PUKE TREE FLATS

A good part of understanding this story is in knowing the players, especially Mark Nordstrom. The four characters are Mark (the dad) and Kevin (his 9 year old son) and Kenny (my son, also 9 years old, at the time of this story) and me. Neither Mark nor I like to camp. Both our sons wanted desperately to go camping.

I love Mark. He’s a great friend. It hurts me to say some of the things I’m going to have to say about him to make this story meaningful, but everything I say is true. Mark is not a mechanical guy. Mark is also used to having others do stuff for him. He’s not really lazy; he just doesn’t do much manly stuff. His (now ex-) wife Debbie does most of the manly stuff in their house. If I can be a little blunt, Mark is used to being waited on, hand and foot. I don’t think he’s ever sweat in his life. Others do stuff for him. It’s always understood that Mark won’t be doing much work. Ever. Anywhere.

Those who know me also know that I’m not much of an outdoorsman, but I will do the work when necessary. My relationship with Mark had developed into an alliance where I did most of the work and he provided the audience and took most of the credit. He watches best. So, it was agreed upon by all that we would take our sons camping up in the mountains above Los Angeles. I would do all the camping/manly stuff and he would watch. I gathered up all my considerable camping gear, from years before when I actually enjoyed camping, and loaded it in Mark’s van. Unfortunately, that would be the last work I would do for the next 24 hours.

As we left for our great adventure, we stopped by the pizza place and picked up a couple of huge pizzas, so we wouldn’t die of starvation during the night. I ate a lot of pizza. By the time we got to the camping place, I was beginning to feel sick. My stomach was rumbling. I was very nauseous. In fact, I could barely sit up. I certainly couldn’t set up a tent! So, I talked Mark through the setup process. Now, this was a huge 8-man tent, with lots of stakes and poles and stuff. It took Mark about 2 hours to set it up. On a good day, no more than 10 minutes for me. Mark was not, as they say, a happy camper. After all the work setting up the tent, Mark was exhausted and frustrated that he had been “tricked” into doing the work. We settled in for the night around 11:00 p.m.

At about 2:00 a.m. the pizza decided it wanted to leave my body. I struggled to get outside. I was sleepy and I was very sick. I went to the east side of the tent and, resting my head on my arm, leaned onto a tree. I leaned for a couple of minutes, until the pizza decided it was time.

Bodily functions, for me, are a loud and, usually, enjoyable event. It’s true, I do love most all of them. When I sneeze, for example, the whole world knows. I won’t go into anymore detail than that regarding bodily functions. As the pizza left my body, I let out a loud noise, kind of a loud, “HUURRAAUUGGHH.” As I made the noise, I could hear it echoing around the mountains above Los Angeles.

I staggered back into the tent. Kevin was making a whimpering noise and whining like he was having a bad dream. I fell into my sleeping bag and was sleeping in mere seconds.

At about 5:00 a.m., we began to awaken. My first recollection that morning was of Kevin telling Mark that he had heard a bear growling in the night and he was pretty sure the bear had come into the tent. He said it made him cry.

The tent was stuffy. I needed some oxygen. I went outside to breathe some of the early morning air. As I stood there enjoying the air I looked over to the east side of the tent. The sun, which was just coming up over the mountains and yet was still mostly blocked by the trees, was shining down, a narrow shaft of light, through the trees, right onto the side of the tree where my pizza had ended up. For some unknown and yet, I’m sure, spiritual reason, the sunlight, which was shining only on that one spot in the entire Los Angeles Mountain area, made the pizza puke seem fluorescent.

I called the others outside. We all looked at the side of the tree and decided that this was surely a vision and a sign. Fluorescent puke with one tiny ray of sunlight beaming on it. The rest of the world still mostly dark. In a moment of inspiration, Mark named the spot Puke Tree Flats and we committed, one and all, to never go camping together again. The beautiful rainbow reminds us that the earth will never be flooded again. The fluorescent puke on Puke Tree Flats reminds us that we will never go camping again.

Mark ended up having to take the tent and other camping equipment down by himself, since I hadn’t recovered from my illness. He was grumpy for days after, telling everyone that I had tricked him into going camping and then made him do all the work.

That was, indeed, the last time I ever went camping with Mark.