My Days At Trestle Creek

My days at Trestle Creek began out of a necessity.  A necessity of reality and dreams.  The reality was I wanted to find a place to live in the woods.  I lived in Sandpoint with my buddy Stickman. He only came over from Thompson Falls Montana every other weekend.  He had retired from his principalship in Michigan after 30 years.  He took a job as superintendent for the Thompson Falls School District in Montana as a way to get back out to the west.  Stickman Cain (Bill) had informed his school board he would be retiring July 1st.  He was going to move to Sandpoint permanently.  It was a great idea (dream) on paper.  We both had talked about this as long as we could remember.  Stickman was in my wedding and I was in his.  

With most dreams God had other plans.  Bill Cain (Stickman) , my best friend, died of a heart attack on February 17th 2020.  I miss him terribly everyday but that is all I will say about that.

So the necessity was forefront, but the dreams pushed their way to the head of the line.  Now it was their turn.  They had taken a backseat to the others for years.  They had sat back patiently and waited.  Now it would be their turn.  Mostly because there was no other reason left to not.  To not, because of financial reasons, family reasons, best friend reasons.  Instead of looking for one more reason to not chase this dream,  I decided to give them their due!  “OK, my best friend just died.  Other people in my life stopped needing me as much.  I figured let’s quit holding back and really live.  Live a life I had dreamed of since I was a child.

I gave my thirty day notice to my landlord and started selling what I had left in this world for possessions.  Kayak, dresser, tv stand, you know nothing that meant anything.  I asked the kids’ grandparents if I could build a log deck with a wall tent on their hundred acres at Trestle Creek.  This was five miles from their permanent residence in Hope Idaho.  This way I could help them as they are getting on in years.  They agreed.  I began hauling cedar logs from an open field where they had lay for decades.  I hauled them across the road to a place where the creek whispered its secrets every night.  I completed the log deck and wall tent in October and immediately moved in.  I will tell you now that the first night I knew this was the place for me.

Skip forward a little over two years.  I’m lying here in my tent listening to the creek rush forward.  I think to myself ok when does all this wear off?  The first year of building, cutting wood, splitting wood, and surviving the winter had come and gone.  I was going to only live this lifestyle for a year.  A year to get back to normal whatever that means.  This first year of Autumn’s colors.  Winter’s pure white glove handling my every move.  Spring’s melt and rebirth of the buds and flowers.  Summer’s heat that soaks into your soul.  Now I’m more than two years into this lifestyle.

No this couldn’t just be a year long experiment.  This needed to become my everyday.  Everyday of breathing in nature’s wonder.  Until you become a part of it.  After that you start to notice little things.  Things like smell, sound and taste become one.  I would listen to a bee but smell it’s sweet pollen.  I actually could taste it.

Instead of turning on the TV to be entertained.  I would just watch and listen as the world around me revealed itself.  Not all at once.  But day by day.  I would say, I learned to listen.  I learned to see.  I learned to become a part of my surroundings.  

One example of this was about a month into my experiment, I was taking a short walk around the property.  I noticed the canopy of the cedars.  I hadn’t really looked up in a month.  Sure when I looked at the mountains I would see it.  Green and brown.  But now I actually looked at it.  

Birds’ nests, hanging limbs, squirrels, falling pine cones, life motion.  I mean huge motion.  The tops of the trees were dancing in an invisible wind that I couldn’t feel.  I thought the sound I was hearing had been entirely the creek.  But at this moment I saw/heard it.  This breeze in the tops of the trees sang a song of whispers and laughter. 

Tonight I sit by my firepit and listen to the crackle of the cedar logs on the fire.  It is backed up by the water spilling over the rocks in the creek. 

A train runs by and sings its lonely song.  What wonders it has seen on its travels I ponder.  Worst of all, there is no one to tell its story to.  It might as well be sitting in the trainyard.  When we experience amazing sights and sounds we want to share our tales.  When we are trapped in loneliness they fade. They fade into a fog as if they never existed.  But we know they were here. Like a lover gone.  The passion is there.  But when we reach out we hold only air.

How lucky are those who grasp flesh when they reach out.  Curves and lust.  Warmth and love.  Kindness and empathy.  No those who hold amazement alone grasp smoke and not fire.  We are left to face ourselves.  No wonder so many settle for the wrong body that only occupies space.  It is better to love alone than to love foreign.  

I now hear the howling of the wolves.  I hope they come tonight.  I do not fear the company of enemies.  I fear the loneliness of oneself. So come do battle with me!  This way I will know the company of the fight.  For any companionship is a much more savior taste then eating sawdust by oneself.  

I stare up at the giant sentinel cedars.  They loom overhead.  They shadow out the stars from above.  Although I feel their security.  Their protection.  I know to gaze upon the heavens I must walk out of their warm hug of security.  I long for the bright excitement of the heavens.

I long for the danger of exposing myself to this world. To meet the sounds and sights of the wilderness is to truly be alive. 

Tonight I look out over the lake in the breeze.  It looks as though a bed sheet is being pulled taunt before you smooth the ripples out with a brush of your hand. 

The distant lights reflect their twins off the surface of the water.

I know I am blessed to live this life.  I will not make the mistake of thinking everyone gets an opportunity to live this free in the wild.  No, I will count each day, each adventure as a gift.  

I will still allow myself sorrow, sadness, and hurt.  For these are as common as is happiness, joy, and love.  One without the other is a fallacy. Too many of us eat the frosting and throw the cake away as a child does.  As we grow we learn that in the cake is the substance.  Life lies in the substance.

At the end of a hard worked day there is a sense of achievement.  If you have spent it cutting and splitting wood or hiking to a mountain lake.  The experience of labor and joy go hand in hand.  They are a marriage of two partners that enhance one another.  At the end of a day such as this, I sit on a log transformed into a bench on the shore of a mountain lake.  I let my eyes drift upward.  Starting upon the waves.  Then rising to the green needles of the pines.  After they rise to the snow capped mountain peaks   Finally landing in the diamond glint of the stars overhead.

I sit and listen to the symphony of the wind rushing across the water’s surface as it lifts to pour through the branches and crash into the rock walls of the far off mountain.  

I ask myself this ponder.  Has anyone else been so fortunate to sit where I sit and listen to this wonder?  If so, do they carry the appreciation that I do in my heart?

The sun pushed itself over the mountains as the clouds parted like the curtain on opening night.  The act that followed was one that is burned in my memory.  As the curtain opened the symphony began.  First a low steady singing or birds.  Next the coyotes joined in the crescendo.  Then all of nature accompanied.  The wind, the creek, the bees.  No one was to be left out.  I rose and walked out into the opening of the Cedars.  I felt as if I was the first person to ever set eyes upon this acropolis.

Where would this path lead?  Does it really matter?  If I am allowed to walk along it.  That is the reward.