It had to be a world record

It had to be a world record
When I was a kid my parents took my brother Jack and me up into the mountains back of Fish Lake for a fun day at a place called the Frying Pan. The area is beautiful. It probably took a few hours to get there. We would go there from time to time to look for puff balls. Puff balls are a type of mushroom that is new snow white in color and round with no gills. They are delicious to eat but they also have a counterfeit toad stool that looks nearly exactly the same. I can’t now remember the differences but if you were careful you could tell. And we could always tell. I was searching for the puff balls back in the woods and had found a few. They are usually about one to two inches in diameter and nicely round in shape. I got quite far back into the dense woods when I came upon a monster puff ball. It was bigger than a basketball. I couldn’t believe what I had found. I checked it out and sure enough it seemed to be a puff ball. I picked it up and went back to find my mom and dad. They said that it was a puff ball. Well the Frying Pan was a huge tall fireplace type structure with an opening for fire in the center in which you could cook stuff. I don’t remember cooking that day but we probably did. We took the monster puff ball home and I stored it in the shed with the root cellar. After awhile I got brave and sliced it up to eat. The whole puff ball was over 3 feet in diameter. The slices were too big to fit in our biggest frying pan. I cut them up and cooked them in butter ( I don’t remember quite how I cooked them but it must have been the same as I do now) and ate them. They were as delicious as the small ones. I have never since seen or heard of a puff ball that huge.

Wendy’s Alien

Wendy’s Alien
Jeremy called me up one late night and we decided that we were going to perform a covert cherry mission, so we loaded ourselves in his car and headed off for “Wolf’s” cherry orchard in the dead of night. It was late in the season, so we had a hard time finding anything, loaded up as much of the goods as we could carry in our sweatshirt pockets and headed back out. I was already a little skittish so it sent a shrill pain of anxiety through my stomach when both Jeremy and I stopped and, together stared at the figure holding fast against the trunk of a tree. Arguing in an anxious whisper back and forth, unbelievingly questioning whether the other really saw what each were facing, we described what we were witnessing. Against the cherry tree stood a child sized form with it’s head facing our opposite direction. It’s back clung to the tree with its arms tensely hugging the trunk. As our hearts were beating ferociously, whatever was inside its chest wouldn’t quiet and it’s uncontrollable breathing was the only movement it made. It glowed like white does on a clear night; only it wasn’t as bright, more like a gray. It was all the same light color but giving off a very dark, irk filled presence. As I begged Jeremy to escape into the safety of as far away as we could go, he walked closer. His intention was to kick the thing, just to see what would happen, how it would react. I kept pleading and eventually left on my own. Jumping at every snap of a twig, looking in every direction, all too slowly, I finally made it to his junker of a car that barely ran. I really hoped that it would start this time. I looked around every tire the thing sat on and behind every peeling seat that it encapsulated, rolled up the windows, and locked the doors. The jerk finally showed up and while I hit him significantly, we drove off. He then told me that he only got close enough to see that it’s outfit had seams because it’s subordinates were closing in. I only recall him telling me about one or two more, but they were crawling in on their stomachs trying, like their friend, not to be discovered. I didn’t want to go strait home because, as you know, some dogs follow. We went down to Balfour and waited through a police sobriety checkpoint, and after telling them what we had seen, they still let us go…Morons, it’s amazing they ever catch anyone.  :)  -1996?
Christmas 2000

Broken Bones up the Wahzoo

Broken Bones up the Wahzoo
It was around 7:00 when Emily and I remember we had a Daddy Daughter party over at the Christ’s. We pulled dad from his bed and made him get some trunks, a towel, and the keys to the car. We arrived late, but the fun had just started so all was well. WE had some pool races, balloon toss, and sack races. After all the festivities everyone was waiting for the barbecue. Sharessa Filmore and I decided to go jump on the trampoline. We started doing flips and just jumping. I kept on yelling at dad to, “Watch me, watch me do a back flip!”. Finally I got his attention so I jumped a couple times and threw my weight backwards. Well……I sorta, kinda, over rotated. It sent me flying off the trampoline. The first pains shot through my arm as my wrist slammed against the metal surrounding the trampoline. My closed fist then went head on into the ground followed by my entire body’s weight landing on top of it. I felt horrible and excruciating pain shooting like fire up and down my arm. I pulled my arm out from under my body. IT looked like a theme parks Mr. Joe’s Wild roller coaster. It was insane. I just laid there looking at it. I was baffled. I didn’t know what to do. I then noticed that as I had fallen all sound had disagreed. I was in a void of silence. I strained to hear something, anything. I then heard Dad asking, “Meghan, are you all right, did you get the wind knocked out of you? What’s wrong?”. I then remember taking in a huge breath as it had so happened I had stopped breathing momentarily. I gasped for air as I wailed, “Daddy, daddy, I think I broke my arm!” Think, pah, there was no mistaking, my arm was messed up! Dad ran over to me, picked me up, and ran to the car. He put me in front seat, revved the engine and started to drive away when I reminded him we didn’t have Emily. He slammed on the breaks and yelled for her. She ran into the car and curiously asked,, the party isn’t over why are we lea…..OH MY GOSH!” She stared in horror at my grotesque and deformed arm. Dad drove like a maniac back home. Mabey it was just me because every slight movement made my arm fell like a thousand needles were jabbing into it. We got home and dad ran inside. Everyone came out to stare at my arm. I recall Krista blurting out, “Holy crap it looks like a roller coaster!!! Oh….uhh…….yeah…are you okay? Then Michael started cracking jokes and I started laughing which didn’t set well with me so I threw up out the window. Mom followed by Dad then came rushing out with a glass of water and vanished Motrin. She went to hand me the Motrin and realized she had taken it herself. Astonished she got in the car with dad and we headed for the hospital. They put me in a wheel chair and hurried me into a room. They helped me out of my wet, cold, and very uncomfortable swim suit and into a warm hospital suit. The nurses or whatever came in and I just laid there hearing jumbled sounds come from Mom, Dad, and the nurse of doctor person. I did happen to hear Dad, “I can’t believe this! I’ve broken six arms and I didn’t remember Ice! Ice!”. The nurse person then came up to me with some things and I didn’t pay attention till she was inches away from my arm with a needle/knife thing. I sat up and started panicking. She explained she was only giving me an Iv. I went into hysterics. I thought an Iv was a very long tube they shoved up and into your arm. I didn’t know they just taped it on. One nurse help me down while the other jabbed, no joking, 11 times at my arm trying to get the Iv in. I wanted to beat her! When it was finally in they shot me up with 4 or 5 different drugs and I was sittin’ pretty. I was then wheeled into a room where I was asked to count to 10. I got to 4 and I was out of it. Much later I awoke in a dark room. It had a yellowish tint to it. I looked around and noticed I was having x-rays. All the drugs had worn off, my arm was set, and all the numbness that had dulled the pain of my wrist had disappeared. I cried out in anguish as the nurse moved my arm around taking x-rays. All of my senses where whetted. I felt every single movement and received vast amounts of pain from them. I must have passed out because I then awoke in a bright room with a cast and Wendy next to me with balloons and a stuffed animal. I was brought home that afternoon. The next couple days I just laid in bed happy as a clam floating in and out of dreams with heavy doses of vicadin. After this ordeal I received lots of sympathy, many visits to a gone doctor, and a not so normal looking arm. It was an experience I could have passed up, but hey….What doesn’t kill yah, makes yah stronger!
(Meghan Nielsen, Christmas 2000)
12/22/00

Fishy Food

Matthew’s Memory
or
Fishy Food

Well, I know that I have had a lot of experiences in my life, that isn’t the problem. The problem is being able to elucidate just one. It’s not that picking one specific experience is a difficult task in and of itself, but that through the years all the individual experiences have somehow run together to make one big memory; a memory that really makes up who I am. For example I have a memory of camping, a memory of hiking, a memory of home, a memory of friends and family and so on and so on. But if you were to ask me about one specific camping story, one hiking story, one whatever story I might not be able to pull up the specific file in which the memory was stored. So it would be easier to just fill up a page with things I remember doing year after year after year until they became ingrained on my memory as a generic experience but I prefer not to. Instead I will rack my brain and try to remember one of those elusive memories of an actual one-time experience. So here we go.
The memory takes place in the not too distant past at Red’s Meadow, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near the California-Nevada border. I’m sure you all know the place. It started one morning very early, at the crack of dawn to be more precise, well maybe before dawn because of that big old mountain that blocks the sun till about 10:00 or so. Anyway, it was before anyone else was awake, all the tribe members were slumbering soundly. I was among those happily oblivious slumberers until the tribal chief (read Dad) came to my tent or whatever it was I was sleeping in (I told you I am not very good with memories) and asked me if I wanted to go fishing to acquire sustenance for the entire tribe. I said that I did and so the two of us left. We went out of camp and crossed the great road to the path that leads through the woods. We walked along the path where the barbed-wire fence is off to the left, you know the one where Joseph got his shin scar. Then we crossed the log bridges and soon we came upon the quasi-secret sapling that marks the depart-from-the-trail-point leading to the quasi-secret path that’s leads to the quasi-secret swimming hole. Then we began fishing on the river. It was a beautiful high sierra summer morning, the clouds were white the sky a bright blue, the sun was yellow and the evergreens were well you guessed it, green. We did pretty well that morning catching about 9 fish, actually I remember that we caught exactly nine, including a 14 and a half and 15 inch fish; and that is pretty big for a mountain stream in that area. Actually it is the biggest fish that I have ever caught up there but now I am just rambling so let’s get back to the story. The fishes didn’t come easily however, especially the 15 inch one that Dad caught, oh, it fought all the way in. For all three grueling feet and 3 long seconds of the fight between man and beast the water was roiling as the fearsome fish struggled for its life. If you couldn’t tell I am being sarcastic; that fish came very easily, Dad just dropped his line in a hole near the bank under a overhanging tree and presto, a second or two later there was one more dead fish. Not all nine, however, came so easily and despite our superior skill there were a few snags and even a lost lure if I remember correctly. All early morning we roamed up the river in search of our elusive prey, well I guess that it wasn’t too elusive because we did get nine of the moronic beasts to fall for our ruse of fluorescent power bait, flies and lures. We walked upstream pretty much until it became difficult to go any further. The stream takes a right turn as a small white waterfall comes cascading down slippery black rocks and adds its water to that of the great river. At that point the trees on one side make access to the river difficult and the cliff from which the small waterfall springs makes it impossible so we turned back, fishing all the way down to the swimming hole. We then followed our secret path back to camp and found signs of stirring so the chief began to cook the newly dead fish for the whole tribe. Our quest for food was over and the tribe members were happy, and soon began to find various ways to expend the energy received from the sumptuous repast.
I know I could have related any number of other experiences but this one is the one I remembered this time and is somewhat representative of all the great times we had and memories we made at Red’s Meadow. I suppose that since this will be a recurring assignment I’ll leave the rest of the memories for another time. I know you can hardly wait for next Christmas so you can hear about another great Nielsen adventure.

Camp Trips

Okay, I’m at the age and state of mind where my memories are getting garbled up - so instead of one memory I’m going to remember camp trip experiences in general and not just one specific trip.
The famous words of dad, “I know exactly where we are” needs to be remembered throughout family history as the longest hike we took as a family. I asked dad if we could hike back to camp down the other side of the mountain. Joseph said that he didn’t think we could get back that way and that’s when dad said, “I know exactly where we are.” He didn’t and we arrived back in camp around midnight, as I remember, where Wendy had spent the day tending the current baby (I believe it was Meghan at this time) and had chili waiting for us…….and it was still hot (the ending to the story of Where the Wild Things Are which is appropriate whem talking about our memories in a family of 14.
On this hike, I remember Krista and Amy. They were little tykes and it got to a point where they were falling asleep on their feet as they were walking. It must have been miserable for all of us at the end but now, I only remember the adventure of it all and the closeness and excitement of all of us in this together and the fact that we survived!!!! And I’m thinking that the trials we face in this life will be very much the same as we remember them in the next. We won’t remember the pain and it will bond us even closer because of the shared experience.
I remember the camping trip in October (after Michael was in wrestling and before the girls started playing high school volleyball.) After the initial disappointment that the showers and the Red’s Meadow campsites were closed we discovered that this upper camp site was beautiful as well. I remember the warmth of the days and the beautiful colored leaves. I wanted to hike to Thousand Island lake. It was right before Matthew’s mission and he wanted to see the lake and make the hike but we had Krista with us, so we had to turn around early. ? But we made it to the top of a ridge and saw this beautiful vista. By the time we made it to Thousand Island Lake on another camping trip (without Krista), Matthew was on his mission but I thought of him and wished he were with us. I dropped my jacket on that trip and Joseph kindly hiked back about a mile to get it for me. The entire hike was about 20 miles and I remember some lame ranger telling us we could hike it (with little children) in about 6 hours - IN YOUR DREAMS!
One of my favorite camp experiences of ALL TIME was experiencing a great dream - the kind with those great yearning feelings - actually happen. I had dreamed once that I was in Yosemite and it started to rain. Suddenly water started cascading in waterfalls off of the granite domes. I looked closely at the cracks and errosion on these huge granite cliffs and saw that they were made from the water when it rained - It was a cool dream and one I often thought about after. I mean they were the normal granite cliffs and then they became covered with gushing waterfalls. Besides being a great dream - it was a beautiful one. Well…….On the way home from this camp trip, we were driving through Yosemite when it started pouring down rain - cats & dogs worth. Amazing to me was that the water started cascading off of the granite domes in waterfalls just like in my dream. Exactly like in my dream! And although it was totally beautiful and exciting - the fact that I’d dreamed it first made it a weird, eery, exciting event that I always want to remember.
Mom, right after my dream became real
Dad, Matthew & Emily - right after my dream became real.

Notice the fishing pole?
Your dad loves to fish and although we were on a hike to see the falls - your dad is always hoping for a fishing moment - and is prepared. I’m so happy that he got to experience fishing in Alaska! ?
One camp trip, Matthew & Krista were in great humorous form. I laughed so hard at the Carl’s Jr. restaurant in Mammoth that I thought I was going to choke on my food and die. Tears were running down my cheeks - I was laughing so hard. I don’t remember specifics but in general it was the worst food we’d ever eaten. I asked for a knife to cut a burger in half and they gave me this huge cleaver-type. Matthew and Krista started joking about having a weapon so now we could rob the place. Their jokes were hilarious and I was laughing really really hard when I tried to actually cut the burger in half. I couldn’t figure out why it was so hard to cut the burger in half and pressed on the knife even harder. Turns out that Whitney had reached under the hamburger somehow, trying to reach for some French fries, (who does that anyway?) ha ha while I was trying to cut the hamburger in two. The knife had cut through the hamburger and was pressing into the back of her hand. I don’t know how she feels about the “time when mom tried to cut her hand off” but the situation at the time it made all of us laugh all the harder - the lack of thought in her sticking her hand underneath a knife and part out of relief that she didn’t get hurt very much. The food was lousy and we took what we couldn’t eat back to camp joking that if we fed it to this bear that had been raiding our camp each night that the nasty food would scare the bear away for good. One night the bear had crawled into the back of out pick-up truck and had bit through our dish detergent….so if that didn’t drive him off……… But anyway, we joked that the food would get rid of him for sure. We left the food by this garbage dumpster near our camp and in the morning the food was gone and it was funny because we truly never did see the bear again. So we made up a commercial about Carl’s Jr. being so bad that it’ll scare bears away. “Try a Carl’s Jr. Value Meal. It’ll eliminate all your bear worries………”
Wendy and Meghan at Red’s Meadow:

Our first trip to Red’s Meadow

The trip our car broke down & Saddlebag was closed.
Dad Aaron and Matthew on top of Conness. Michael is taking the picture. The bottom picture is about the time that dad, Aaron, Matthew & Michael were climbing Conness when Matthew fell through the snow into a lake and got scared to death cause he thought he was about to meet his doom. Aaron & Michael are reenacting Matthew’s experience for the photograph.
Below is our first trip to hot creek when I was afraid that we were all going to get arsenic or cyanide poisoning because of the government’s warning signs all over.

… and how we always stop at this vista to look at the view cause it’s so worth seeing again and again.
And a memory that should be forever a part of our family history is how Meghan climbed North Peak all by herself when she was only 3 ½ years-old. And I couldn’t find the pictures of her climbing up so instead is a picture of Joseph on the top of North Peak and a picture of Emily (at another time) who is all sunburned from another climb up North peak when she was carried along.

 









The Swimming Hole
 

And the swimming hole!
What memories!
What a place!
I think I spent most of my time Worrying that someone was going To get hurt … But I guess that’s what mothers do. Most of you have jumped from these rocks but it’s Matthew jumping in This picture ?

 

Broken in Utah

Broken in Utah

1987, the year I was the big F.I.V.E. Our family headed out for our grandmother’s house located in the the great (yeah right) state of Utah. We had been traveling for what seemed like weeks when we all decided that we were hungry. I the adventurous kid that I was moseyed off to explore. I soon found a huge pasture filled with enormous horses inside; as a child I was obsessed with horses, I loved them, I dreamed about them, but OK whatever, back to the memory. Aaron with his michevious mind soon came up with the idea that I should jump on the vicious beast, and if I did I would be rewarded with candy...mmmmm, worth it right, no. Me being niave did it. :) Right away the horse decided it liked the apples my brothers were feeding him instead of a little psycho on its back. So in turn the retarded horse started going buck wild, trying to throw me off...well it succeeded within in seconds, but seemed like hours. As I was falling in a sort of dreamy haze to the welcoming evil concrete ground I was thinking, “Man, this is really going to hurt.”....which it did. CRISUNCH!!!!!!!!!! was the sound I think it made as I fell on my right precious arm...yes, the arm I write with, yes, the arm I eat with, yes, even the same arm I played Barbie dolls with, that punk of horse. I had broken my arm. As I laid there I was thinking, “Hmmm, well this really bites.” For some reason or other looked up, I don’t know why, maybe it was the vibrations of an evil horse coming to trample the life out of me....ahh, yes that was it. :) So there I see the massive beast coming to trample the life out of me, yes sweet little me. So I get up like a babe deer that had just been born, all retarded like, do to the fact that I only had one good arm left. So I’m up, I wobble my confused little self out of the pasture and to my parent’s. Of course they totally wigged out, cause there favorite child had been wounded. :) They bolted to the hospital. There the evil doctors took me from my loving parent’s. I was terrified, I had no idea what they were going to do to me. All of a sudden CRACK!!!!!!!! they had just Set my arm without any pain killers involved those idiots! :) Then I guess we chilled at grandma’s house. That has to be one of the most painful, but funny memories.

THE END

David’s Memory

David’s Memory 

I was the first one to make it to the top of North Peak. And then when we first went to saddlebag, I climbed the mountain by the lake when I was 14. A year later, I climbed the mountain again. I also climbed a mountain in Red’s Meadow when I was 17. I feel good when I’m up high on mountains, very good. I like looking down to the ground from way far up and it’s really neat up there. I like high altitudes. I would like looking down from the top of Mt. Everest. I like flying in airplanes. I love flying in airplanes. I like getting high scores on video games. I like high speed, high scores and high altitude. I like high numbers. I like to go to the library and look at books that have lots of pages in them. I like looking at the big numbers. When I was younger, I used to like writing numbers. I wrote numbers up to beyond 200,000. I know a faster way to write numbers. I can get beyond 200,000 like anytime I wish by writing how many squares there are. Say if there’s one square there - there’s 1 square and if there’s 2 squares by 4 squares that’s 4 squares and if you add 1 square to it that’s 5 squares and 3 squares seems to be 9 squares but it’s really 14 squares. That way I can get beyond 200,000 anytime I want and it’s lots and lots and lots faster and it doesn’t waste3 as much time as only writing by ones. I’ve gotten as high as I know how many squares there are. I’ve gotten to 10,000 X 10,000 squares which is 333 billion 383 million 335 thousand…..and so on. (David was doing all of this amazing math in his head while he was dictating this to me. Perhaps “squares” are a concept of mathmatics that’s understood out there in the world and perhaps not. But David understands it). I like speedometers and I like looking at speedometers. I especially like speedometers with high speeds on them.

 

Christmas 2000

A 38-Mile Jaunt

A 38-Mile Jaunt

4:00AM and there I was in the darkness of the early morning standing in the rain. It was more just a drizzle now but it was enough to soak me through…
I’d always wanted to see Alaska and now I was there spending a whole summer exploring, camping and hiking in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Skagway is a little town of around five hundred people right on the ocean surrounded by five thousand foot mountains on its three other sides, a quick five minuet walk and you were out of town. I couldn’t get tired of climbing through the dense rain forests thick with trees and ferns and moss covered rocks up toward the icy peeks well above the tree line. I’d hiked every trail on the map except one and here I was at the trailhead at four in the morning. “It’s been done before…it’s possible,” I kept telling myself to suppress the realization that the furthest I’d ever hiked in one day was around twenty miles. We started out jogging in our heavy wet clothes to get some distance behind us as neither one of us knew how long this would really take. Most of the hikers on the Chilkoot took three to five days to finish the hike we had until 6:00 that evening to catch a ride home on some highway across the border into Canada. It was cold and the sun wouldn’t be up for around a half an hour… It was amazing to have so much light. The sun would hang in the sky nearly the full day. Toward the summer solstice it would be dusk around one in the morning and then the sun would start to rise again by three. I found I didn’t sleep much using all the daylight hours for exploring. I could get a good hike in before work just after sun up and a good one at night even when I got off late.
The first sixteen miles when by quick we only stopped for a few powerbar or picture breaks and once in the middle of a patch of fat blue berries for an unexpected snack. We were only a half a mile from the pass but it was a beast. It’s known as the golden staircase a half a mile seemingly straight up, the Chilkoot was a famous Klondike gold rush trail thus the name. We passed some Swiss hikers toward the top of the pass around nine o’clock adding them to the dozens of others we’d passed to be the first ones over the pass that day. We were feeling good but knew we weren’t half way yet. The pass was also the Canadian border. As we dropped down into Canada the weather went south. It had cleared up and we’d even dried out but now we were getting wet again and this time in the snow. We nearly walked into a lake the visibility was so bad, even with the snow we only got cold when we’d stop to eat something. After a few more miles we hiked down out of the rotten weather. The terrain was amazingly different on the other side of the pass. The thick forests were all gone and it was a rocky desert with a few trees here and there. There were amazing lichens growing all over the rocks in all sorts of colors. After about fourteen more miles the trees began to thicken up and we left the trail and followed some railroad tracks for the last eight miles of our journey. With our sore feet the railroad tracks were a pain but I couldn’t slow down knowing the end was so close. I collapsed at the end of our trip and lie there on the ground waiting for my friend to catch up. Twelve hours and forty minuets after I’d started there I was somewhere in Canada lying exhausted on the ground in a gravel parking lot waiting for a ride home. As soon as I cooled down from the hike I began to shiver but I didn’t have enough energy to move around to warm up so I just lied there and waited. Some other hikers found us and gave us some hot chocolate, which saved us. I think I was in shock. Thirty-eight miles in twelve hours, that’s definitely the most I’ve ever hiked in one day and something I’m sure I’ll try to beat one of these day’s if I get the chance. Other than my feet swelling up the next day I felt fine. I was expecting to be sore but I was good enough to do another hike that night.
~Aaron 2000