A river runs through it

We set up camp by rivers and creeks and lakes, in forests, on prairies, in places we knew would wow us like Yellowstone, in places we were surprised to fall in love with: the sunflower fields of North Dakota, the Niobrara. We made our way across the country on Route 20, Pacific to Atlantic, and then because on that trip we discovered Route 53 at a stoplight in the middle of Valentine, Nebraska, we followed that route the next year, making camp from Canada to Mexico.
For so many nights, in so many campgrounds, in dozens of states, we had our ritual: I’d take care of the tent, laying it out over the ground cover, assembling the shock-corded poles, looping them through, staking them, the structure up in minutes. Tom would inflate the two mattresses with a foot pump, 100, 200 steps for each.

We finished our tasks at the same time. Then Tom poured us each a shot of tequila, and we’d sit for a moment at the picnic table, if there was one, or on a rock, and we’d toast to our good fortune.

Except that time that we learned we had just set up camp a mile down the road from the Clutter’s farmhouse in Holcomb, Kansas. (Yes, it still stands.) We downed our shots, disassembled camp, and moved on.  

It is a joy to remember this now, yes even the In Cold Blood moment, to have worked through the anger and regret and pain, to have stopped reliving his illness, his decline, his death, to come to this place where I can remember our life together, where I can marvel at what we had and what we did. It is not sadness. It is not nostalgia. It is, really, a kind of freedom.

Last weekend I made camp by myself, pitched the tent, that same tent, on a site by a beautiful river, inflated the mattress, set out a single camp chair, made a fire, Jetboiled myself a cup of tea, and sat listening to the crickets and the crackle of the fire and the whoosh of river, and I thought about all those other rivers, the ones we camped alongside, the ones we floated, the ones whose banks we explored: the Pecos and the Platte, the Missouri and the Mohawk, the Big Horn, the Snake. And you know what comes next, don’t you?

Eventually all things merge into one,
and a river runs through it.
—Norman Maclean