:
“How incredibly pointed and sharp can river rocks be?”
And so it went.
Email: dhughnegus@gmail.com
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