Casual
MATUS, VICTORINO
Casual IT'S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE Most people's idea of getting away from it all is to vacation on some Caribbean island, go on a cruise, get a tan. But my favorite getaway is upstate New York in...
...We would get home stinking and looking like hobos...
...That's it...
...After the hikes, we would return to the cabin, smoke pipes, play cards or chess, read, and nap...
...Steve's grandfather had a collection of tobacco pipes which we eventually got the hang of...
...VICTORINO MATUS...
...No one took a shower—the water's ice cold...
...Occasionally, we'd stumble across fresh paw prints and hope they would lead us to a black bear, though none of us would have known what to do if they had...
...Steve's advice was grim: If you meet a bear, run up a hill because bears are slower going uphill (aren't humans too...
...That and the independence from adults...
...It was suicide because you traveled at high speed and because the only way you could stop was by crashing...
...There was always a fear that eventually someone would break something...
...It's situated on a hillside clearing, looking down on an open field, with not a soul in sight...
...If we forget to stoke the fires every few hours through the night, we freeze...
...Inevitably, we had to pack up our things, clean up our mess, and return to our normal lives...
...None of us is in college anymore...
...Another morning, we finished a box worth of pancakes and a few pounds of smoked sausages, which one of us rolled up into a sort of "pig-in-a-comforter...
...But my favorite getaway is upstate New York in the bitter cold of December...
...Then we'd make dinner and around midnight go back out for another hike...
...Gas powers a few lamps as well as the oven...
...We played round upon round of hearts, smoked the old pipes, and told the same crude jokes...
...It was better than a spa...
...All of us have jobs except Steve who is studying to become a doctor...
...And eventually someone did—a hairline fracture to an upper arm...
...In Schoharie County, way up in the Catskill Mountains, sits a log cabin my friend Steve's grandfather built 30 years ago...
...Two announced they are getting engaged to their girlfriends this month...
...And we promised not to bring our wives...
...There's a beaver dam nearby, and next to it is a frozen pond we would walk on, wishing one of us would fall in...
...Not that this stopped us from further sledding...
...If you're trapped, play dead...
...We finished almost two dozen eggs and four giant cans of corned beef hash (which I cooked proudly, using butter to grease the skillet and throwing in a little tabasco sauce) all in two days...
...We had to do everything ourselves and make sure no one got hurt...
...On a clear night, you could see the Milky Way and hear only the stream, the wind, and the coyotes...
...Warmth comes from a stone fireplace and a potbelly stove...
...There's a bathroom with a shower and a toilet, but as teenagers, none of us really quite knew how to operate the generator to make any of this work...
...This might not sound too appealing, but it gets better...
...Which is why I so looked forward to my return to the cabin last week, along with four friends, after a six-year hiatus...
...Hence, when nature called, we went to nature...
...The bear might take a swipe at you, but as long as you remain lifeless, it will eventually move on...
...And much as we try to ignore it, our age is catching up with us: On the third run down Suicide Hill, one of the guys seriously injured his leg and limped the rest of the trip (he's getting X-rays this week...
...But we all promised to return someday to the cabin...
...We've changed in six years...
...We tried sipping on Sambu-ca, that licorice-laced cordial resembling lighter fluid, and some of us even acted as if we enjoyed it...
...But we always felt relaxed, refreshed, and ready for school...
...The cabin itself is unchanged, but for a new mounted deer head on the wall (taken by Steve's grandfather and dedicated to his late brother, whose ashes were scattered nearby...
...Alas, we could kid ourselves only so long...
...Another highlight was sledding down Suicide Hill—a steep mountain slope that all of us would ride down to the bottom on a wooden toboggan...
...That's what we loved about the cabin trips...
...Soon we'll be going to the engagement parties, then the weddings...
...When we were in high school and college, my friends and I would go there for a week, pretend we were pioneers, and rough it without electricity, phones—even television...
...Another pulled his back while trying to start the generator...
...Hiking was always an adventure...
...Early on, this meant franks and beans and whatever we found in the kitchen cabinets...
...Because it was just the guys, we ate and drank whatever we wanted...
...We would spend hours playing cards—mostly hearts, which meant mostly yelling and screaming at each other—and talking about girls and school and college...
...But for those five days, you'd have thought time had stood still...
Vol. 6 • December 2000 • No. 15
