Four Flashlights in the Back Pasture

The Back Pasture

The back pasture runs flat and wide behind the machine shed, out to a line of oaks along the creek. In winter it is a long white field with the fire pit sitting a good way out from the house.

My dad dug that fire pit when I was eight, a shallow bowl scraped down to bare dirt out in the open pasture.

Steve and I used to roast hot dogs there in the summer. It had been years since anybody lit it.

Grady picked the spot for the tent, flat and a few steps upwind of the fire, so the smoke would not drift on us.

He stomped the snow down with his boots to make a floor, walking back and forth in a square like a little soldier.

We unrolled the tent by the light of his flashlights. He had brought all four, the one from tonight and the three before it, each one in a different pocket.

He handed me one and held one in his teeth. We had the poles in and the tent up in eleven minutes.

I buried the snow stakes sideways the way Jeff had showed me, then packed snow over them and stamped it down. Grady tugged every guy line and pronounced them good.

He laid the foam pads in, then the bags, then the fleece liners, then sat back on his heels in the doorway, very proud.

Then I built the fire. I made a little nest of birch bark from the creek bank, a handful of dry twigs, then pencil sticks, then thumb sticks, then the split oak in a small teepee.

I struck one match. The bark caught with that crackle birch makes, and the flame climbed.

“Mom,” Grady said, with real respect, “that was one match.”

“Your grandpa taught me,” I said. “Right here. When I was your age.”

He looked back across the pasture toward the house when I said that. I put another stick on and let the fire do its work.