He Was Fourteen

It's just...about my cousin and how me and him could talk about more things than we do...he's more like a brother to me...so...yeah...

Green,

Brown,

Clear,

Blue,

White.

What do all these have in common?

They're all colors from memories 

of camping with my cousins.

We drove from home

Up to Granny and Oompa's house

In Mom's brick-red Ford Explorer.

One summer, we had brought so much

stuff, there wasn't enough room for Lucas.

He ended up in the back--in the trunk.

We stopped suddenly, once, and he hit his 

head on the back of our back seats. We 

laughed so hard we were crying.

Driving to Ipsit Creek Campsite up near

Mt. Rainier took about five or six hours,

So we'd usually get to our spot around six

 

Or seven o'clock at night. We'd stay there for

three days, and go through eighteen eggs within

one of them. There were six of us, so, ya know...

We went on hikes, we slept in tents. Not falling 

asleep until ten or midnight, but waking up at

The crack of dawn because of the light filtering in

through the tent and the pine trees surrounding 

us. 

When we hiked, sometimes we'd go to a lake at the 

base of a waterfall. It was always beautiful and one 

of my favorite memories is from there. Luke was on

A rock and Layne snuck up behind him. Layne pushed

him in, splashing and sputtering, and then Luke pulled

Layne in with. 

It was another one of those laugh and cry moments. I 

have another memory from hiking: To get to the lake, you

have to first go over a bunch of wooden bridges over different

branches of a river. The first one was only a flattened, 8 inch 

wide log. I remember freaking out and saying I wouldn't go 

across. Everyone went, the Dad, then me, and Lucas was behind

me. Another memory isn't from hiking. I had just woken up and 

gotten some sweats on and I walked out to find Luke sitting by

the fire in sweats and a lot of other warm stuff, shaking, his hair

all wet. I found out later that he'd seen Dad dunking his head in the

river (which got its water straight from a glacier stream) and 

wanted to try it out himself. He found out the hard way that it was

freezing cold. When we went home we'd have just as much fun as

when we were going up there. The only difference being having to

say goodbye once we got back to Granny and Oompa's. I remember

all of this and I was seven. Could Lucas possibly have remembered too, considering he was fourteen?

Author's Note

Lucas (Luke) and Layne are my cousins. Luke is about six and a half years older than me (so he's 21 and a half now) and Layne's a year older than me. The only reasons I wrote this (this one's new) was because we're not as close as we used to be...I miss that. Plus: good memories, ya know? Anyways, if you guys are on here (which I highly doubt) I love you to death. <3