I do not have a digital camera. It is on my wishlist, but not a priority right now. Therefore, I have never really explored Flickr. In reading others' blogs, I can appreciate everything that Flickr has to offer, but haven't really considered setting up an account myself. Or so I thought.
It is snowing today (yes, snowing, in April, big, heavy snowflakes), so it seems an appropriate day to explore a bit on the internet. I decided to set up a Flickr account. All I need is a Yahoo email account. Huh. As it would happen, I have one of those, which I set up a long time ago to use for junk mail on the internet. I sign in my Yahoo address and WHAM! I have pictures. Yes, actual photographs with my smiling face. Hmmm.... I don't remember doing this. Suddenly, I am looking through the pictures and taking a walk down memory lane. The picture above? Well, here's the story....
I had finished up working for the summer as a seasonal interpreter, and it would be a bit before I started a new job in Red Lodge. So, I packed all my belongings in Bertha (my car...the name is another story itself) and headed to Glacier National Park for a week. After a hard day of driving, the shadows started growing longer and I realized a campsite needed to be found. By looking at my beat-up atlas, I saw a tiny green tent outside of Augusta, Montana. Perfect!
I nosed Bertha down a rutted, rocky dirt road, confident in her abilities to get me where I wanted to go. After driving what seemed like forever, I still had not arrived at my location. Darkness fall, the inky kind with only pinpricks for stars and my headlights not providing much visibility. The landscape stretched endlessly in all directions with nothing to break the isolation. Rhetorically speaking, there was not a lantern in a window anywhere. The road became rockier and ker-klunk, ker-klunk, ker-klunk. That's right, a flat tire. Panic and dread filled my chest. I think a million different horror movies crowded in at once...all involving a chainsaw, and ax, and maybe a big knife thrown in for fun. And a pack of wild dogs.
I was not prepared for this type of catastrophe. I unpacked the entire trunk looking for my headlamp...all by feel. Once finding my headlamp, I dug out the spare tire. Thank goodness I had changed tires several times before. With the bubble tire in place, I was not willing to continue on the never-ending road, nor drive all the way back to a small town with no hotel and a closed garage. So I did the only thing I could think of. I pulled my car off the road, set up my tent, and fell into an exhausted sleep. (I guess those wild dogs did not bother me all that much.)
This image is what I woke up to the next morning. It ends up I camped beside a small lake, and I even had a privy and a picnic table! How fortunate!
Thank you, Flickr. What a pleasant surprise to rediscover images I thought lost forever.
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