Steve Moseley

This is written the very day Good Wife Norma and I are frantically packing … we leave at 6 a.m. tomorrow for Sheridan, then over the hill to Powell on Thursday and on to the park. Yikes, what a stress inducer!

First is to get the 1999 Burb with ‘Rstbukt’ on the plates ready to roll. The old girl is rock-solid and low-mileage for a 25-year-old. The only flaw is some orange highlights on the white paint. Far cheaper, I calculated, to slap on $40 self-deprecating specialty plates than to mitigate the rust at $3,000 knowing it will rust again for sure.

But that’s the least of it.

Still to come as my fingers tap the keys while in full-recline are camera gear, emergency floor jack and assorted tools, clothing, toiletries, the faithful but maddening CPAP, outer wear for everything from 80-degrees to freezing with wind-driven snow or, if we’re lucky, a blast of hail in the high country.

In my case, camera gear runs to a pair of obscenely large lenses, several examples of less ponderous glass, two camera bodies, tripod, monopod, beanbag for a window rest and a big black camera bag of support stuff. This is what happens when you live to 75 as a photo freak in a world where outstanding refurbished or lightly used bodies and lenses are available at sometimes, but not always, half the cost of the same item brand-new.

As a career print journalist in an industry where you are paid just enough so you starve slow and they get more years out of you, I could not possibly afford to buy new. Over decades of time you accumulate this and that and the other until you have enough to fill a feed wagon.

Clothing is easier, mostly because I am many times less fussy about jeans with frayed cuffs and stretched-out, faded old sweatshirts than delicate, pricey photo gear.

Between two couples we will tote perhaps as many as four coolers and several boxes stuffed with paper goods and dry food for most of a week in the hills.

When I say it is a pain I ain’t kiddin’. And all of that awaits the moment I wrap up these ramblings and lob them electronically to Zac, your local friendly editor at the Tribune.

Now, let’s contrast these Normandy Invasion logistics to how the exact same adventure would have played out when we lived among you on Cary Street.

1. Fill the tank.

2. Toss in a picnic lunch.

3. Load the wiener dogs. We had an even older Suburban in those days, with a solid wooden box way-back-there for what was in those days a pod of three tube dogs (of course GWN carpeted the top so they could dig in on all those switchbacks). If we liked to look out and take it all in, why not them?

4. Toss in camera gear for the day (no need to pack everything you own for a day hop like this).

5. Spend a leisurely morning wandering aimlessly in Yellowstone, the Bighorns, the Beartooths, the Pryors, etc. 

6. Find a shady spot along a crystal clear mountain creek wrapped in splendorous scenery for lunch.

7. Drive home in plenty of time to catch the 10 p.m. news and sleep in our own bed.

Turns out the ‘good old days’ that used-up old poops like me prattle on about ad nauseam really were good. In this example, oh my how we miss them.

That is all. Time’s up. Gotta get packin’.

(Contact the writer at stevemoseley42@gmail.com)