Deralied by Love

The Ponderosa Campground sat at the end of a gravel road that had been trying to shake my car apart for the last twenty minutes. Eastern Oregon. Late August. Dry heat and the smell of pine through the open window.

Forty-two years old and I was betting my career on a family-run campground with maybe thirty sites and a creek.

"Dead ahead," Tobias said from the passenger seat. "Told you the sign was weathered."

The sign did look like it had been out there since before either of us was born. PONDEROSA CAMPGROUND, most of the letters faded to gray. A hand-painted arrow pointed down a dirt lane.

He was forty-four and had spent a decade as a park ranger before going freelance with his conservation writing. He knew more about conifers than most textbooks. I'd met him at a journalism conference in Portland seven years ago, married him two years after that, and never once regretted it. Even now, when I sorta needed him to be a prop instead of a husband.

We pulled into the site I'd reserved by phone. Level ground, a fire ring, a picnic table with somebody's initials carved into it about a hundred times over.

I got out and stretched. He was already at the tailgate.

"Give me the tent poles," I said. "You take the bags."

He handed them over without arguing. That was one nice thing about him. He didn't argue about small stuff.

So I put the tent up while he unpacked. I'd done this maybe six times in our marriage and it showed. One pole took me three attempts. The rainfly fought me. Somewhere behind me a bird started calling, four notes, rising then falling.

"Black-headed grosbeak," Tobias said, not looking up from a field guide. "You should get that in your notes. Actually, the campground probably gets a dozen species just along the creek corridor. Grosbeaks, tanagers, towhees. Could be a whole section."

"Toby."

"Yeah?"

"I'm trying to put a tent up."

"Right. Sorry." He was not sorry. Thirty seconds later, another bird. "Hear that one? Rapid trill. Dark-eyed junco. Nesting in the understory, most likely."

I got the last stake in and stood there, sweaty, with dirt on my knees. He grinned at me from the picnic table where he'd laid out three field guides, a notebook, and a pair of binoculars like he was setting up a shop.

"Come here," I said. "Sit. Let's talk strategy."

He came over and we sat side by side on the bench. I opened my own notebook.

"Okay. Here's the plan. The editor wants a definitive piece on sustainable campground management. The Hendricks family has run this place for forty years, right? Water-wise showers, composting toilets, the trail maintenance program. If I show up with a detailed ecological report, species lists, water usage numbers, soil stuff, they're gonna see I did my homework. And if the Hendricks like me, my editor hears about it, and I stop being a freelancer they can drop and start being staff."

"That's a good plan," he said.

"It's a desperate plan. But it's a plan."

"It's a good plan." He squeezed my knee. "You'll knock them dead."

"And you're gonna help. Your naturalist brain is the whole reason I picked this angle. Nobody else writing about campgrounds knows a junco from a jerk."

He laughed at that. Then he got that look. The one where an idea was forming behind his eyes and I already knew I wasn't gonna win.

"We should hike to the hot spring first," he said. "Before any interviews. Get the lay of the land. The spring is a mile up the trail and it feeds the creek that runs the whole southern edge. Everything here connects to that water. You'll write a better piece if you understand the water."

"That's a full day."

"It's one morning. The Hendricks aren't going anywhere." He tapped the map he'd tucked in the guide. "Besides. Hot spring. Your editor can't bill you for soaking."

He had me and he knew it.

* * *

The trail climbed easy through the pines, switchbacking along the creek. Tobias walked ahead and narrated the whole way. Ponderosa bark smells like vanilla if you stick your nose in a crack, and he made me try it, and it did. That was going in the article, at least. Some of his material was actually usable.

The spring sat in a rock hollow a mile up, steam rising off water the color of sky. Nobody else around. A rough timber edge somebody had built decades ago, moss on the boards.

Tobias pulled his shirt off before I'd even set my notebook down. Then his shorts. No hesitation. Forty-four years old and he waded in with the enthusiasm of a man much younger, which was just like my husband, who had always been comfortable naked in a way I'd never managed.

"Come on in," he said. "Water's perfect."

"I'm working." I sat on the timber edge and opened the notebook. "Give me the water source details. Where's the outflow?"

He splashed me.

"Tobias."

"That's not an answer to your question."

"Outflow. Where."

"West side, see the channel? It feeds the creek below." He ducked under and came up slick, hair plastered to his head, water running down his chest and dripping off him. "Surface temp stays about ninety-eight year round. Snowmelt recharge up gradient. The family tested it in spring, I heard them talking when we checked in."

I wrote that down. I wrote the outflow down. Then he swam over and put both arms on the timber edge beside my legs and looked up at me with wet eyes and I stopped writing.

"You're dripping on my notes."

"Am I?" He reached up and pushed a strand of hair off my face. His fingers came away wet and left my cheek damp. "Suzy. It's ninety-eight degrees. You're fully clothed in August."

"I have work."

"You have until dinner." He splashed again, lighter this time, just my shin. "One soak. Then I'll be your research assistant, promise. I'll even carry your notebook."

He was being ridiculous and he knew it and I knew it. But I kicked my sandals off anyway. I peeled out of my clothes on the flat rock and slipped in, and the heat hit me like a hand on the back of the neck. God. He was right. He was always right about nature stuff.

I floated next to him. Water held onto his skin, beading along his shoulders, catching the light. I'd been married to this man five years and he still could derail me with his forearms.

"You're staring," he said, pleased.

"I'm observing. For science."

"Sure."

* * *

Back at the tent that evening, the light going gold through the nylon. I had eleven pages of notes and a plan for tomorrow's interviews and I was feeling pretty good about the whole desperate plan.

Then Tobias unzipped his pack and pulled out a bottle.

Organic lube. Full bottle. He'd packed lube to a campground.

"Research purposes," he said, completely straight-faced.

I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the sleeping bag. "You packed lube. For research purposes."

"Yeah. I figure the ecology angle goes deep. Real deep."

"Stop. Oh my god, stop!" I wiped my eyes. "You absolute dork."

"Your dork." He held it out. "I also brought the other thing we talked about. If you still want."

The other thing. We'd talked about it in bed back in April, half asleep, him saying he'd read that some women loved it, me saying I'd maybe be curious, both of us leaving it there like people do. He'd remembered. Of course he'd remembered.

I stopped laughing. I took the bottle from him.

"Yeah," I said. "I want."