Waking Up In Brookings

Waking Up In Brookings

When I woke up in the morning, Aaron was gone. I figured he must have been either arrested or eaten by bears. Wilderness is wilderness, after all, and who was I to say bears wouldn't be on the prowl for a dawn breakfast behind the Scrub-a-Dub laundromat 25 miles from the California-Oregon border. And cops are cops, and who was I to say they wouldn't get “ a hunch” from the yuppie German cyclists who locked the laundromat door on us when we tried to go in at closing to sleep, and were now sleeping themselves at the KOA Korporate Kampgrounds across the street. Aaron and I, we didn't need pools, or showers, or electricity, or stoves. We just needed each other, and maybe one more layer each of blankets than we'd thought to bring.

I'd never been to the Pacific Northwest in the summer, and I'd never been camping before. Aaron grew up camping in Eugene and told me it would be warm and dry. Obviously he hadn't been home since before the Greenhouse Affect became apparent. And where the hell was he now, anyway? When is it appropriate for me to start worrying about my dead, detained ex-roommate?

When Aaron and I first met, I liked him instantly because he said he was from Eugene, Oregon.

“Where Anarchists come from!”

“Well maybe. You're actually the first 'anarchist' I've ever met.” Then he used the acronymn “G-T-F-O” (“get the fuck out”) in a real conversation, and I knew he had to move in with me. I wooed him with exotic tales of self-defeat and shared with him my very vegan-tasting wheatgerm chocolate chip cookies, and he blushed and unpacked. Eugene may not be the Cabbage Patch for radical anarchist ELFers as I'd thought, but they sure knew how to raise a nice guy. Even if he wanders off in the bleak bluey dank dawn.

Right about the time I started to dread the bike ride back to Eugene to explain to Aaron's parents that he'd been eaten by a paddy-wagon full of grizzlies and I had to sell his bike to the kids outside the Circle K to buy enough Triscuits to get me back alive, he showed up pink-faced and smiling.

“It was too cold to sleep so I went to the diner across the street and got a cup of hot cocoa and the best pancakes I've ever had in my life!”

“Oh yeah?” I said disinterested, actually very thankful he was alive and even more jealous of the fresh hot chocolate.

“They were blueberry. Three-stack. With bacon.” His eyes rolled back in his head, and the further back they went the bigger his grin got, until he looked like a six-foot-tall, dead, pink Jack-o-lantern.

“Harumph. I'll just go to the Circle K next door, I could use a warm beverage. I knew I was looking forward to another cup of stale black coffee and a single-serving box of dry frosted flakes. Maybe a Clif Bar if I could steal one of convince the clerk to “let me have.” Likely, though, I wasn't going to eat real food for another four hours when we reached the next town and could at least buy some more bread, peanut butter, and raisins.

Back at our nest behind the laundromat — which we'd purposefully set back far enough that I could feign my first real camping experience — I packed the rest of my things to prepare for the road: rolled up the fleece blanket (which just barely covered me), folded the tarp (which was actually a picnic blanket my mom gave me in high school), and took off the sweatshirt and cargo shants I wore to sleep. Sure I was damp and shivering now, but in a few miles the sun would be out, the ocean coast would crystallize against it to reflect all the sunlight onto my increasingly less pasty skin, and mainly I would start overheating and wanting to just ride in my sports bra anyway.

We had conquered our first real obstacle. We found refuge in a town where we knew no one and no one wanted to know us. We survived without making friends. We were not arrested or mauled. And the snooty cycling tourists even waved goodbye as we pedaled into the valley, into the sunshine.