JR's journeys
by JR Johnson
Was Soft-Stepping Stan A Real Man?
Whenever we’re camping, the night is always darker and the stars brighter than at home. Sometimes deep in the night, the darkness awakens me to walk the dog. Either that or the chili had been way too spicy.
So one night, I dressed and took the dog out for a 2 a.m. walk through camp. She was excited and occupied with the smells of the night. I was occupied with the milky sea of stars above. Nearly everything else was invisible in the darkness.
We walked out onto the vast sandy beach adjacent to the park. In the distance, the glow of a nearby town lit up the sky. We approached a fire ring with a smoldering pile of half-burned wood at its center. I moved a few pieces around and in a few minutes we were warming ourselves in front of a cheery little blaze.
A short time later, a low growl from the dog let me know that someone was approaching. I stood and welcomed the stranger into the circle of firelight, quieting the dog with a touch of my hand. She sensed that the stranger was no threat and resumed her place, lying close to the ring in the warm glow of the fire.
The guy’s name was Stan, a fellow camper, also awakened in the night. We talked about different places where we had camped, the way that RV camping relaxed us and about his recently departed dog. Mine wagged her tail when he touched her, as if sensing his loss. He told me about remedies for her arthritis, creative ways to get into coastal RV parks and how to keep rust at bay when camping there.
As the conversation tapered off, we sat in companionable silence, contemplating the fire, the night sky and the stars shimmering above. Eventually, Stan rose, bid us good travels and walked back into the darkness.
We slowly got up and walked back to camp. My sleep for the rest of the night was restful. I awakened several hours later than usual, refreshed and ready for another day.
In daylight, I decided to find my way back to the fire circle my dog and I had stumbled upon in the night. When I found it, the wood had all burned to ash. A drizzle in the early evening had watered down the original fire builder’s marks in the sand, so it was easy to see the tracks of the dog and myself and every move we had made. What was not so easy to see were any tracks that Stan might have left. In fact, I couldn’t find even a single imprint where he had been crouching next to the fire. I was certain that every fresh mark bore my shoe print or the paw print of my dog. My search became a little frantic, which further confused the marks I was trying to read.
I reeled back from the fire ring. Was I actually alone in the night? Was Stan just a figment of my imagination? Had I been hallucinating an entire conversation with a guy who wasn’t there? Irrationally, I thought that my dog should have barked or something when she noticed that I was talking to myself.
Shaken, I returned to the RV with a heavy step. The weight of an imagined conversation pressing each footprint deeper into the sand. When I arrived, my wife handed me a bottle of glucosamine pills left by a nice man named “Stan.” She explained that he spotted our dog as he was leaving the park, knew about her condition from our conversation and had given us doggie arthritis pills that he no longer needed.
The wave of relief that washed over me was palpable. I now know how great it feels when you realize that you weren’t hallucinating in the middle of the night, even if it also means that you are not as good at reading sand tracks as you thought you were.
I spent the rest of the trip relaxing more thoroughly, trusting my conclusions less and contemplating the thought that truth and reality sometimes fall outside of the realm of our certainty.
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