The day after our wedding I sold my car
to one of my best friends for 800 bucks and
said goodbye to Denver. We packed up Sam’s car
with our clothes, books, pots and pans and drove
900 miles to western Idaho. After the shock, high excitement
and sleepless daze we finished unpacking and looked around
at our new place knowing we had changed our course for the better.
The following morning we elected to do something familiar
so of course we went camping. In our half torn up
1993 Road Atlas that we refuse to replace
we decided on a spot north up in McCall along Redfish Lake.
Didn’t find this out until afterward but we stayed
at the same campground where Richard Brautigan wrote
two of his books while on a honeymoon in the 1960s.
The newlyweds thought the location so beautiful they stayed for a month.
We made it home for two nights. We swam, canoed, fished,
cooked over the fire, napped in the hammock, read, etc.
On the third day I tried out our new camera gifted for our wedding.
On our hike I took a photo of the Sawtooth Mountains
and later framed it in our living room. When I look at it now,
it fills me with both joy and sadness.
Not break your heart level sadness but emotionally sad.
Joy because of taking a chance, trusting a decision
and knowing there’s beauty everywhere.
Sadness because the mountains remind me of Colorado
and when I mean it reminds me of Colorado
I mean it reminds me of The Rocky Mountains
because it is The Rocky Mountains. And when I see
those beautiful peaks rising to the heaven of space
it reminds me of my friends and how we made a pact
when we first all met that we didn’t want to be apart for long
so in agreement we would all someday move west
together like a band to a place like Colorado, and never leave.
Jack C. Buck currently lives in Boise, Idaho. He is the author of the collections "Deer Michigan," "Gathering View," "will you let it send you out." He is currently working on his fourth book of poems to be published later this year.
