Personal Narrative-Swan Dives Are More Graceful

Swan Dives Are More Graceful

Morning was like death in Montana, most often avoided and never pleasant when it arrived. My skin seemed to freeze to the already frosty nylon of my sleeping bag and all the goose down that lay inside felt clumped together like a flock of frozen geese would if it were stuffed in a nylon sac. The first light of morning crept through the weathered tarp that draped the pole shack. The light then pleasantly began burning “Good Morning” on my retinas, something to this day I have trouble looking past. My father lay next to me stiff and unaffected by the beams of fiery death that sprayed themselves across the planks we slept on. I lay awake and unprepared to accept the day’s demise. I knew the sun was impersonal to all manner of work and torture and without a doubt that is exactly what this day held. Hours upon hours of listening to oldies and slaving away hammering, cutting, sawing, and freezing my poor teen age ass to the bone in order to finish this pole

The first roof panel went up with a struggle. The tin had it own agenda and managed to slip off the side of the roofing almost taking my father with it. Being that he had escaped the glamorous life of a Chris Reeves by just a few feet he decided to make himself a makeshift harness by nailing a piece of rope to the roof and tying it around his waste in place of a safety harness. This is when I would have been rethinking my game plan. “Maybe it isn’t a great idea to build a crappy cabin in the middle of nowhere without the necessary safety equipment?” Or maybe something to the effect of, “I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die!” But, surprisingly, I don’t believe either of those crossed his mind considering he just kept laying his body out over the edge of this awning attempting to screw a thin piece of brown tin into a piece of flimsy ply