I've decided to stay up all night. I would have to be up at 7 anyway, to get ready for school, catch the bus at 8 to be there by 9. My essay is done and I ate a terribly bland twice baked potato that I microwaved. Even with the added cheese and pepperonis and pickled jalepenos it still bored my mouth.
I have a cat on each corner of my bed. Figaro, the stray, squeaks when disturbed. He does this funny yawn sigh that is adorable. I hope I'm making the right decision finding him a home. He likely belonged to someone in the neighborhood, but he has no collar and was out all night on his own for at least two nights. If I don't see flyers on my way to school today, his owners weren't good parents and he deserves to be taken care of better. People shouldn't leave kittens out all night like that. I feel bad enough when my cat wants to go out at night, knowing there's all sorts of critters to contend with in the dark.
Speaking of which, the wolves. I've got an affinity for them though I've only ever seen them that one time. There's another story though, where visitors in my sleep made me uneasy.
When I was 12 my mom and my second stepfather took my brother and I camping on the Lake Simtustus Indian Res, past Kahneeta. It's the sort of off the beaten path place that guarantees seclusion on account of how treacherous the pass is that winds down the side of the canyon to the lake. Down below, against the shoreline, you can camp near trees that hang over the water, with the lake all to yourself. It gets to be over a hundred degrees out there at the beginning of summer, so you end up waking early, coasting out to the middle of the lake on rafts and tubes. It's impossible to stay out of the water. In any case, our first trip out there was kind of overwhelming. It was a bit of a culture shock to be out in the desert, the terrain was so much different than the tree-lined hills and coastal wet spots. On the way in , our truck seemed to barely cling to the side of the hill, it was so terrifying to look out my window and only see a sheer drop that I had to focus on things on the drivers side, which were pretty much high sandstone cliffs with caves, and a lot of scrub brush, (things that looked dead but were just dormant and waiting for the rains). On the way down, my stepfather is telling us why camping on the Res side is different than camping on the standard designated camp side. For one, he said, the indians don't really like it, which is why if we see any we should steer clear and let him handle it. He picked this story back up later that night, while we finished off chili by the campfire. Brandishing a small pistol that I didn't even know he had, he told us this story about how an indian might get drunk and decide to kill us all in our sleep. My mom tried to get him to stop telling stories like that, but he assured her it was a reasonable threat to worry about, and sent my brother and I off to bed in our separate tent with the visions of stealthy natives slipping in from every direction, thinking death thoughts. What made this worse was the portable radio, still out by the fire, playing the only station that came in out there, chanting indian songs, sad wolf yips across the lake.
Eventually I fell asleep. Even with murderous indians on the brain, I fall asleep early in nature, and the lake slapping quietly against the pebbly beach made music out of the wind through the tall grass.
Suddenly I was startled awake. My brother was screaming and thrashing in his sleeping bag. I scrambled to my knees and began pawing around for him in the dark, trying to adjust my eyes and frantically trying to save him from whatever it was making him scream. My stepfather began to bellow from the tent next door but all I could do was yammer that Doug (my brother) was freaking out. Doug lurched upright and I realized something was wrong. He had no head. He was this large dark sleeping bag covered lump. Where was his head? I felt around for his face and couldn't find the opening. "How did you...?" I asked, he cried, something about a stolen zipper. As it turns out, he had somehow night terrored himself completely upside down in his bag, woke up zipped completely inside it with his head where his feet should be.
Once we righted the situation, he fell back asleep, but it was a jaunty rest for me after that, trying to settle my nerves.
At some point, I must have drifted off, but something else woke me. As I lay there in the dark I could hear a few snaps from the fire but everything else was silent. Assuming maybe it was just a loud pop of sap or something that woke me, I rolled over and closed my eyes. That's when I heard the thud. Or rather, it was like I felt it. It sounded like a careful footstep, a heavy boot coming down in the dirt outside my tent. And then another, Something was trying to quietly and slowly walk through the grass just outside. Then I heard the water ripple, were they coming up from the lake or going into it? Was this the murderous indians coming for our throats?
I panicked. I tried waking my brother. I half whispered to him "something's out there!" He was disgruntled and didn't believe me. It took more prodding to get him to wake up and listen. We became riveted as we both listened to whatever it was sneaking around out there. Finally we couldn't stand it anymore and began hollering for our step father, who despite all bravado refused to check on the sound with his gun and told us to go back to sleep.
The next morning when we woke up, the grass all around our tent was flat. The lake had pretty much lapped over any footprints but there were still a few heavy holes that didn't sit well with any of us. We had a quiet breakfast full of creepy feelings despite the how warm the sun was already.
On our last day there, as we were driving up the hill, the mystery was solved...
A herd of wild horses were grazing on the hillside.
And that's only one of the reasons I told you that horses are tricky.
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