Due to the fact we never had a lot of money, my Mother would make it a point of taking all of us camping. She would work at tents and food and all to make our trip a good one. We would go up on the Oregon Creek past Grass Valley at North San Juan to camp most years. It was a beautiful place with swimming holes and friendly people and a small stream that that opened into a wide sandy bottomed swimming hole under the over pass for the raod. There was a covered bridge into the campground that some used to sit in the rafters with water balloons waiting for the cars to come through.
I loved that place. My Uncle Pont and Aunt Norma would come with my cousins sometimes, or we would invite other friends to come along. We would swim all day and eat food cooked on an open fire. Smores, hot dogs, hamburgers, fried potatoes with onions, and eggs in the morning with bacon sizzling in an iron skillet. Makes my mouth water. We would drink the water from the creek after boiling it and get the meat from Babe's market in town. ,
We also made alot of summer friends both the locals and the ones staying in the campground. It was the place of my first innocent summer romance. His name was Bill Butterworth and he worked at the lumbermill that summer. He had come on the weekend with some friends to swim at the falls, They were about a half mile up stream from the campground. I was 15 and it was the first year I was allowed to go there. I had met other kids my age and we were all there swimming and having a great time. He and his friends pulled up in an old yellow pick up truck and they noticed us and the flirting began. It was so fun to talk to someone who knew the area, and Bill could track and had lived there all his life. He knew all the back woods areas and offered to show us the local spring to get water, and all the places to go to swim and hike. He was going to go to college in another year to be a Park Ranger and was into conservation. He loved the wilderness and was a bit shy until he talked about it. We were two peas in a pod.
That day he drove us back to camp and stopped to meet my parents. He talked with them for a while then asked if he could take me to the falls the next day after he got back from church. My parents said yes and we then spent the rest of the week hiking and swimming every free minute he had. With the back drop of the Sierra foothills, the clean air, the cold clear water, and at night no lights to blur the millions of stars, we had a picture postcard week. It was hot during the day, and cooled off in the late afternoon. The summer breeze would come up about 4 o'clock and it was like your skin was being wrapped in a blanket of warmth. It felt so good if you had been swimming in the icy cold water that flowed down from the higher elevations. We would have dinner and sit around the open campfire roasting marshmallows and then stretch out and watch the stars move through the night sky picking out the constellations and one of us usually knew the legends behind them.
The day before I was to go home he took me to a place he called Blue Hole which was a couple of miles down stream that we floated to on inner tubes. It was off of a fire trail, and down a gully but it was so beautiful. It had a small waterfall that fed into it and a deep pool that had two big boulders in the middle that were flat on top so you could lay on top and sun bathe and a small sandy beach on the far side. It was peaceful and not a sound but birds and the water. We pulled the innertubes onto the beach and swam and sunned and played there most of the afternoon. Then we started to walk back to camp. Bill and I were both feeling a bit sad that the week was over and I was going home, but he finally got the nerve to kiss me (not my first kiss but certainly one of the sweetest) and hold my hand walking back. It was a perfect day so we walked slowly in the heat not talking much. We even passed up a ride home so we could draw it out a little longer. We got back to camp and took a last swim in the stream and then he was gone with promises to keep in touch. Neither of us did.
It was years before I ever went back there. I just didn't want that perfect week to be altered in any way so I didn't go back with my parents ever again. It will always remain a week of perfect summer fun in my mind. I think we probably all have a summer vacation that was just that good that you never want to spoil the memory of it? It will remain untouched always in my memory as such an innocent and perfect moment in time that you can't recreate. Like a rainbow or sunset that you come across unexpectedly.You just have to take it as it comes, not run for the camera, not wish that it could be more than it is, just be one with it and be thankful that you are there to have had that moment. Right then, it was yours, all yours, and know that in your minds eye it will always be there for you. After all, that is what made it so perfect and special.
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