“So, how was everyone’s night? Anything interesting, any neat night hikes?” Amy asked in her best morning voice.
“There were mice in the walls!!!” yelled a table of four women.
Behind the table of women, we slouched lower into our chairs, hoping to hide. As obvious as we might have seemed, nobody seemed to notice, or care. Everyone’s eyes were focused on the women, all in their early forties, all beautiful. You only need one person to catch onto a crime, and Amy’s eyes were fixed on us. We were busted.
Laughing to myself, I thought back to yesterday morning.
“Nice to meet you Doug, Is this your son? What’s your name little man?” asked Kathy, the leader of the group.
“Hi, I’m Cole, nice to meet you too Kathy”
We were 6500 feet in the air, on top of Mt. McDonald in Glacier National Park. Sitting on a rock, overlooking the ocean of jagged peaks, some green, some gray and both beautiful. The Sperry Chalet was our home for that evening. Built in 1913, it has been used as a lodge for overnight hikers for many years. I could see Lake McDonald 6000 feet below me, like a puddle I stepped in earlier that day on the trail up.
“Cole, do you think your mother would hike up here with a group of her girlfriends?” my Dad jokingly asked later that night. Whenever he talks in a joking manner, his words are choppy and forced. They sound nasally, but I always appreciate it because I know they will be funny.
“No way” I laughed.
We both laughed. We both sat there silently, overhearing the group of women gossip over wine and cheese. Pouring their wine out of there little thermoses made me giggle. I was 12 years old, not nearly old enough to understand the effects of wine, or cheese.
“Did you hear about Carol?”
“No, what happened?”
“What do you mean what happened? Why does something always have to HAPPEN, can’t their just be news?”
“Give me a break Sue, like you ever talk about anything that isn’t a big happening around town”
“Well, she came into the shop a couple days ago and was telling me about this new guy she had met-”
“So something did happen?”
“Give it a rest, yes, something happened, gahlee”
“Well, go on”
“Can I? May I? Well, she met this new guy named Mark. He’s from California, a developer I think he is? I don’t really remember, or care for that matter, but apparently he is a real handsome guy”
“Successful?”
“Seems to be”
“Why is it that I never run into the successful ones? I always get stuck with dead weight”
All the women burst into laughter, sipping their wine like it was juice of life. I grew bored with the conversation in which I could interpret nothing and decided to gaze off into the distance. Sitting above the top of the world made me think of the days when we weren’t here. The days when there was no such thing as concrete or Twinkies. The red, sandy rock cliff left dust on the back of my thighs as I sat on its ledge, overlooking life.
Dinner was lamb and potatoes. German chocolate cake was served for dessert. I picked around the nuts and crunchy strings, as I called them, and was able to get about a quarter of the cake down before my eyes grew weary. Hiking for 7 hours uphill was sure to put me into a deep sleep.
“Hey Cole” my Dad yelled at me from the porch in our room.
“Come check out this view. You can see the moon rise from behind this rock face”
I walked to the back of the room and stepped onto the creaky wooden porch.
“Wow,” was all I could muster.
I waited for my Dad to walk inside, then I quietly urinated off the porch down to the ground below.
“I hope you didn’t just pee out there”
“Uhhh, uh, yea, sorrry”
“Lucky I wasn’t walking below or you’d be a dead man”
A smile grew on my face and we both got into bed, finally, ready for sleep.
“OH MY GOD!”
My eyes shot open. Through the thin waffle-cone walls we could hear the four women drunkenly yip yapping and laughing up a storm. Doors were being slammed, laughter sneaking through our walls, and music playing was enough for my Dad and I to arm ourselves.
“Watch this” he said in his nasally voice.
I knew this was going to be funny.
“Bop bop bop bop bop” was the noise his fingers made as they scampered across the wall which bordered our rooms. I knew where this was going and I liked it.
“Here, you do it too, that way they will think there is a mouse fight going on inside the walls.”
I did it, and didn’t stop. We scratched, scraped, and clawed our way across every corner of that wall.
“QUIET!”
We heard one of them yell.
“Are those... mice?”
BINGO, that was our key to continue. The drawbridge was lowered, and we walked on in.
“Oh, my, god!” someone yelled in the most high pitched, humanly possible voice known to my 12-year-old mind.
“Sue, quickly, gimme a hand here and help me move this bed away from that wall. I do NOT want these mice running all over me tonight”
“No way, those things are disgusting, EWWW, I can't go over there”
“Hurry up, drag the bed”
We silently erupted in laughter as we heard beds being pulled across the room.
“WHACK, WHACK, WHACK”
“Jesus Sue, you are going to wake up the whole place, put those shoes down”
“Wow, my Dad snorted over his nasally laugh, they really do not like mice... let’s keep doing it!”
“ WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK”
“Thats it!, get my boots in that corner, we have got to scare these mice outta here!”
“I think they might be gone” we heard one of them say.
“Let’s hope so. I don’t want to wake up with a mouse on my face!”
My Dad and I sat there, Indian-style on the single, weak springed bed that was ours for the night. I stared at him as he stared at the wall, with his turtle frame glasses and smile on his face. I admired him. Through all the bad, there was always good. This was one of those good times. He turned is head and faced me, acknowledging me staring at him.
“You know, Cole, there will always be times when something does not go your way. Times when you might be disturbed or forced to feel uncomfortable. That is what the world is about.”
I listened intently as he gave me his midnight sermon.
“One thing that I have always done in life is make the best of a certain situation. It’s something that Pappy taught me, and that I want to teach you and your brother. A person will never be happy if he cannot adapt to certain situations, and enjoy them, regardless of the problem. Although I would not recommend doing this anywhere else, I had fun doing it. Thanks for being the second mouse.”
