In the Clouds of Mt. Shasta
My father stops to tie the bag of garbage to a nearby tree before we traipse off for our evening showers at the campground.
“It keeps the bears out,” he explains to my sister and I as we huddle beneath our raincoats in the dark, the beams from our flashlights shining on the wet ground below us.
He explained to us, too, why we take our showers at night.
“They’re emptier then,” he said, and sure enough, each night when we walk as a family to the distant wood building, and he leaves us for the Boys side of the showers, we are the only ones in the tiny building. As we undress in the dampened rooms, I set my flashlight on the bench beside me, aiming the light into the ceiling where it explodes into a dim cloud of illumination.
I can hear my father’s shower start from the other side of the wall, the pipes creaking throughout the building.
“Oooeee!” he shouts as he steps into the water, and we all laugh, echoes bouncing off the wood walls. We tell jokes and laugh with each other, our voices floating through the small opening between our separate sides.
It is the camaraderie of the nightly showers that I love the most, a time when it is only us, our family, in the middle of the popular campground just south of Mount Shasta. In the dark, we can maneuver on our own path while other families finish up dinner or settle in around the campfire. A rainy walk back to our tents, our wet towels slung over our shoulders, cold feet in our sandals.
