I like the out of doors. I enjoy an adult beverage on the deck. I like a stroll along a well-groomed trail. I very much enjoy an uncrowded beach, sea breeze in my face, and I la-la-love a boat ride. On the flip side I do not like planting a garden, doing any kind of yard work, or spending time at a hunting camp deep in the woods without running water or indoor plumbing.
In retrospect, I should have known there would be some mucking around in the woods when we started out. We vacation nearly every year at a campground in “da U.P.” My husband loves his hunting camp, and I like camping in our cute little trailer with full hook-up from the county park. In a normal year Dave would have made a trip to the hunting camp in the spring with other hunting camp officiants. They check to see how things have weathered in the harsh northern winter, they make sure the road is cleared of debris, cut the grass and some firewood, before coming home. This year was different—no one had been to the camp in the spring, and the area had suffered a very hard winter.
To complicate matters there were health issues suffered by all of the hunting camp attendees previously this year. One of the men now has a pacemaker, one was recovering from lung cancer surgery, and my husband had quadruple bypass surgery on Jan. 6th this year. To add to all of these issues was COVID-19. That left my husband with only one helper—me.
I knew ahead of the trip I would be involved in helping with some clean-up because I was not about to let him run a chainsaw by himself more than two miles back in the woods on a two-track road. His strength and stamina was still not good—we were told he had heart damage and would never have full function of his heart again. I knew about the heart damage—what I didn’t know was the extent of the damage to the two-track road leading to the hunting camp.
After driving for six hours, and setting up camp in Big Bay, we headed for the hunting camp. He was anxious to get to his camp and see if everything was ok. Shortly after we moved from county road to two-track we experienced a lot of brush encompassing the road, and I was concerned about getting the new pickup scratched up, but he just wanted to see what the camp looked like.
Onward, we crept along avoiding the brush where we could. Then we came to a tree totally blocking forward momentum. His determination moved him to get out his saw and he proceeded to clear the road from this obstacle. He cut and I moved the pieces out of the road. I was exhausted after that and was pretty sure he was as well. We moved on, but didn’t get very far when there was another tree blocking the road. We sat there for some moments considering options. I was hoping for turn around, but he went for cut it up. It was beastly hot, I was sweaty and dirty, and I hate sweaty and dirty. But another hindrance was out of the way and we plugged along toward camp, but when we turned a corner and could not tell where the road had gone it was too much. We were done for the day.
The second day of “vacation” did not get us to our goal of getting to the top of the mountain and the hunting camp. It was another hot day. I traded hairspray for bug spray and was soldiering on—moving brush as he cut it. As one section of road was cleared we could only see another blockage ahead. When he slipped on a steep bank carrying the saw and said that his knees were getting wobbly we were done for another day.
On day four we made it to the top! It was a celebration, and to add to the joy everything at the camp was fine but on the way back out from the camp to the campground we got sucked into some mud and got stuck. It seemed as though we were to be denied any success without a setback. We called our friend Jack in Big Bay, and he came to our rescue.
Just because we were able to get through the brambles to get to the camp the job was not done. We continued to work every day to cut back the brush so it wasn’t attacking the paint on the truck as we drove along. This was not my idea of vacation for sure. I had visions of some reading and writing time. By the time we would return to camp each day I was too exhausted to read, write, or do much other than shower and fix something for supper. Oh, woe is me? Actually no.
Brushing out a two-track is not my idea of a good time for sure. What happened here turned out to be an opportunity to be really helpful to someone whom I love. I could feel his sense of accomplishment at the end of the day and shared that feeling. We were simpatico. I shared his joy when we reached the mountain top. I shared his joy at the end of each day after a job well done. We were a team again, really pulling together—supporting and caring for each other. I could see, and he admitted after two weeks of working almost every day together, that his strength and stamina had greatly improved. Benefits were felt by both of us as I could tell, by the way my jeans were fitting, that I was losing some of my COVID weight gain. Hurrah!
What I learned from this experience is that hard work easily turns into reward. This remarkable man encouraged me to step up and do some things out of the ordinary, like he did so many times when we lived and worked in Alaska, and only after all is said and done am I able to realize the benefit. There is no better way to say, “I love you,” than showing that love by offering up yourself, your time, your comfort, for your loved one. When you give love—you get love right back. I can’t recommend it enough.
