Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen

The format of the famous Cook's Illustrated Magazine is a wonderful one to both read and just look at.  The format goes something like this: some 60 members of the test kitchen, located just outside of Boston, decide that it is high time to take another look at a classic food type or a classic recipe and

put it to the test in the kitchen by re-evaluating the process of cooking.  A classic lead-in goes something like this, an article from the newest installment, concerning carrots, "We all should eat more carrots. They're nutritious, inexpensive, and available year-round, and their cheery color brightens any plate. But if eating carrots means roasting them for 45 minutes or grating a pile of them for a salad, most of us are unlikely to prepare them often."

The article continues on a step by step experimentation in ways to prove the beauty of the cooked carrot, as long as the cooking of them are both simple and tasty.  Another lead-in from another article in the same magazine talks about the truly perfect way to cook those very thick pork chops which, if not handled properly, almost always give home cooks headaches because they are a difficult dish to prepare without becoming dry on the inside or burnt on the outside.

The solution in this case is to use a cast iron pan, pre-heat the pan up to a full-tilt 500 degrees, then set the chops in for some serious searing, turning back and forth so not to burn the exterior, but all the while continuing to sink the heat deeper and deeper until the temperature reaches some just beyond 125 degrees.  Let the chops sit under foil for another 10 minutes and they will continue to cook up to the necessary 140 degree mark.  The key: you want deep cooking quick, and you want to time the extra cooking the chop does after it comes off the pan.  Both of these are common enough recipes and full of pitfalls; by reading through the articles, now we have standard processes to follow and either too-crunchy carrots or leathery thick chops don't happen as often as they might have.

The Riverside Ovens Test Kitchen would love to try to test the tests -- the one great advantage the test kitchens have is the time to try multiple processes for cooking.  For the chops, the tester tried a variety of thick chop styles and eventually realized that he wanted to go ahead and buy a pork roast and cut his own chops in order to keep shape and thickness uniform. He tried multiple pans and multiple heats.  For the carrots dish, "The Easiest Carrot Side Dish," the tester tried a variety of mixtures of salt in the boiling water.  When you are cooking at home, though, you have to take the parts of the test recipe and make them happen as quickly as possible for the sake of as much success as possible.

When I made both of these dishes, I had already had some luck with certain experiments with carrots and thick chops so was able to apply the new to the old, hoping to find what I would call a signature, or a way that makes sense for the home cook. I really liked the idea of cast oven pan -- it seems more and more magazines are trending int he direction of these thick, durable and even cooking machines, but I don't happen to have. I do, however, have a very powerful large top burner on the stove. By letting the pan sit on low for a considerable amount of time, I was able to both deeply pre-heat the pan and also secure against an initial burning of the surface of the chop.  If I would have pre-heat my non-stick thin pan on high, for example, the chop would have exploded over the oil and almost certainly the sear would have been a burn.  As I began to cook, I raised the temperature up to medium, which is closer to medium high on most stovetops.  The idea from here on out would be to continue to flip the chops as many times as necessary to get rid of the visible pink line in the center, all the while not blackening the surface.  I took these off of the pan and let them rest for only around 5 minutes: I either don't have the patience to let meat rest a full 10-15 minutes, and I have always felt that I prefer to eat a thick chop when they are hot not lukewarm. This batch was a perfect combination of seared to a crust veneer but that was actually quite soft from the oil, cooked all the way through, moist, but hot.  As we all know, as a thick chop over cooks, at least half of its positive, inherent taste is lost and it begins to pivot to taste like something else entirely, like shoe laces.

Carrots are one of the easiest vegetables in the world to make good.  You can boil them and simply continue to poke them to see if the texture is the way you want them.  I found the key in this batch to be the addition of a little extra salt to the boiling water, as the recipe suggests. The salt boosts the flavor and also reduces the cooking time, according to the tester, by at least a minute.  Uniformity of the chop, as always, will help with the success of cut vegetables.  I always like to cut the cylinder of the carrot in 2-3 inch chunks, but then cut those in half length-wise, allowing for an interesting texture when cooked and soft.

The simple addition for flavor was some freshly squeezed lemon, as much butter as you see fit, and a dash of chives.  The combination of the large piece of white pork meat, and the very soft and juicy carrots was a nice signature dish.

Mesa Trail, ch. 13
Draft 3

Even if Inuna had not known of the these coins and the maps, she knew full well of the story of Zebulon Pike himself who had been sent by President Jefferson to seek the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers of Louisiana Territory, still owned by Spanish.  She knew that the expedition did not understand the Colorado Mountains as her own ancestors knew it.  Snow-capped mountains, 14,000 feet high, what was up there?  What the native Americans of old called 'Sun Mountain' and the Arapaho called 'Heey-otoyoo,' or Long Mountain, the summit was never reached by Pike and his men.  Two days without food or water, at the small village of Mt. Rosa, slogging through waist-high snow, they finally turned back to the lowlands, enough of the high country, but not without losing some of the men. What had the gold rush come to but a few mining camps scattered around the front range at Denver City, Boulder City, Saint Charles, and the ghost towns of Central City, Black Hawk, Georgetown and Idaho Springs, where now only the ghost of the thousands live in memory and tumbleweed.

And then she began to think as she looked out onto the spiny red rocks up above Bear Canyon Creek -- how permanent, how ancient they were– about the '59'ers of old, of the old Colorado Gold Rush, of the men who had packed up everything they needed and owned, the wagons, the mules, any off-hand equipment they could get their hands on, not anticipating the various regions of what was then considered the Louisiana Purchase, off across the country for the prospect of getting their hands on gold.  There had been a picture she held onto that always reminded her of the 59'ers, of three men in work clothes, beaten and tired, their hats dusty and floppy at the brim, walking around their home-made sluice box with pick axes and shovels in their hands digging away at the sides of the caved-in gulley seeking the veins of gold.  So many would find only pebbles of free gold and that would keep them going for years longer, but they could not get to the sunken veins for they did not have the mining equipment to strip the rocks clear of the precious metals.

Josh was the gold collector of this operation and had walked down from his stool at the top gate of the sluice box.  He showed it to the group of three girls by holding it up, "exactly the same as yesterday, about half a vial." He shook it up and down, keeping his thumb steady on the cap.  Hannah pulled out her charm. The afternoon sun caught it right off and it dazzled there in her fingers, clearly a more significant amount than what Josh held up.  The gold was what kept the operation running.  There was much more to be learned out there in the Flatirons, that was sure, but none of them could forget that it was the finding of the gold that kept them out there at the Oasis and out of school. It had become a great cooperative project and proceeds went to small charities of all kinds.  "What does yours look like Kitie," she said, her eyes shaped like almonds, wise at the corners and thin stark eyebrows and pointed upwards towards a long head of black hair.  Kitie pulled her own coin out of her pocket, rubbed it with her thumb as if to warm it and handed it to Inuna.  The markings were Spanish, that much was clear, but the tone of the coin was virtually yellow, bright as honey, and almost felt soft in the hand.  "Our father has two maps hidden.  They supposedly mark off where our great grandfather had buried all his own findings from up here in the creeks." Inuna, of course, also knew that there was more gold up in these foothills than the traces they collected each day at the box.  How much more, none of them would know for some time to come.    

Mesa Trail ch.12
Draft 3

"I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration. The isle was uninhabited; my shipmates I had left behind, and nothing lived in front of me but dumb brutes and fowls. I turned hither and thither among the trees. Here and there flowering plants, unknown to me; here there I saw snakes, and one raised his head from a ledge of rock and hissed at me with a noise not unlike the spinning of a top. Little did I suppose that he was a deadly enemy and that the noise was the famous rattle." – Treasure Island


The story that Kitie, Hannah and Josh had remembered from their childhood, handed down to them, like a strange but wonderful gift of a dream, started by what must have been nothing more than myth but, as time moved on and the players in the dream came to reach closer and closer to their very own great grandfather, became so real they felt like they could touch it, and did! Hannah was not the only one who carried a golden trinket from their past; Kitie had her very own coin which held the original Spanish lettering that had been translated to Santa Fe De Nuevo Mexico.  It had been told to her from her father that he had been told there were many more where this one came from and was one of the very original coins that sent, so many years later, great grandfather from his home in New England to the claim that had been settled by his father years before during the Great Pikes Peak Gold Rush.  The Spanish were the first known European Settlers and had briefly explored into the Front Range area as early as the 17th century and found many native groups who had lived in among the great mountains and learned to trade Spanish good for buffalo robes, which came in handy for a winter climate the Spanish were not used to in Mexican territory.  The Spanish conquistadors, always with one eye out for expanding their colonial territory and one eye out for expanding their possessions of gold, had learned that many natives easily collected gold from rushing creeks spinning down from the steep mountainsides.  Even though long and difficult winters and mostly small treasures persuaded the Spanish from fully settling their new claimed territory of Colorado, they had paid close attention to the ancient story of the great golden cave, a true mother lode as it would be termed in later years, but that also held great spiritual significance for the tribes who called the Flatirons home.  This story had made its way from the Mexican territory by Spanish ship, the Hispaniola, back along the coast of South America and up through trade routes and to Boston where they had found native tribes to trade with as well.  The Hispaniola never left the Boston Harbor again; the Spanish had disappeared, but the ship remained for hundreds of years as a relic and object of plunder by both natives and colonists.  The Hispaniola carried a full load, as it was on its way back to Spain for offering spoils to the king.  A mix of treasures from both Americas had been found; buffalo robes, foreign tools, even scalps, and several maps.  Some of the coins and maps referred to Santa Fe De Nuevo, Colorado, the Spanish claim west in the interior.  It was one such coin, and two such maps that eventually found their way into the Three Cranes Tavern in the center of a thriving downtown Boston at the turn of the 20th century in the hands of Kitie's great grandfather.

Mesa Trail ch.11
Draft 3

Kitie knew the stories of her great grandfather's mining adventures alright. There seems to be a storyteller in any family, the one who wants to listen, maybe secretly, to the elders as they chat around the kitchen table at night, or who likes to look through the old handwritten letters sent from sister to sister or brother to brother from ages past.  For Kitie it was the stories of great grandfather that had filled her dreams at night.  She often got the one that seemed to last forever, of the high cliff at a mountain ridge.  She could see out over the cliff onto nothing but a city made of gold.  Not a single wooden roof or wall, no schools, no glass, just golden counters, all connected, for as long as the eye could see.  A feeling stirred inside her dream self, inside the stomach, if felt like the feeling you get you fall as she contemplated flying over that city of gold.  Most dreams, she always thought later, allowed you to do that, just start flying or falling and you would always wake up before it all happened.  But in her dream, she was never allowed to move.  She was stuck in place, there at the edge overlooking.  She thought she could even feel sometimes the heat of the golden city and lifted up her hands as if to a fire. She could feel it on her face. There were no people, just birds of some sort flying around in the sky around her.  All this wouldn't be so bad if she didn't have the dream all the time.  She just knew it came from the story of her grandfather's 'boxes' as her family called them.  He was an early prospector, had come all the west from Roxbury in Boston where he was the owner of the Three Cranes Bar.  Working in a port city like that, at a bar, he heard every wild adventure known to mankind of that time.  Merchants arriving from Europe told of their tough luck on the seas, they told of stories of desperation, and they, as all seamen do, told their stories of the day that would come when they put the life of the sea behind them, settle down, in a city just like this one, and then make their way across the continent to find gold!

Hey, Coach!
ch. 15

"My mother thinks Sheila is the greatest. 'She's so smart,' my mother says. 'And some day she's going to be a real beauty.' Now that's the funniest! Because Sheila looks a lot like the monkeys that Fudge is so crazy about. So maybe she'll look beautiful to some ape! But never to me." – from Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing









The look on the face of the eight grade girls' basketball coach, the eighth grade Girl's own mother, when Scotty threw the ball back into the court, could tell a thousand tales.  Imagine the set-up if you have a moment: the Girl's mother was more than likely an original eight Grade Girl herself, way back, when basketball was still fairly new.  She knew her own team was not really much a team at all, but a loosely connected group of girls who were mostly bound by the sheer greatness of her daughter, The Girl. Today three players were gone -- they had five.  Now, any coach who has ever coached a basketball team knows that playing basketball with five isn't really playing basketball, but sort of pretending to play another team.  One day coach decided that she would take it upon herself to defend  against the team offense.  At first the girls didn't take this seriously and coach was able to rush up to high post, defend, recover, then take away the baseline drive.  She was getting a bit too old for this.  She decided to sag on defense. Her daughter, the Girls, decided it was time to teach mom a lesson and decided to actually start passing the ball around, calling out numbers like 'three' (for at least three passes), or even as high as 'five' (for five passes). The girls didn't have to move around much, but the coach was downright dizzy by the third time around. Needless to say it was frustrating for all.  When the new boy threw out the ball to her, let us just say she had a brief idea. Corey walked out onto the floor after Scotty.  "Ah, hi, ma. Like, we know we're pretty short on players this year, right?" She smiled a very large and cheesy smile, the kind that only showed up in generally pleading opportunities. "Well, here's the thing," she said, looking back over her shoulder to the sidelines. These are fifth grade boys."
"Hi" said Scotty, raising his hand.
"Now, they have players. But they have a little problem.  No gym and no coach."  The Girl's mom could see the wheels spinning and spinning.  In her own mind, what did she see?  She saw immediately a slight reprieve from 5 on 1 basketball, her no longer the abused 1. She blinked.
For the boys standing behind them, a rag tag bunch if there ever was one, heights so varied you might not guess their grades if even in a pinch, attention spans so rapid that you might not have time to say their entire first names without them experiencing an injury or flagging a question about getting water or going to the bathroom, they could only look at this particular coming set-up with a bad case of fifth grade doubt.  Luckily for their case, Scotty had already started shooting fifteen footers with with the eighth grade girls. The coach could hear the fabric of the net twinkle.  She knew it wasn't her players.
"Say no more," coach said. She gestured to the bunch over on the sideline. "Come on out.  Show us what you've got."

Mesa Trail ch. 10
Draft 3

What would become known as the Mesa Trail Oasis started as a day trip. Hannah and Inuna received a day pass from school for independent study. The day pass turned to class trip. Class trip turned into the class itself, what Mrs. Diaz decided to call simply Social Studies. Who hadn't heard of the class by now? You didn't even have to meet inside a classroom, but outside the school, and the twenty-some students walked up the Chautauqua to Bear Canyon Creek where Hannah and Inuna had fully running, small outfit, sluice box gold mining operation! Who had ever heard of such a thing? Some teachers no doubt wondered about the academic rigor of the trips, but more than not they began to implement projects for their own classes and before you knew it there were multiple classes at a time joining in at the mountain sight as a collaborative studies project.  They had built a small shack for protection from the sun and very occasional rain. Besides the shack, three picnic benches where students sat down with their notebooks and pulled geography and natural history books about the Flatirons out of their backpacks.  Students were sometimes asked to teach the classes themselves.

Today was the day for a history lesson, Inuna decided. Inuna was of Arapaho descent, one of the last remaining of her tribe who lived here in the city and attended traditional high school. Without Inuna, there never could have been the Oasis because she was the one knew most about what it meant to spend your days out in the mountains, that the mountain is a classroom, and the lessons need only observation and reflection, some sense for history and ancestors, some sense for the future and preservation.  Inuna had already laid claim to her title as Flatiron Ambassador and would be found any moment helping along her mighty band of turtles at the end of the sluice box or initiating short hikes up into the rock history of the world.

"It is very difficult to show the world anything of our great ways if you are stuck behind walls." Inuna was the kindest person, they all agreed, on earth, but she was fierce in her opinions of the ancestral mountains.  She took long treks into the foothills in a black button up suit and a small black hat.  She brought no water or food but looked to the woods around her for sustenance.  It came naturally to her.  She would return to classes on monday morning and as the other childrens' attention spans dashed and dived in three thousand directions and wanted nothing more than to get out of school to play more video games in their basements, Inuna came to class to describe her expeditions up on Ute Trail at the top of the mountians. "The continental divide was very frosty yesterday morning.  Clouds of the ancestors were sleeping in among the giants of the great valleys."

At the mine site, Inuna seemed to always know immediately what to do in and around the creek.  Her people had watched the miners of old hastily reach these same heights and scratch and pick and even at times dynamite rock to crack it open for the glittery rocks.  Her people also respected stones and so could partially understand the cravings and decorative aspects of the great stones.  Before they reached the trailhead, near the city, where the Bear Creek had twisted in with Boulder Creek, she would find her 'friends' the turtles and bring them along for the day's dig.  "Our people were born by the turtle along with Man as the legacy goes." She was sitting now at the end of the picnic bench. Hannah could over hear her from the Oasis shack where she was preparing lunch for the three class. Inuna read from a small handwritten book, "our world had become water and Man had need to find land, so he sent Grebes, waterfowl, Beavers to dive down to the bottom of the great ocean for land.  So many attempts did not work.  Finally it was the duck and the turtle who successfully found the patches of earth and they brought it back up into the sky where Man dried it and cast it out into the wind of the four directions." Anybody listening wondered where such a soul came from. To be thinking these thoughts? She picked up the turtle and let it make its way onto the shallow shoreline as it made its slow way into the water.

The sluice box was now a fully functioning machine.  Mr. Pruitt had come up weeks before and tightened or replaced the hinges and re-attached some boards.  Inuna walked over to Josh and Kitie, who had permission to come along on the class project. "Look at this," Josh said, as he lifted up the gate board temporarily, then redirected the chute. Water began rush into the neck and he filled the first stage quickly with fresh very cold water. Unless their eyes completely deceived them, there was floating peppery flakes of glittery gold settling right down to the bottom. Josh stuck his finger along the side of the chute and pushed a flake with his finger and brought up along the side of the board.  He smiled. Inuna smiled and her eyes twinkled.  "Have you ever heard of the Ojibwe tribe?" Josh nodded that he had heard the word before anyway.  "The women of the tribe had many many responsibilities and duties in their societies.  "At the end of winter, women would leave their camp for a place called sugarbush village in order to make maple sugar.  They were in charge of collecting sap in the birchbark troughs and boiling it down to sugar. From their they would pour the syrup into carved wooden molds or birchbark cones. By summer, they would dissolve these in water for cool, sweet drinks or mixed with medicines for children. It was known that there would be a great celebration and feast for the first fruits of summer.  Maybe we should have our celebration for the first cups of gold!"

Hannah had by then walked over to the gate box and overheard some of the story.  The rush of the creek behind them could just about lull any of the workers to sleep.  The sun had coated the entirety of the camp by now and a very light breeze barely flicked at the stiff ponderosa pine limbs.  Hannah had been thinking about turning the shack into something more like a eatery for a few days now.  This seemed like a great invite to create a menu. "Like burgers and fries," Josh yelled out, now off of his step ladder and back down onto dry land.  Kitie was standing mid stream down in the middle section of the sluice box, noticeably cold, and walked up them with her arms split over her shoulders for warmth.  "What about Great Grandpa's gold? Isn't that up here also?" Kitie couldn't see as much as Josh or Hannah the great purpose of finding such little flakes, could take forever.  "I mean, didn't he hide like big boxes up in these trails somewhere?"  Inuna had never heard of this story, but knew of many such miners from generations past staking out claims as the Arapaho went about their business in these mountains.  Kitie was younger than Hannah but easily four inches taller.  She slender, like their mother, and not built very well for standing in cold water.  The sun beat down on her long neck.  The kids from her class were a little upset that they too didn't get permission to come to the Oasis for 'Social Studies.' She would prefer to find the real stuff.

Mesa Trail ch. 9
Draft 3

"Just ahead of The Scamper, the falling tide streamed out of the Cut and into the gulf, rushing toward the sandbar. There the stingrays hovered on the strong currents. How many were there? Hundreds? Thousands?" – Appelt, from Keeper


Right next door to Bear Canyon Creek valley lay Skunk Canyon, an old rockfall which trailed all the way down to the base of the Chautauqua.  Was it ancient glaciation that left those enormous, smoothed-over boulders laying in the rising meadow grass like enormous eggs in among the ponderosa pines?  Those trunks rose up in craggly limbs, so dry, shaped like the arid climate itself, and seemed to sprout out of rocks ready to fight for their sunshine.

Up and down this valley was where the Williamson Sapsuckers flitted about the hard birch bark in search of grubs and sap.  Not just one, not just two, but for this day, this time around, how many, how many holes could be counted?  None of the city traffic could be heard here.  There were no hikers because there were no trails back and forth, just raw outright woods and rocks, so that every time their irredescent black faces with striped white eyes sucked for sap, the click to the wood was amplified and bounced around the valley like a mis-timed drum session.  They were not thinking of their music.  They had sunshine on their black bodies and were warm, and the air was clean, and field was bright green.  There was sap and bugs in there some where, just let me at it! Their little heads twitched in excitement, then the little feet scampered to the next hole, clickity click, and then, as if savoring the find, you might see a grub lay at the tip of the beak, held there for a moment before the last lightening quick gulp and another flit of the wings in satisfaction. The sapsucker would fly off, leaving a series of flute holes in its tree.

The past few sunrises brought to the attention of the sapsuckers far more than the temptations that lay within the birches.  Up over the crest of Skunk Canyon, looking over onto the next crease in the mountain, activity of the upright two-legs had increased.  There used to be nothing there more than the constant buzzing of the creek. To the sapsuckers this meant the place of the bird baths which  formed at the edges of stones. It meant the easiest of drinks, or the occasional two-leg quietly walking past, over the small rock trail planted in the creek, then out of sight again.  Yet lately small structures had been built, the two-legs stayed all day in and around the same place, often pointing at the creek itself.  Strange smells came rising up over the ridge of their homeland valley and wafted in among the birch limbs. The sapsucker might raise its little beak quickly to taste the air, then dive right back into breakfast or lunch.  Today they gathered at the top of the rockfall to consider a new location.  Many of the white trees had already been picked clean.  There was a secret language among the sapsuckers, not just sounds, but the quickening of their actions, the beak peck, the wing flit, that was code for let's wait and see. They rose up to the top tier of the Ponderosa and sat still momentarily to watch the new camp at Bear Canyon Creek.

Mesa Trail ch. 8
Draft 3

"At the sound of his name, BD thumped his tail against the bottom of the boat. BD, short for Best Dog. He felt Keeper rub the soft fur behind his ears. In return, he gave her a slurpy kiss." – Keeper


What Hannah may or may not have found in that sluice box that night, just as the sun was rising up over the eastern horizon, still remains to be known for sure because Hannah didn't know if it was gold just yet.  Only old Nevada could have known the full truth, but then again, as we said before, the Husky is one of the world's great companions. The Husky, as far as we know anyway, keeps her secrets, she doesn't chat much in among dog groups, or make a lot of noise upon exciting circumstances.

The Husky is more than happy to share its excitement with big licks and a lot of uncontrollable dashing off into the dark, seeking even more friends from the wild backcountry, but you'll never ever find her taking snapshots, nope, secrets are kept with a good companion like that. Hannah called out to Nevada.  "What do you think about us doing some mining this summer?" She felt the contours of her charm once again. It was there still, solid as ever, and maybe, just maybe, throbbed a little as Hannah started to use that planning mind of hers, full speed. Nevada swung her tail but this time didn't yelp.

She had options. It doesn't take long for all of the components of a great class project to take shape in one's mind! The next day was a school day, so Hannah listed them as fast as she could out loud, as though pleading her case to the first best school administrator that would listen, "don't forget you have the red rocks to start, I mean they look like dinosaurs, and so they are fun to learn about how they erupted up through the earth's crust. Kids of every age love dinosaurs.  Imagine the exercise every day and for a good reason.  Mesa Trail is not dangerous at all and we could hike to Bear Canyon Creek in no time flat.  The parents would love their kids getting outside every day under the sun.  We could learn about the vegetation, how a desert lives up in these mountains, I mean this is really fascinating." Mr. Macintyre would look at Hannah at this first lobbying effort with eyes that were not totally shocked; in fact, these were the very same reasons he himself chose to teach here in the Boulder schools. If it were up to Mr. Macintyre, how's about skipping the standard classroom stuff altogether, he would live up at Flagstaff House, way up on top, and work from the fine dining room table overlooking vast sweep of mountains.  "Hannah, I totally get it," he would say later, not fully understanding why today the revelation. I grew up in Fort Collins, too, like your dad. My parents could barely keep me out of my  tree house. I used to build them in neighbor's backyards.  That was what I was going to do for a living. I spent a summer traveling the country on a crew of treehousers. If you ever come up with a plan to get us out, let me in on it."

This was why Hannah started here, with Mr. Macintyre, she knew there was a chance.  They would forever applaud her for being the voice of "out of class, into the world," or some such catchphrase that she would make up later. Mr. Macintrye looked back at her, "but," he said, " even here in Boulder Colorado, nature capital of the world, it might be a tough sell I'm afraid."
 
"And there is gold." Hannah could no longer hide her secret.  Who wasn't interested in gold? The Gold Rush of Bear Canyon Creek, founded by the sophomore class of Boulder High.  All proceeds go to school resources, feeding the hungry...she could go on and on.  It was at the that moment that Mr. Macintyre's eyes lit up like two Spanish medallions that it all began.  They would have to concoct such a variety of permission slips and educational underpinnings that the paperwork would challenge even the mightiest of local law firms. Once the gold was found, and Hannah already knew it was there, whose claim was it, exactly? The mountains told the story for them, the greatest of storytellers.
Along the way, with a little help of Nevada's peculiarly sensitive nose, they might just find a box or two dug into the ground, holding those treasures great grandfather hid along these trails all those years ago.

Mesa Trail ch. 7
Draft 3

"I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an apple left; but sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, I had either fallen asleep or was on the point of doing so when a heavy man sat down with rather a clash close by." – Stevenson, from Treasure Island


Some of the greatest adventures begin with fear or the poorest luck imaginable.  Imagine Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island having to put up with the old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow for all of those months. Sea Dog's demands, his serious instructions to Jim and his mother, menacing the place until Black Dog came along, that old and scary blind man. Long John Silver, who was he? Friend or foe? How could Jim know? Too young to understand the intricacies of greed or pressure.  All of them aboard the Hispaniola ship on its way to the Treasure Island itself where secrets and treachery began to rule the progress of the voyage.  Treasures have that way about them -- they loom there in the imagination, maybe not so much as something that can be used practically, but that are desired and that can be found. Can be found. That is the very motivation for the sailing of the seas, for the swashbuckling, for the finding of the 'X' s that mark the spots along the great trails of a wild unknown hidden beach.

That night it was Nevada that sparked the partnership for such an adventure. With a companion, the search was shared and the adventure confirmed, one more friend among the darkness, no secrets to tell, yet.  If the Mesa Trail could be conquered at night, what else could stop them?  As Hannah and Nevada reached Bear Canyon, the wind had picked up and blew straight through the thick jack pines above. If the trail was followed below them along the side of the 6500 foot high mountain, the adventurer would be able to see the continental divide, snow capped and out of reach, a bit like a hazy dream rising like a halo. Nevada didn't bark at the sounds slicing through the woods. Huskies were a lot of things but barker not one of them. Need a sled to be pulled? Find yourself a Husky. Need a loyal companion? Find yourself a Husky. Need yourself a fellow adventurer? Find yourself a Husky. "Good girl Nevada," said Hannah as she would quickly return from the fringes of the woods sniffing out any backcountry creatures and wag her tail at the innocent findings.   Contingency plans be darned. Who needs them when you've got a friend on the trail. Nevada shook her fluffy curled tail and most certainly was thinking the very same thing.

There it was, Bear Creek, the very one that was described, Hannah believed, in her great grandfather's old descriptions that were passed down by word of mouth entirely and that had been sniffed out by own two faithful dogs.  It looked like nothing more than a hidden trickle far above, but as it reached the flatter ground at the curve that then led down into the foothills, it too rushed, then deadened for a short stretch to a pool where the old sluice box sat like some kind of ancient jutting arm in a big wooden sleeve. Nevada had already sniffed her way right up to the edge of the rushing creek.  Husky's didn't particularly like water either, but who would blame them, especially at night, when the creek is loud and you can't see through it.

Hannah didn't know a good wood structure from one falling apart at the seams, but she quickly took her shoes off and waded into what she hoped to be shallow water.  If she could have screamed and gotten away with it, she would have.  She was back to contingency plans. Icicles began to form in her veins and her skin crawled with prickly goosebumps. Night water was colder than she thought it would be.  Nevada seemed to hold her paws to her eyes in disbelief. She edged her nose in toward the shallow bank. "Don't come in here Nevada. You might turn into a Huskysicle." Nevada belted out a slow whine, swiped her curled tail up toward the sky and stood still, watching.  She examined the top end of the box where a chute had been left open and a box with an old screen looked still something in tact.  There full stretches of the runners had pulled apart from the base of the sluice, but otherwise it was not falling over -- the legs still as sturdy as ever, dug into the stream who knows how deep.  "If they built it here then, that means there was a reason, Nevada," she said out loud, examing the flexibility of the rusted hinges.  As she stood there, the sun had now just made its very first upward wink behind them, out beyond the city of Boulder, where the horizon was flat, and it lent a few rays like a flashlight up along the rising of the chute.  Buried deep into the creases, underneath where the sides had come apart from the base, glimmered a short track of the finest of speckles.  "Nevada, don't tell anybody else we found gold here, ok?" she smiled and began to peal away the top layer of old wood. "Roof, roof," said Nevada.  "Shhhhh, be quiet girl," Hannah murmured under her breath.

Mesa Trail ch. 6
Draft 3

"Only sand and palm trees and water. In Iowa, Signe had felt as locked in as the landscape, but not here, not on Oyster Ridge Road, a world onto itself." from Kathi Appelt's Keeper


Hannah was born, she always felt, with a lot of plans built right into her brain.  If 'A' does not happen then it will be 'B.' But Hannah had not only the A's and B's covered, but C's, sometimes all the way down to D's, E's, heck even F's when the time came.

It was at this moment, though, on this deep dark night walking along a secluded semi-arid Alpine trail, so utterly quiet in certain pockets you might as well be underwater, she had already used up her first couple of plans. The first one was the most obvious, but it was too late: turn back when it got spooky out here on the trail 2) wouldn't it be nice to find three friends somewhere about half way along this long trail. 3) How's about just "wake up" from this dream of the fear of the night altogether and find yourself inside a very soft new blanket in bed.

There was no contingency she could come up with for the sound of those footsteps clomping along behind her somewhere back in the woods. Hannah might have had a contingency plan for a moment, like a brief flash of northern lights in her mind, but of course anybody who has ever planned for the unwelcome visitor really just hopes for the best. "I hear you out there," she yelled out loud.  "We also know the sheriff of Boulder County," which was a flat out lie, but one that might work in certain company, and she didn't feel very guilty for it for very long.  Her pace had quickened and her backpack became quite light.  Up ahead, a dark meadow.

Long grass at least head high created an upward moving plain where there stood what looked like a major trailhead sign.  Briefly she could see a flash of a person up along an opposite ridgeline, one that was facing the city below, his head bobbing up and down, likely a night jogger.  She could yell, but wondered if that would help her if what was behind her was nothing more than a heavy chipmunk, wishful thinking.  Her father once said that ninety percent of fear is the fear itself not the thing that is being feared.  She always wondered about the ten percent.  What was that part of it anyway? Before she come to the conclusion of the ten percent or contingency plan F, something rubbed up against the back of her leg and let out the very distinct yelp that only one creature she knew could yelp.

"Nevada! What in the world are you doing here?" Nevada was an adorably adventurous Siberian Husky that also happened to be Hannah's best friend, confidante in all things, fellow house keeper, cooking partner and an all around fishing buddy.  She shone in the dark night like a white knight, virtually glowing, blazing the trail, so to speak, with fluffy swirls of white fur, and a set of eyes so blue, so certain, that last ten percent of fear melted away like warm caramel over a candy apple.

Mesa Trail ch. 5
Draft 3

There it was, thank goodness, that wonderful comforting thing nobody else knew about except for Hannah, right down there at the bottom of her front pocket. She knew to wear her long jeans on hikes – as she found out the very first morning working as a trail hand, that poison ivy was all over the plains and rocks. She felt in her pocket her very very very lucky rock.  The lucky rock was the size of the end of a fifteen year old's thumb.  Sometimes when she had it in her hand, secretly when nobody else could see it, she scratched it with her fingernails. It was the large nugget of gold that her grandfather had given her when she was just a young girl. It was given him by his own father.  She found out the surface was soft enough to leave faint little lines.  Most every night, just before she went to bed, she still pulled her charm out of her pocket, set it onto her night stand and thought of one wish for the next day. She thought of one thing she should have done better for the day.

She had to admit to herself, though, it felt recently like some of the magic was slowly draining from the rock and it began to look like just that, a rock with cuts all over it.  Maybe she had held onto the magic a little too long, she asked herself at night, as she looked over to Kitey and had to wonder what the kids at school might think of Hannah Provo, the magic rock collector.  Usually at that same moment, holding that gold in her hand, and it shining underneath her night lamp, there was something that swept back over her, like a dream, an image of her great grandfather who she had never seen in person, only in pictures, that began to fill her mind and made her sleepy.  Without the magic of the rock, she came to understand, there was only the rock. The story of who gave it to her only a man who lived a strange but sometimes sad life.

It was her grandfather's father who had fished this out of the front range Rockies at the time of the famous Pike's Peak rush.  He had, as the family story goes, lived in the mountains for six years, rarely showing his face.  He became friendly with the local Arapaho Native Americans and asked for friendly permission among the tribespeople to bring his own hand-made equipment into the small rushing streams that littered the Flatirons.  "Your great grandfather didn't really have an official claim. I will tell you, he sure loved to pan, there was no doubt about that, but nobody knew that he was finding his veins of the good stuff up here because he never brought it into town.  As he would find his gold, there was no where for him to put it.  He would wrap up his findings in thin cloth, to let it breath as he would say it, then bury his findings in small wooden boxes." It was the next part that made woke Hannah at night with wild dreams.  It was the part that dragged her out on the trail this very night, like a lure, like a string and hook.  He made a list of directions to locate each of these boxes but he had always feared this list would get into the wrong hands, so he burned them. But not before he showed your grandfather the whereabouts of each one.  He also had two very special friends who lived with him, two Malamute dogs who would go panning with him everyday to keep watch.  It is said that it was the sensitive noses of Bernie and Jessie that were the living will and testament of all his hidden gold.  Whoever could find the dogs might be able to find the buried boxes." He handed Hannah the gold. "This will be your lucky rock, and you can remember that it was those two dogs that found it for you -- they helped me locate this particular box." Hannah had asked her grandfather on the spot how much was in the box and whatever happened to those dogs. She could barely remember the words, so young, so taken by the nugget. "I will tell you that someday you will find out because it will be yours. It will be up to you to find it."

Hannah quickly awoke from the brief day dream of the past and looked up to see that she was approaching the branch of the trail that lead to the caves. The trail rose directly up the side of the mountain and faded into an indescribably black umbrella of forest canopy.  She stayed on the Mesa Trail and then picked up the sound of the soft thumping of footsteps behind her closing in.

Mesa Trail ch. 4
Draft 3

The first night Hannah walked to Bear Creek alone it was midnight and the moon had shriveled under the western horizon to little more than a faint yellow glow behind the Indian Peaks.  The parts of the trail that her mini flashlight picked up were so small she thought that virtually everything was alive and jumping out her -- every fallen limb was most certainly a rattler, every boulder laying out there in the woods rising upward into the deeper unknowable black forest was a soon-to-be hibernating black bear who was not much in the mood for sleeping or for two two-laggers tramping around in the middle of the night on their turf.
Every tuft of fallen leaves stuck in the elbows of the limbs of the jack pines must have been mountain lions.

And yet it was all so silent except the squeaky footsteps made by the stiff soles of her new hiking boots.  "Wrong shoes," she said to herself outloud, shook her head, and purposefully continued the conversation with herself. The advice she had heard anyway was that when you are out in the woods alone you should wear a cowbell, which she did not have, or you should make noise so not startle anything bigger and meaner than her, which was everything except for the crickets exercising their legs underneath the dry brush along the trailside.

Sure she had made this route what seemed like a hundred times in order to help her mom on the trail in the mornings after Kitie and Josh had breakfast, but these long canyons, all crushed rock, rose up into dark creases and it felt like now, in the dark, there was nothing there but trouble.  "What am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing?" she said out loud, feeling so nearly electric that her whole body through buzzed and tingled.

There had been a point, about halfway to bear creek, where she thought she could make out the famous old stone house nestled in among the fir trees, that she realized that it would be just as bad now turning around to head back home but in that case nothing would get accomplished.  Inside her back pack was a new rock filter screen, two small buckets, a small foldable shovel and little pic.  Over the last few weeks she had begun to assemble her sluicing kit from left over tools laid in the garage from the trail crew.  From all those mornings out on the trail under the sun she had overheard all she needed to know: first and most importantly, there was gold still trickling down that creek, they all knew it.  She knew how to handle rocks and had some understanding how the old sluice box that sat at the shore line of bear creeek might work.  She knew it would take patience.  She knew what she would do with the gold if she found it...

Up until this point in her life, let's face it, the courage to stake out in the night to do such a thing was beyond her, but here she was, and a surge of adrenalin rushed through her, her ears tuned like bat radar.  She might not have admitted or understood the second part, but let's face it, t's hard to do such things without a little help from the prospect of coming fame. She could see herself on postcards down at the Ranger Cottage smiling for the camera with a gold nuggest the size of cupcakes in her hand. "Gold mining extraordinaire Hannah Provo finds forgotten claim and strikes it rich!" What would the kids at school say about her then?  She bucked her pack up off her back to loosen the straps.  At the very instant that she had for even the briefest moment forgotten about the blackout that surrounded her, this time, she was sure, she heard the footsteps of some thing much more substantial than a cricket behind her coming up from the trail, thumpity thump thump, thumpity thump thump.

Mesa Trail ch. 3
Draft 3

"What makes a ten-year old girl think she can go out in a boat alone, at night, with only her dog for a sailing mate? Well...muscles. Exactly!"
–Kathi Appelt, from Keeper


How many know that gold's atomic number is 79? That it is thought to have been produced in a supernova nucleosynthesis?  Nuclea-whose this? That it formed as a result of the collision of neutron stars and that because at this time of the heavy bombardment 4 billion years ago of the earth's surface by so many asteroids that this particular type of glittery dust boiled deep down into the earth's crust's planetary core then hardened to form a mantle? Those miners of old, the Gold Rushers at Pike's Peak, or the Rushers out to the west coast at San Fransisco, saw that a nugget dug up not only looked precious but knew other things as well: the mind liked the look and feel of this stuff! ... it looked better than other metals, that was for sure, more pure, and was workable into other objects.  They knew that other civilizations had used this as a base of trade, that the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Romans, so many others, might spend entire decades and centuries scouring the earth for the settlement of veins of the pretty glittery rocks.  Pirates sailed the seven seas so to capture the great locked boxes full of the bullion and that bankers back east would always pay out raw cash in exchange.  Water that gathered at the top of the Flatiron mountains in narrow creases turned to creeks and gravity swished and swashed away the granite and dolomite for so many eons that it might expose the cosmic dust turned 'atomic element number 79' so that flakes might drag down to the bottom of the gulleys, some settling more, but some, some, if the miner was lucky, could be trapped inside a wooden contraption and filtered through a screen and onto a pan for examination. The miner might have indeed bitten the flakes to see if it was the real stuff or quartz of some other element.  He might collect it in a vial and watch it fill up to the cap until he knew that when full it was worth to him a hundred dollars. It looked just like a night in a fancy hotel room with a bottle of his favorite whiskey (yuck!) and good grub.

Mesa Trail ch.2
Draft 3

Did somebody say dinosaurs? Not like the ones you see in the movies.  No no, those are so real that they couldn't be real, not really.  Try instead to picture the real ones now, right now, in your living room, out on the great Front Range thumping about their big horned feet along the dry gulches and crunching  small rocks steaming hungry.  What would that be like? An animal the size of the redstone rocks. The size of a yacht coming at you.  You might want to be invisible while they passed by. Or just settle with your imagination, a much safer bet.

It was no more than a mile as the crow flies from their house near Settler's Park, across that vast Chautauqua Park mountainside Trailhead, just past the last of those three famous Flatiron granite boulders jutting up into the sky like silver tongues, that Hannah's mother had planted herself that morning, earlier in the summer, in the middle of one of the new trails to be built off the south Mesa Trail branch. She stood very tall inside that early morning patch of sun, the shadows of her limbs as long as windmills.

Hannah's mom had been a famous volleyball player in her day. The joke was that she could spike a ball over the net from her knees. Out on the trail she was almost always the tallest person on the crew and was often be asked to reach for things in the branches of trees.  How was it, she wondered, that even though she was the big boss, she was the one who was looping the cables around the trunks of trees?

Hannah's mother was the only person anybody knew who had been a semi-professional volleyball player (beach volleyball circuit right out of college), trained as a paleontologist (a fossil finder) but who became a textbook writer as her first real job... not exactly your standard match-up of skills as a trail builder. But she did take great comfort in the fact that she knew everything there was to know about 10th, 11th, and 12th grade textbook world history. For years she kidded with her fellow mothers that she had never yet met or read about another mother of three who was also an aspiring bone digger. She spent all those years raising the kids secretly preparing and preparing, taking Hannah, Kitey and Josh on long walks pointing out the glaciation of the limestone ridges that lined the Mississippi River Valley back in the midwest.

Today she plucked at the long metal cord the trail crew used for hauling pouches of tools and dirt several hundred feet straight up the side of the mountain to another waiting crew member. "Ok, tug!" she yelped out, and Jayse, crew supervisor, pulled down on the cord behind the pulley attached to a pine tree below.  The cord and pulley system was not exactly a precise contraption.  Sometimes it sagged a little halfway up the hill, other times the loop that was pulled around the tree at the bottom might begin to loosen and whatever was in the pouch would come close to dragging along the ground. Luckily this was a pretty tight loop, Hannah's mom made sure. The bag full of hand tools flopped along suspended 10 feet over the trail.  Two hikers were coming their way down the Mesa. "Ok, stop." She put her two long arms way up in the air. They both knew the only thing important in this pouch was Jayce's lunch, a fish sandwich he had made the night before and set on ice to keep fresh (never never pack a fresh fish sandwich on ice for a lunch in the sun!). She crossed her arms signaling, again. As the hikers passed by underneath, the fish sandwich dangled right up above their heads.  Jayce was a line cook down at Mountan Sun at night and would bring whatever happened to be left over from the night before.

When Hannah's dad landed an interview with the famed Atmospheric Research Center in Boulder, Hannah's mom saw herself, in a blink of an eye, out of that office of hers, out of the house, out of 12th grade history books, and into the mountains, back with her rocks and bones. "They need me," she would say, and the rest of the family would give her a look like she was the crazy seven-footer who should have stuck with volleyball! Now that they were here, she was always looking at the trails  and would yelp out at random moments "we're walking inside history people.  "It's like a museum of stone." She asked every morning that all the workers "dig lightly." And so this became one of her esteemed nicknames up on the trail, 'Mrs. Diglightly.' "Delightfully, Mrs. Diglightly" she would say mockingly in the mornings as the trail team set off to work. If somebody on the crew was found spearing too hard into the earth, it was "watch out, Diglightly is watching, or Diglightly will track you.  If she catches you, you will have to 'haul the pails' for the rest of the day."

It was the day that Hannah and her mother walked down the newly picked trail together where the Mesa meets Bear Creek and felt for that split second the very same as all those who had been here before and washed out a claim to seek the prospect of a gold nugget.  There had been remnants of a sluice box up just fifty some feet from the trail crossing at Bear Creek which they had both seen before but not really thought of.  They had been told that the opening gate still looked workable, maybe an old claim abandoned during a dry spell.

Mesa Trail, ch.1
Draft 3

"Every landscape has its magical beings. The ancient forests of the pacific northwest have Sasquatch. The piney woods of Alabama have Bigfoot. The Texas coast has Jacques de Mer." – from Kathi Appelt's Keeper


Preface

When Hannah had her very first vision of opening Element 79 some day, some day down in the valley, along some side street off of the Pearl walkway that was cozy and cobblestoned, where she would bake her famous "Mountain of Velvet Cakes" and serve "Chocolate Cliff Coffee," she never would have thought it would happen the way it had.

It wasn't until mid morning that the entire crew had arrived – Inuna at the bottom of the sluice box with her band of swimming turtles, Josh up at the head gate of the sluice box managing the water supply, Mr. Kliefen, 10 th grade Sociology teacher, hauling away gravel, Mrs. Diaz, 10th grade Health Sciences, sifting – when she found herself standing underneath the roof of the roughly constructed wood shack preparing lunches on the counter and realized that this was it.

She reached behind her and tore off a piece of cardboard from a box and wrote in big golden glittery letters Element 79 onto it, taped a stick onto the back and planted it into the hard ground out front along the trail.  She saw that there were rocks naturally in place to either side, they would work just fine for warm seats under the afternoon sunshine.  Inuna called up from the banks of the creek asking if Hannah needed help in the kitchen.  Mr. Bunkledon was arriving supposedly in just an hour and the entire sight had to be what was promised: a fully working gold mining operation. He needed to see that this 'Outpost' could be counted on, and that this was not just some crazy kids' dream scheme.

She put Inuna to work on cold wraps and quinoa bowls.  "I just lay them out to start in a stack then use the scoop for the black bean rice and lime mix." She squeezed the handles together and a perfect scoop dropped onto the maize wraps. "Voila, just like that." Hannah tried another one, dropping it from a bit farther up in the air, and it splooshed down and crumbled a little. "Sometimes you gotta have a little fun, too."

She called in Kitie for freshly squeezed lemonade.  Kitie was an eight grader. No, her name wasn't a mistake on the birth certificate, being mistaken with a Katie.  It was what mom and dad told everybody was a compromise name.  "What is a compromise name," the question would always come back. "He wanted a Katie, and I wanted Kite.  I've always loved kites, how they seek out the wind high above, duck and weave, like a hawk.  So we compromised to Kitie." Kitie, of course, like every other kid in the history of the world, didn't like her name.  She insisted that most everybody she knew just started calling her Kite anyway, so why not just stick with that.  Although, come to think of it, I don't really like Kite either. "How about Cutie, then, dad would say, and usually that would end that.  Kitie, by the way, in her most secret moments, loved kites herself. When she was first pulled onto the gold mine, the first thing she asked Hannah was whether they might try to use kites for some of their work.  "How exactly are you going to do that," Hannah wondered, but was open to any suggestion that anybody ever had.  They were working in a gold mine during school hours, for goodness sakes. If we can use a kite, let's use a kite!  "I just think they are pretty. I was also thinking that we could use them to send things to each other from the trails." Hannah had to give her a good long look at that one. "Kites don't fly themselves you know. Somebody has to hold onto the ropes." Kitie, was, well, a little Kitie.  Hannah looked at her and they both silently agreed that Kitie's name, as it turned out, was perfect.


Josh was a different story. Josh was younger brother, a 5th grader who could tinker with the best of them. It had been Josh's job to handle the sluice gate, clean the screens and set the rocks along in mindful piles, tagging them. He didn't think much about the sky and the hawks or kites.  His eyes were usually on moving parts. The way water moved down that last curl up above the mine sight was fascinating because it was such "high volume per cubic inch," that kind of thing.  Josh was the one who rebuilt the hinges on the opening gate.  They had been rusted by years of disuse. Standing in cold water ankle deep, he bent over with his pocket utility screwdriver and replaced hinges he got with the help of dad down at Kroner's hardware.  Josh didn't like ghosts and he didn't like "hot hot heat," as he would call it, the kind that came down at noon up here in Flatirons and would force any sane gold mine worker to dip into the cold creek for relief.


Before Hannah knew it, Mr. Kliefen and Mrs. Diaz were talking to others who had gathered where the Mesa Trail crosses Bear Canyon Creek and Hannah could see them pointing upwards to the shack, otherwise now known as Element 79 she told herself proudly, and a plan sparked in her mind as it always did: 1) this is the grand opening for the Mesa Trail Oasis; 2) we will invite all hikers in for fresh food and water; 3) if they would like to help haul, filter screen, weigh, they are invited.  Whatever they find directly in gold, they can dedicate to their own favorite cause down below in the city.  Hannah felt the old charm around her neck and wondered if this was what her great grandfather had in mind when he said, all those years ago, "some day you will find yourself at a cross roads. You may see two ways to go. Take the one that follows the bright sky. Always follow where the water flows."  At that time, she had no idea about cross roads or following the bright sky, but she could sure see it now, out there in the rushing blue water, the swirling blue sky, here family, the coming gold.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.

...The very first nights that Hannah and her family lived up there at the top edge of the city of Boulder right along Settler's Park – the very same place where the city had been founded two hundred years ago – were so dark that you dare not walk outside without a flashlight.  It was so dark behind the great red rocks that their father, in the beginning, would not even let them go with a flashlight.  "The rattlesnakes underneath the boulders are sleeping.  They have had to put up with people all over their homes all day long, maybe we should let them rest for the night."

Dad had grown up not far from here, in Fort Collins, and told little stories of he and his brother, who they called Ace because he was always into little disasters, getting nipped at the sides of their tall-necked boots their mother made them wear out in the brush.  "It is not a happy sight at all, let me tell you, when the stick laying across the trail isn't a stick.  It starts moving.  Sometimes it coils up, then you know what's next.  The shake rattle and roll." He happened to have a salt shaker in his hands as he was telling this, and shook it for effect.  "People panic.  They get stuck way up high in the mountains. Never hike high altitude alone, that's all I'm saying."

Hannah knew this was parental code for fear what is out there. The red rocks in the dark, from the back windows anyway, no matter how much safe light inside, were not rocks at all the three kids had decided. These were living, breathing, spiny, winged, rip roaring dinosaurs. Goodness only knows what they do when nobody is looking out there deep into the night. For awhile it was only Kitie who knew they moved. Then it was Josh who one morning woke up to run out into the kitchen and make the wild statement that last night he "most certainly saw the very top of the closest spine of boulders raise its head up to the sky, and peak right into the house. Like he was watching me." If any of them stayed up long enough, the howling from the west, on the back side of Flatirons, way up there at Flagstaff, began at midnight. Of course it echoed up and down the canyon to stir up the silence of everything else.  Bears! Mountain Lions! Dinosaurs! What else?

Hey, Coach! ch. 14

"So I stood on my head. When Fudge saw me upside down he clapped his hands and laughed. When he laughs he opens his mouth. That's when my mother stuffed some baked potato into it." from Tales 4th Grade...










The next week didn't play out quite the way Scotty had anticipated.  Little Brother and The Girl became inseparable, texting, meeting at lunchtime down on the gym floor, going over practice plans.  Little Brother brought her a dry erase board for her to construct plays and he gathered stray basketballs at practice.  All of this was after they had to present the idea of a team in the first place to the athletic director, Mr. Aikers.  He hadn't anticipated a fifth grade team, not this year around, because, well, there was no gym space another team.  Scotty, Little Brother and an Eighth Grade Girl made their case, that there were enough boys for a team, and that she would coach.  "Do you plan on practicing, though," he asked as if the most obvious problem that they hadn't considered.  "You know it's not just about the games, you know that, right?" He had no idea.  They told him about the available court and that everybody was just fine with us practicing there, although nobody really knew about it except for the boys themselves, who were quite convinced that none of this could ever work out anyway, so gladly agreed to meeting right before dinner time at 5:00 which gave the coach time to get there from her practice.  "Well, we are going to practice at my house," Scotty said. "I have a court."
"It's winter," Mr. Aikers through out there, like it was such a big deal.
"We shovel it regularly, so that it is not slippery." As Scotty said this, it began to dawn on him just a little bit that this sounded a little far fetched.
"I mean, you three, really, I love your spirit for the game, truly, but but can you imagine if somebody slipped out there in the afternoon like that, got hurt...." He pushed up over his slender rickety chair and grasped his hands together.  "There's just no way that this team application could work without a facility available."
"What if there was a roof over the court," The Girl said. "Then there would be no snow and it would be safe.  We could still play our games on the weekends at our school."
"I think what I am saying you three is that maybe this is a good year to get ready for next year.  6th grade always has half of a gym available, and you all will be that much better for the wait." Mr. Aikers didn't look like this was his favorite thing to say or do either.
"I will tell you what, just maybe Corey and her teammates would be as kind as to scrimmage with your boys team, for fun some night at practice, what do you say?" And there it was, the dream squasher.  So many little plans and possibilities right out the window, just like that. Little Brother wasn't crushed.  He had been working harder than anybody, serving cookies, help shovel, holding clipboards in cold weather.  "Oh, well, next year," he said.  He pulled his backpack up over his right shoulder.  "We get a ride home in exactly six minutes." As they walked out of Mr. Aikers gym office, The Girl, already dressed for 8th grade practice, looked out onto the gym floor.  The 8th grade girls barely had enough players to make a team, seven altogether, and Suzy Wetzill could only come three days because of band.  The floor was wide open.  She set her duffel bag on the sideline. A ball came bouncing in her direction.  She scooped it up and handed it Scotty.  "Go ahead and throw this back over to them, I have an idea."

Hey, Coach! ch. 13

"He stayed away until we were in the middle of our roast beef.  Then he came in carrying Dribble's bowl. He walked right up to Mrs. Yarby. He thought she was his new friend. 'See,' he said, holding Dribble under her nose. 'See Dribble.'" – Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing








Of course Little Brother and The Girl quickly became thick as thieves.  2:15 had come, father had been home no longer than 20 minutes, and mother had brought outside a small little bag of Chips Ahoy not realizing that a team full of kids where out on the court lined up stick straight as a military unit taking orders from an older girl she had never seen before. Scotty fell in line, what else could be done? "The first thing to think about, boys," The Girl emphasized boys, "is to be on time.  If we say 2:00, that is exactly the time that we mean." Matt and Tyler were the two tallest of the group and they stood in the middle of the line looking at one another with very large question marks in their eyes, eyelashes blinking.  Will, Trent and Henry stood down at the end of the line, weaving back and forth. Nobody knew The Girl except for Scotty and Little Brother, they hadn't even been told that they were here for anything other than a comfortable chair down in the basement accompanied by a new style of joystick that was supposed to be virtually intuitive, "like a second skin, you won't have to think at all!" was what the commercials said anyway.  Now they were being scolded by a tall girl who was describing to them the history of basketball.  Scotty grinned and looked her right inside the eyes and without blinking nodded in agreement with every word.  "The game of basketball came from a challenge to make physical education more interesting, more healthy than what kids had at the turn of the century." Little Brother stood behind her and handed her a cookie at intervals.  He took a picture here and there to record the first practice, to be choreographed later on and planted on the new team app.  That was if there was a team after this.  There were no questions being asked yet, but this would last only so long before the dream of it floated away and the boys started to lose concentration which was, usually, about 3.2 seconds and counting.  "Form two lines facing the basket.  The right side dribbles the ball with their right hand, when you get to the basket, you go off of your left foot." She sunk down in a stance and showed the boys the proper way to dribble.  "When dribbling, you keep your head up, always.  You are looking for somebody else to pass the ball to. This is not a head down and dribble sport." She looked over at Tyler, who had far surpassed his 3.2 seconds and now was in the quintuple digits of having to stand in one place thinking about the same thing, "why do we dribble with our head up?" She had come over and placed her hand on Tyler's shoulder.  Tyler was around 4 foot - nine and had the face of a choir boy singing alongside an organ being played by the elderly Ms. Moffit.  "Um, ah, you dribble the ball to the hoop to shoot it?"
"Second thing. First, we practice on time. The second, you listen when the coach talks." Now, nobody in the 10 years had really spoken to any of these boys quite like that.  Maybe an occasional shout up the stairs to "let's get moving," or maybe a "what in the world happened here?" but the utter surprise of The Girl standing there directly inside their personal space asking questions was life-altering.  "You dribble in order to pass, in order to get a high percentage shot!" She quickly looked over to Scotty in disbelief.  He stood forward, "Hey, Coach! should we give the guys here their positions?" It was at that moment, no time before, that the rest of them knew that they were now on a team. They had a court to play on.  And now, finally, they had a coach.

Hey, Coach! ch. 12

"Leave it to my brother to eat flowers! I wondered how they tasted. Maybe they're delicious and I don't know it because I've never tasted one, I thought. I decided to find out." – Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing











There were only three known ways to get that many boys together in one spot on a weekend. The first one, the easiest usually, was if all the dads were getting together for a football party and they took their kids along with them.  This had happened a lot more before dad started a new job on in other countries, though, and Scotty didn't think that was what his dad would want to do this particular weekend, having been gone for a week.  The second was a birthday party of some sorts. The problem here was that there were no birthdays to be had. Making one up might get him in trouble somewhere down the line, like next year at the same time, when they would most likely find out it was a hoax.  The third and maybe the most promising was video games.  A new video game along with the temptation of a freshly baked cookie was a little like fifth grade kryptonite -- good luck holding off.  This then was Little Brother's day to shine.  He had been on the text circuit for hours plugging in temptations of the newest version of Destroy Wonderland, two new self molding joysticks, and a mean batch of double fudge monster cookies.  Arrangements were made, moms were briskly called into action, and all but all but Randall was able to come by at 2 in the afternoon.  There were a few problems.  Mom had spent the last two days and nights cleaning up for dad's arrival at precisely the same time of day, something that Scotty overlooked when the coordinating began.  "Make sure to clean up as you bake the cookies," he pleaded with Little Brother.  Little Brother didn't know about this part of the plan. "Why do I have to do everything?" he asked, which Scotty knew was a legitimate question. "What is your position on this team?" Scotty asked, bending down into the bottom level of the pantry for chips, flour, sugars and vanilla. "No eggs!" said to himself remembering what all went into these.  He had to show Little Brother very quickly how to mix and follow a recipe.  He had been so good with the spaghetti though, he thought, this should be a breeze.  "You are communications and logistics coordinator," that is why.  "It's my job to recruit the players and the coach. Have I done that or not?" he actually said out loud. It was 9:45 saturday morning.  Outside, as if one good omen were allowed, the sun shone down at a morning angle onto the court and it glistened as if wet and shiny.  He pictured four on four drills out there, boys high giving, twikking threes, raring to go into school monday and make their case with Mr. Tattern to form a team.  "Where the recipe calls for eggs, you'll just have to skip that, ok?" he asked.  He pointed to the recipe line, one that had been pulled out the Food Network Magazine like a book mark.  Little Brother set his phone down.  Texts continued to roll in, he swiped, read out loud, "Matt and Tyler can come at 2:15 now, not 2:00." He wasn't much for reading a recipe card.  Put it all in a bowl and start swooshing it around.  "Use this," Scotty said, holding up an electric mixer. One beater had rounded metal tines, the other one was square. "This will do. We have got to get these done before mom comes home from the store.  She will majorly wonder why cookies right now, today."
"We could tell her they are for dad," Little Brother said, his conniving-ability fully engaged by now. Little Brother had scooped out the two cups of flour and dumped them in a big bowl, along with white and brown sugar.  As he dropped the beaters down into the bowl, two things happened simultaneously that nobody could have predicted -- the flour fluffed up not merely into a small cloud, but a full blizzard and covered counter in a halo around the bowl and had settled in powdery bits around Little Brother's neck and chin like a new beard. He quickly lifted up the handle only to see that both beaters fell out into the bowl and lay there as if they were going nowhere anytime soon.  "Should we text mom for cookies?"
"Maybe," but first, I need you to go outside and talk to The Girl." Little Brother's eyes widened to two eggs, which would have been nice to have earlier.  "What do you mean The Girl. Now?" Sure enough, there was Corey, the new coach, The Eighth Grade girl out on the court tossing short hook shots in like a robot. "For god's sakes man," Little Brother yelled out "why me?"
"You are just a kid. And I don't know what to say."
"You recruited her to coach your team."
"That is true."
"You said something to her then."
"That's true."
"Say some things like that again."
"I can't. Not yet," said Scotty and he galloped upstairs.
Little Brother might have been a sight walking out onto the sunny backyard basketball court with a light powdery white beard swiping texts. The girl asked, "Let's play PIG" and she took the first shot from the three point line.

Hey, Coach! ch. 11

"I went to Jimmy Fargo's for the afternoon. I came home at four o' clock. I found my mother standing over the dinner table mumbling. Fudge was on the floor playing with my father's socks. I'm not sure why he likes sock so much, but if you give him a few pairs he'll play quietly for an hour." from Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing








Dad was coming home for the weekend after being away for a long week.  This last one was a trip down to Mexico City somewhere.  He had facetimed back home most nights, right at bed time, so that he could Scotty and Little Brother and then talk to mom alone.  The reception would cut in and out depending on whether he was in his hotel room or at a cafe of some sort.  He said there were so many people that you'd get caught in crowds everywhere you went, no matter what.  It felt like relief to get back to the actual plant because at least it was built out along a countryside mountain.  Scotty felt funny that he was off playing girls at HORSE and having Little Brother cook spaghetti, all the while his dad was in another country away from everybody.  He had asked if he could go along on the next trip and maybe learn the business.  Dad said that sounded great and that maybe, just maybe, he could take his place, kidding.  "How was basketball? Got a team yet?" There was no way that Scotty could fully answer that with anything other than a no, no yet, but we are working on it.  "I think if you can just get Matt and Tyler," dad said, "that the rest of them should come around. It's just fifth grade basketball, right?" Dad downplayed it all over the phone, but he had played all the sports himself, and Scotty knew what his hopes were. "We'll see you this weekend," he had said, "and you can show me some of those new moves." Scotty badly wanted to tell the story of near triumph in front of the school against The Girl, but it might all sound like nothing if you hadn't been there.

The next day, saturday, mom was on a mission.  The house had become not quite a house but a laundry and dish junkyard, little piles everywhere, to the point that even the two boys, gasp, had started to clean up because they couldn't walk a straight line from kitchen to bathroom to TV. That was always the last straw.  Dad was coming home.  Mom's job, she said, was going well. She carried a little illustrated book along with her everywhere showing a variety of massage techniques.  Once in a while she would randomly walk over to Little Brother and begin to put two fingers along his temples as practice.  Little Brother had swimming in half an hour, Scotty was supposed to go along so that he could get Little Brother ready afterward and then play in the game room for half an hour after so that mom could quick dash off to the grocery store.  That would be the time they would need to call the team players to get together.  By monday, they had a coach, a good one, and a court, but no players.  It's always something Scotty thought, always something.