Swatting Horseflies

by Michelle Stone

I never had so much fun swatting horseflies in my life, that is, until they started biting. The one summer I spent at a little cabin in the wilderness stands out as the most memorable of my childhood. When I was little, we did not have access to television, and my parents never bought my brother or me any type of electronic games. Instead, we played with simple toys, played music, read lots of books and traveled someplace new and exciting every summer. As passengers on long stretches of highway, and when we stopped at remote campsites, we amused ourselves by creating our own games. The gift of an active imagination allows days to pass in a blur of adventure, romance or mystery. That one memorable summer when we traveled throughout Wyoming, Idaho and Montana to hike in the jagged mountains and explore the vast prairie and farmlands, our imaginations were set on overdrive.

We stayed for a couple of nights in a lone Forest Service cabin, miles from civilization, atop a ridge somewhere in southwest Montana. Little Bear Cabin had no running water and no electricity, but that did not matter to an eight-year old girl and her ten-year-old brother. We were fascinated by the rustic one-room log cabin that featured an old-fashioned wood stove in the corner, a large stack of firewood on the front porch and a rusty old oil lamp on the rickety dining table. We spent days playing in the simple kitchen, the dark attic and the wildflower-strewn clearing around the little hut. My brother and I had read the entire “Little House (on the Prairie)” series and, for the time we spent there, I was Laura Ingalls and he was Almanzo Wilder. We lay on thin mattresses on the floor in the attic, where we discussed the progress of the crops, planned the new barn, dreamed about our future and tucked our “children” into bed. It was a cramped space, a loft really, with room for only a couple of sleeping bags. Every night, we would lie on our backs and stare at the loft’s round window, waiting for the moon to rise above the pine trees. The loft was accessible only by a sturdy log ladder, which we would climb up and swing down tirelessly, as our parents fretted about potential accidents. When we weren’t scurrying up and down the ladder, we pretended to make flapjacks or fried eggs on the wood burning stove with a dusty old box of Aunt Jemima pancake mix and an empty cast-iron pan. In the cool mountain mornings, we leapt over rotting pine logs that crisscrossed the forest floor behind the outhouse, chasing butterflies and looking for treasures. As the heat rose, so did the giant horseflies, and we competed to kill as many of the sluggish pests as possible. Eventually, we tired of the red welts left from slapping the bugs, so we ran back to the house to resume the previous day’s game of “Little House on the Ridge”. It was impossible to stay away from the measuring cups and wooden spatula as we donned imaginary aprons to create noon dinner. Soon we were back to scrambling up the ladder to check on the children. As the day sped on, we would age in reverse. By evening, the young Almanzo helped Pa chop firewood and then sat whittling by a campfire which sat atop the ridge, proudly showing off his big-boy basketball shorts. The child Laura helped Ma portion a can of beans onto four paper plates, accompanied by some bread, canned tuna and powdered milk. One night after dinner, we all sat on stumps down the hill from the front porch and listened to the night sounds grow louder as we grew more quiet. Awed by the pale full moon and the tiny stars that rose in an almost white evening sky, we sat in silence with our own thoughts about this special place.

Little Bear Cabin was shrouded in a cloud of dust as we drove away and so our game was left behind as well, leaving us only with wonderful memories. Someday, when I have my own children, I will introduce them to books and games which will feed their imaginations. I hope I will be able to take them to a cabin just like the one in Montana where they can let their imaginations run wild and be transported to another time and place.