That Wonderful Monday

We ended that wonderful, 1993 October Conference Weekend by going to Woods Canyon Lake on Monday, sailing.

Moe had a sailboat, a REAL sailboat, and he towed it up to Kohl's Ranch behind his truck. There wasn't any spot where he could fit both his truck and the boat trailer in the parking lot, so he unhooked the boat and pulled it into a parking space of it's own.

Monday morning the kids were up early, excited about the coming day. We ate breakfast together in the hotel's cafeteria, then Moe went back to his room to grab his stuff, and the girls and I went back to our room to get ours. Russell and Stephen begged to help Moe hook up the trailer, so he told them to meet him by the truck in a couple of minutes.

Perhaps the boys thought they were stronger than they were. Maybe they thought the boat was lighter. One way or the other, they rushed outside and decided to pull the trailer over behind Moe's truck so it would be easier for him to hook it on. He came outside a few minutes later just in time to see the boys struggling to hold onto the trailer before they lost their grasp and it started slowly rolling backwards, down the steeply sloping parking lot.

By the time the girls and I got outside Moe had everything in control, the trailer caught and hooked onto his truck, but he was still a little green, and although he chuckled as he told me the story, his laugh was a little bit shaky.

Woods Canyon Lake was delightful that autumn day. We had a picnic along the shore, we rode in the sailboat (although there wasn't much wind so we didn't go very fast), and we laughed and played.

“If we left now,” I told Moe and the kids early in the afternoon after a couple of hours on the lake, “we'd still have time to drive by the cabin and show Moe where it is.”

I had all been telling Moe about the cabin for a long time now, and I kind of wanted to show it off. Moe had had a cabin of his own, up on Blue Ridge Reservoir on the other side of Payson, and he had loved it. We were all sure if he saw our cabin he would think it was wonderful, too.

“OK,” the kids agreed easily. They loved any excuse to go to the cabin, just the same as me.

Pulling the sailboat out of the lake turned out to be a bigger job than sliding it in, but we all helped as much as we knew how. We just didn't know much.

“Hold this cable,” Moe instructed Russell as he worked on pulling the boat out of the water. “Gale, you stand over there and guide the boat up, girls, you stand here,” and Moe began winching the boat up onto the trailer.

Suddenly, the huge mast which held up the sails fell down, crashing into place instead of slowly being lowered the way it was designed to come down. We never could figure out exactly what happened, but we were sure glad no one was badly hurt, although the cable Russell held wrapped around his wrist and left a scar he's carried for the rest of his life.

That kind of sobered us up, but Russell was a trooper and didn't complain even though his arm hurt. We quickly finished loading the sailboat, then drove down the rim to Colcord Trail and the turn off to the cabin, where Moe left his truck and boat and climbed into the van with us. As we drove towards the cabin we told him all the old stories: how Dad had bought it when I was two, how I'd broken my arm when I was seven, about each of us catching our first fish, about the creek and the swimming holes and the Indian Ruins, and how much we loved that place. By the time we got there, I think Moe was beginning to understand just what that cabin meant to me, and to my children. I was a little worried what he would think of itm after all, our cabin was not a summer home or a resort spot. It was just a tiny little cottage nestled on top of a ponderosa covered hill, between a rough,winding dirt road and a clear, cold, tumbling creek.

Maybe it was because of our stories, maybe he was just being nice, but when we drove up and parked the van outside the gate, (I hadn't thought about bringing the keys with me this trip) and the kids jumped out and crawled through, Moe took my hand and stood next to me, looking at the cabin and the scenery behind it.

“This is beautiful, Gale,” he told me quietly, squeezing my hand. “It's just exactly like the kind of place I've always wanted to have. Secluded, quiet, far from everything. Listen to the quiet.”

I listened, but what I heard were my children; laughing and giggling as they ran around the cabin, coaxing us to follow them over the fence so they could show Moe Grandma and Grandpa Russell's cabin down below the hill, and the creek and the swings and the blackberry patch and the tree house and the outhouse and all the other wonderful things that made up the cabin. Still, I knew exactly what he was talking about. There was a peace, a stillness, an amazing quiet here at the cabin that you couldn't find anywhere else. It was home, my happy place, and now I was here with the man I had decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life, and eternity, with. And he loved it. And I was happy.