By Cheryl Calvert, with David Anderson
“They’re gonna tell us ‘no’ until we’re 30!”
I was trying to allay the fears of my best bud Annette that climbing The Ridge as two 14-year-old girls over our parents’ likely objections – should we even ask – was not risky.
Mostly not risky.
“The rattlesnakes will let us know when we’re too close! That’s what their rattles are for!”
Adventures with Annette had been many and memorable already.
Born July 5, Annette was fondly referred to by her mother as “my little late firecracker.”
She was a little firecracker. And the two of us together? We were the fireworks, the sparklers, the whole shootin’ match all at once.
It wasn’t long before ‘Annette’ became ‘Nettie-Pie’ and me ‘Cherie-Pie,’ and we finally settled on ‘Nee-Pie’ and ‘Che-Pie.’
Like my granddaughter now these many years later for whom gardening is part planting in the dirt, part eating the dirt, there was the time in the muddy river bottom when I swiped Nee-Pie with a handful of silt and received the same in response.
It wasn’t long until we were caked with mud – mud in our hair, our eyes barely visible in our mud-smeared face, our bathing suits obscured in the mud.
It took a rinse in the rapids to come clean.
Mostly clean.
I know ‘clean’ did not describe my bedroom. Maybe Nee-Pie’s bedroom but not mine.
‘You must be clean out of your mind!’ had to be what Nee-Pie was thinking when she stood there the first time looking at my bedroom walls. Not frilly stuff, or a girl’s teenage boyfriend fantasy, or however ‘normal’ girls decorated their rooms of which I had no idea.
On my walls I had a shotgun, a rifle, bows and arrows and my coon skin hat (shot that cute little critter all by myself and helped tan ‘em too).
Mostly weapons on my walls.
But rabbit pelts too.
I’d ride on the hood of the truck as it was driven along the dirt country road and blast away with my 410 shotgun, the light kicking action not enough to knock my slight frame (I’m all of five-foot-two) off the truck as we bounced along, rabbits hopping, shotgun blasting, me reloading.
Most fun I’d had maybe until Nee-Pie and I climbed The Ridge.
The Ridge is hand-over-hand – “listen for the rattles!” – steep, but we made it. And to commemorate the occasion we wrote the date and our names and placed that note under a rock.
“C-H-E-R-Y-L!”
“A-N-N-E-T-T-E!”
Wide-eyed with horror we looked at one another and then in the direction from which we heard our names hollered.
Far below, standing in the bed of my dad’s dump truck, was my mom. And, by the sound of her voice, she was concerned.
Mostly concerned.
Maybe worried too since they were heading for the river.
There are two ways down from The Ridge.
The way we had come up, which was the slower route, boulder by boulder, or the quicker route, through the thickets and the trees, faster, but the one that tears at your clothes and scratches your face.
With no time to listen for rattles, we jumped.
And landed against a tree. And jumped again for another tree and so down we went, scratched and bleeding.
Following the power lines for Nee-Pie and me was the straightest shot home and since dad was following the winding river road, my mom’s voice fading in the distance we thought we could make it.
We did. We won.
Mostly.
Practicing our lines as we lay in the hammock – “we’ve been here the whole time!” – was met with a knowing look, a stern grimace and crossed arms.
The give-away might have been our disheveled appearance.
Then the day came when my mom came into my room and sat with me on the bed and held me as I cried.
Nie-Pie had died in a motorcycle accident.
She was two weeks shy of her 16th birthday.
I would reclimb The Ridge and look for the note we’d left.
I never did find the note.
But I did find something there on the top of The Ridge.
I found a memory of a friend who like me believed that normal was a code word for boring.
I had found a friend who shared with me the best time of my life growing up.
I had found a friend who loved life and who helped me add another ‘R’ to mine: rabbits, raccoons, The Ridge, and rattlesnakes.
Having lived almost five decades past those events, I now add another R-word, reminding me of what a precious treasure and gift was Nee-Pie to me:
Rare.
