Norana patched a hole in my khakis with the emergency sewing kit in Vincent’s well-stocked first aid kit. Apparently I had crouched and split a seam from just under my fly on down. Someone said, “Did you know you have a hole in your pants?” and I said, “Yeah, these are my camping pants, so they have a few holes...” and I looked down and realized I’d been unknowingly flashing a large portion of my boxer-briefs to everyone for an indeterminate length of time.
This afternoon, Megan and I swam to the eastern shore of the lake. Although that might be an understatement because at some point between childhood and now, I’ve forgotten how to swim. So I pulled on an orange life vest and sort of bobbed, kicked and doggy paddled my way over. It was exhausting. We stopped a few times to sun ourselves on the craggy mini-islands that poke from the lake and I got myself a nice sunburn on my head, shoulders and back.
For dinner, we made one of most ingenious campfire entrées ever: personal pizzas. Butter or olive-oil both sides of a round of pita or nan. Grill one side over red-hot coals. Pile sauce, toppings and cheese atop the grilled side. (We had garlic we’d roasted on the fire, onions, tomato sauce, canned tomatoes, pepperoni, portabella mushrooms and a few different kinds of shredded cheese.) The pizzas are then covered with tinfoil and returned to grill, ungrilled side down and cover. About 10 minutes later, the crusts were crisp, the cheese melted and they were ready to eat.
Afterwards, each person around the campfire relayed a favorite joke or two but I couldn’t think of one. As I write this entry a few days later, I realize I do know one joke, so I suppose it’s my favorite. Here it is:
An American businessman gets into a cab in Mexico City, gives the driver his destination and takes his seat. The cabbie rockets off and immediately speeds through a red traffic light.
“Are you crazy?” says the suit. “The light was red!”
“It’s okay,” says the cabbie. “My brother does it all the time.”
Just as the businessman’s heart rate returns to normal, the cabbie blows through a second red light.
“Jesus! That one was red half a block ago!”
“Relax,” assures the cabbie. “My brother does it all the time.”
So the cab approaches a green traffic light. And the cabbie brings the car to a halt.
“Now what!” screams the businessman. “The light’s clearly green!”
The cabbie settles back unpeturbed and says, “My brother might be coming.”
Megan, Josh and I are the only remaining campers at the southern end of the island, so we took a canoe ride back together. Somewhat addled by Jack Daniel’s, we turned off our lantern and our flashlight and let the wind and current carry us down the lake. With Megan at the bow and Josh at the stern, I rested on my back on the bottom of the canoe and the three of us stared up at this dome of constellations and tried to describe the grandeur of it and we couldn’t. Instead we lowballed it and murmured things like “awesome” and the only comparison I could make was to a planetarium, except that this firmament enveloped body and soul and made me feel comfortably small. And other than our own sounds, all we could hear was the aluminum of the boat gently cleaving water. Huckleberry Finn said it best:
Sometimes we’d have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. .... It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened...