Claire

I once spent a night in a cabin. In the pine woods of the Rocky Mountains near Fort Collins in Colorado USA.

I was staying with a woman called Betty Shoemaker, who didn’t make shoes. She worked for Colorado State University and offered a rent-free room for itinerants like me, nothing dodgy, she was just nice. It was part of a late winter 6-week trip in 1985 to the USA, during what I could euphemistically call a gap year, where the gap was between the A Level results my university place required and my underwhelming grades. Can I help it if the pulsations of a water flea’s stomach look very similar to its heartbeat under a microscope? Anyone could take an hour counting and plotting completely the wrong numbers in their A Level Biology practical exam (don’t get me started on the earthworm dissection).

So, I tagged along with my friend Simon Pope and his Dad, Roger, who worked for Chevron Oil. We got a Greyhound from New Jersey and counted the cars on the turnpike – via Pittsburg (fries), Philadelphia (burgers), St Louis Missouri (grits and biscuits), somewhere unknowable in Kansas (coyotes, pickled peaches and shoofly pie) and finally to Fort Collins, near Denver.

Simon stayed with a family friend, and I was at Betty’s house. Roger went home.

I mostly spent the time eating Jellybeans and watching MAS*H on account of not having a fistful of dollars and also of being puffed out by the altitude.

I did some voluntary work for Simon’s family friend who was organizing the World Wilderness Congress. David Bellamy was somehow involved in this (let’s just leave that there).

I was befriended at a bus stop by a very old* woman who took me on trips in her ancient giant American car, including one to church where the preacher asked me if I knew the lord was my savior – I replied that I hadn’t been aware of that.

We hired a car for a day (Simon had more money) and visited Red Rocks because of U2 and Bolder because of Mork & Mindy.

And for one night, Betty took Simon and I to a cabin in the woods (she was just nice remember). We parked about a mile away and trekked through snow to get to it. We collected some small twigs and sticks for the stove and fried sausage, onion and potatoes in a blackened pan for supper. We watched the chipmunks scuttling about in the branches and worried about the warning signs for Moose.

The best bit of all though, of that night and of the whole trip, the part that is vividly wrought in my memory, is the nighttime visit to the loo.

It was situated in a small pine outhouse, a short distance from the cabin. I sat there on the toilet with the door wide open, looking out across a moonlit landscape of snow and pine and mountains, with the legion stars crystalline in their heavens. I thought then that if ever the lord was going to reveal itself to me, it would be here and not some gaudy evangelist church.

The Lord declined, but if he is ever to visit I should like it to be on the loo.

*I was 18 at the time, she was probably about the age I am now.