Third Annual Beavertail Hill Camping Trip with the Cousins

New This Year: Teepee Vestibule We Added to Keep the Doorway Dry and Nathaniel at Breakfast in His Sleeping Bag 

The first trip in 2017 was smoky, with a camp for the Sapphire Complex firefighters right across the meadow from us, the second just hot, but this year's gathering of the cousins, Linda's grandchildren from Florence and Edmonton, was cool and rainy. 
 

We missed Eric this year since he stayed home to do some neighborhood firewising committee work. 

I won't say we replaced him with Cappy. 

Before the Rain Started (Beavertail Hill in the Background)

The teepee was still where the cousins stayed and the pond where they wanted to spend time. Thanks to Kim Briggeman's article last month in the Missoulian, we now know that the Clark Fork beaver king Skookum had his loyal beavers from around here dig out the foot of the Cramer Creek drainage to the north to build a wall to stop the river's flow. His show of power to make the downriver beavers pay tribute resulted in the pond and hill, and the river runs to the south of the hill because that's where Skookum opened the wall after the downriver rebels surrendered and paid their taxes. 
 


Over at the pond, the cousins took their potato chips swimming. For a while Emma carried them in one hand and swam with the other arm; for a while she carried them in her teeth. 

I continued my quest for ovoids, reflections on the surface of water that some people believe provided the source of the ovoid design element in Pacific Northwest coastal indigenous people's art.  

 


Paradise--not only for cousins on their anticipated and beloved annual teepee trip, but also for dogs and for white-haired, retired English professors reciting poetry and prose in Old, Middle, and Modern English over martinis.