Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. I’ll be sharing some of my favorite posts from the past 16 years that may eventually make it into UT-OH!.

Today’s post will kick off the tale of how Bone was originally found in a mountain meadow 49 years ago south of Lake Tahoe when he was still just a bone. For those of you who have been following Wandering through Time and Place for a while, you’ll be familiar with the slightly whacky, opinionated Bone. If you aren’t, he’s weird but fun, an antidote for our present weird but not so fun world.

It was the summer of 1977 and my wife was divorcing me. Apparently I lacked in stability, or at least in the desire to pursue the Great American Dream. She was right of course. I had absolutely zero desire to live in a large house in the suburbs. None of this made the divorce easy. I had been prepared to spend my life as a happily married man. (As I am today! Thank you, Peggy.)

To keep my mind occupied, I was working on the route for the Fourth Annual Sierra Trek, a challenging, nine-day 100-mile backpack trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that I had created as a pledge-based fund-raiser for the American Lung Association in Sacramento.

“So what’s your problem?” my friend Tom Lovering asked over a beer at the Fox and Goose Restaurant in Sacramento. He’d been-there-done-that with divorce and dated a number of women since. Tom owned Alpine West, an outdoor/wilderness store in Sacramento, and sponsored the Sierra Trek. His store was upstairs from the restaurant.

I had persuaded Tom to go backpacking with me for six days to preview a section of the new route. Our plan was to start near Meeks Bay, Lake Tahoe and work our way southward 70 miles following the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail.

Tom had invited his girlfriend, Lynn, and Lynn was bringing along her friend Terry. Terry was nice, but not my type.

“I have a friend named April who wants to go backpacking,” Tom offered. “Why don’t I invite her to go as well? Maybe you two will hit it off.” The implication was it would help me get over the pending divorce.

A friend drove the five of us up to Meeks Bay. April was gorgeous and Tom was right. I followed her long legs and short shorts up the trail. My gloomy focus on the Soon-to-Be-Ex faded like a teenager’s blue jeans.

Hot feet and screaming fat cells were even more potent in forcing me to live, or at least suffer, in the moment. As usual, I’d done nothing to physically prepare for the first backpack trip of the season and I was paying the price.

We climbed a thousand feet and traveled six miles to reach our first night’s destination at Stony Ridge Lake. I crashed while Tom broke out some exotic concoction of potent alcohol made out of 190 proof ever-clear alcohol and Galliano Liqueur.

After consuming enough of his ‘medicine’ to persuade my fat cells they had found Nirvana, I fired up my trusty Svea stove and started cooking our freeze-dried dinner. It wasn’t hard. Boil water, throw in noodles, add a packet of mystery ingredients, stir for ten minutes and pray that whatever you have created is edible. That night it didn’t matter.

Afterwards, we headed for our beds. The next day would be long. I slid into my down-filled mummy bag and looked up at what seemed like a million stars. There were no city lights or pollution to block my view and the moon had yet to appear.

I traced an imaginary line from the Big Dipper and found the North Star. It seemed far too faint for its illustrious history. A shooting star briefly captured my attention. Thoughts of divorce, short shorts, the next day’s route, a rock digging into my butt, and sore feet jostled around in my mind for attention.

Sleep finally crept into the bag and captured me.

Next Post: Tom flunks map reading 101.