A blast from the past today folks. I was trying to come up with something interesting to post about and all my constituents could suggest was ‘swimming lessons’ (they’re a bit obsessed with that right now) as it is apparently the coolest most awesome thing EVER!!! I figured I’d wander through the old picture archive and see what sparked. Found these photos from the summer Kevin and I met and figured I retell the tale.
As many of you know both Kevin and I met through the US Forest Service. This is to spite the fact we both attended WSU and were in the same graduating class. Three years of running around the same campus and we’d never met. Kevin even had courses with my sister and I had an Economics class with his friend/roommate.
Summer of 2004 we were both SCEP (Student Career Experience Program) interns working on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. I had been transferred from the Colville NF over to the Okanogan to get more ‘typical’ range experience. Kevin had been working on the forest already but had been encouraged to live in the bunkhouses that year instead of with family friends as he had in previous summers.
That meant we would both be living in the Tonasket Ranger District ‘bunkhouses’ which are, in actuality, the old Conconully Ranger station in Conconully, WA…population 200ish on a good day.
I was driving up from Vancouver and had pretty much zero idea of where I was going. I was just following the map. I was told I was supposed to meet some engineer guy there who would have the key to the building.
So I show up late on a Sunday evening, it’s getting dark, it’s raining, I’m low on gas (and the only gas station in town has closed for the night), I’m not quite in the middle of nowhere (but I can see it from there), and I’m the only one there. There is no cell service in Conconully (at that time I didn’t know about driving up to the cemetery to get reception) I don’t know anyone, and everyone I do know is hours away anyhow so not really much help. Pretty much I just had to sit tight and hope this guy showed. Not sure how long I waited, maybe half an hour, but it seemed like ages.
Finally this Jeep pulls up and this guy steps out of his jeep and introduces himself as Kevin. I remember he was wearing a blue fleece. He opens the door to the bunkhouse (a cabin with one main room a bathroom and a kitchen) and starts putting his stuff inside. Uh, wait a sec! Until that moment I hadn’t realized that ‘guy with key’ would also be my roommate so that was a bit of a shock especially since privacy was at a minimum.
Fortunately for Kevin, his natural charm (realized or not) won me over in a short period. Even though he didn’t share his Chico’s pizza with me and left me to have some questionable potato soup for dinner that first night. He did help wash dishes though….not just the dinner dishes either. Since the bunkhouse sat empty all winter it was really necessary to wash all the dishes in residence. Good thinking too because we discovered the cabin had a bad sugar ant infestation a few weeks later. He also cross-stitched, and had an excellent brand of humor. What’s not to love?
For the first month it was pretty much just the two of us. He’d go home to Moses Lake on the weekends though (to get his laundry done) and it was one of those weekends where I caught myself watching and waiting for him to come back and it just suddenly hit me how ‘screwed’ I was
(No fooling, that was what my inner monologue said to me, “you are so screwed”) They say you’ll ‘just know’ and ain’t that the truth?
We survived living together that whole summer and actually had a lot of fun in the meantime. I guess we figured after that everything else was cake….
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