Ok Honey. We're Here. You can come out now.
Parking
spaces were in short supply by the time we arrived at the Flat Top Mountain campground. But I did manage to find an isolated site
that others for some reason, had apparently avoided. It had a pristine view of the canyon below
and the beautiful mountain scenery beyond.
The site was quite flat, requiring minimal work to prepare the camper
for sleeping and the use of the stove and furnace which required that the rig
be perfectly level. Once I had
everything set up, I thought I would call the good wife so that she too could
enjoy the view. “Okay, Honey. We’re here.
You can come out now,” I encouraged.
“You won’t believe the view from our spot.” I heard the back door of the camper open but
Honey never appeared from the rear. I
just assumed that she was in awe of the breath-taking sight and chose to remain
at the back of the truck.
It
wasn’t till I began to get hungry around five o’clock, that I decided to walk
around the back of the camper and enter to see what was taking Honey so long to
come outside. She was nowhere to be
found. I did notice however, that in
backing up, I had perhaps driven the truck a little too close to the edge. A terrible thought struck me. Had Honey taken a particularly long step this
afternoon when I had called her to take a look?
Try as I might, I could not see anything amiss down below, but
considering the two thousand foot drop, and my poor eyesight at the time,
seeing anything would have been miraculous.
Carefully,
I reached around the back end of the truck, grabbed the door handle and swung
myself up on the metal porch at the back of the camper. I entered, but found no Honey. She was gone.
I considered calling the park ranger to help me find her, but my cell
phone was dead. I had forgotten to
charge it on the way to the park. As
carefully as I had entered, I extricated myself from the inside of the camper
and returned to the cab of the pickup. I
decided that I would drive to the entrance and speak directly to the camp
warden.
As
I began to pull away from the site, I noticed a flash of yellow in my rear view
mirror. Honey had been wearing yellow
on the trip. I slammed on the brakes,
threw the transmission in park and jumped out of the truck. There stood Honey, dusty and dirty from head
to toe, with a scowl you wouldn’t believe plastered upon her face. “Where have you been hiding?” I questioned.
“Hiding? Hiding?”
And with an awful sarcastic tone, she continued, trying to imitate my
voice. “Okay Honey! You can come out
now.” Then, she got even more insulting. “You idiot.
You nearly killed me. I thought I was dead. My whole life passed before my eyes as I
dropped down below the camper door. It
was all in slow motion. If you had
parked a couple of inches further back and I hadn’t been wearing this outfit
and gotten it caught under the back steps of the camper, they would have been
scraping my remains off the rocks at the bottom of the canyon for weeks. As it is, I was lucky that it ripped when you
took off just now, or you would have been dragging me around the park or maybe
along the highway, under the truck.” Honey
continued to rant.
As
Honey went on, I had the distinct impression that she was not happy with my
chosen camp site or my driving, but I said nothing. Anything I added would have just added fuel
to the fire. As I began to tire of the
whole complaint thing, another less than loving and more malevolent thought
crossed my mind. “What if I had parked just a couple of inches
further back?”
-Louis Roquain
-Louis Roquain
