Anna and Abby's Accidental Adventure

I'm no damsel. I usually keep my head in stressful situations. I may be in distress, but I'm not the kind of woman who needs a knight in shining armor to come to her rescue. I prefer to take care of things myself.

So when the nasty red oil pressure warning light came on while I was on a dirt road in the middle of the Olympics, I did not panic. Calmly, I pulled the car over to the side of the road, turned off the engine, and made a plan. Abby and I had been intending on doing a day hike up the Duckabush River, but clearly, Edgar the Mighty Volvo was not going to make it to the trailhead. When we got out of the car to check the engine, we noticed a large pool of oil on the road leading to my car. I'd bottomed out on a hidden pothole, tearing a hole in my oil pan. Thank goodness I'd pulled over.

I knew exactly what to do. We had to get to Camp Parsons.

I was a Boy Scout camp counselor in college at Camp Parsons, the oldest Boy Scout camp west of the Mississippi. It is a place of tradition and history. Once a Parsons counselor, always a Parsons counselor. And even though I had not set foot on camp property for five years, I knew there would be someone there to help. It was an adult work party weekend, and my dad would be around, as well as other current and former staffers who could help get my car out of the Olympics.

Abby and I flagged a passing car down. The woman inside had been walking her dogs on the Duckabush trail, and needed to go back to her house and get a larger truck in order to transport both of us to camp. We started walking down the road, stopping to glare at the offending pothole. Eventually the woman, Cathy, came back with her truck. She told us that she'd once been stuck 30 miles away from the nearest town in the Alaskan interior, and was happy to help a pair of stranded hikers out. Her dog, a beautiful white long-haired dog named Handsome, sniffed us inquisitively, barking as we got in.

"Your dog is lovely. What kind of dog is that?" Abby asked. As the smaller of the two, she got in the back of the truck. I perched up front to give directions if necessary.

"Oh, he's a wolf," Cathy responded. Abby and I looked at each other, incredulous.

"A WHAT?" I yelped.

"He's a Siberian wolf," Cathy said nonchalantly. Abby warily eyed what we thought had been a big white fluffy dog in the seat next to her.

"He's real friendly," Cathy said. And true, he was.

We got to camp, found Dad, and ate lunch. At lunch, Jim, an older volunteer and Brinnon resident, offered to help us get the car. We called Triple A, explained where the car was, and off we went. Two hours later, we brought Edgar the Mighty Volvo into camp, leaving him next to the ranger's house.

We figured that Keith, who was on Camp Parsons staff with my dad in the 1970s, might know how to get a used oil pan. Now working as a long haul trucker, Keith had been a Volvo mechanic for quite a while. I called him up, and serendipitously, he had a Bellingham, WA phone book in his truck.

"Call this guy. Rainbow Larry. He's good, and he'll have what you're looking for," Keith said. Wait a minute. First, I pet a wolf. And now, Keith was telling me to call a guy named Rainbow Larry? I scratched my head and wrote down the number. I called it, and sure enough, got the answering machine for one "Rainbow Larry's Auto Service" in Bellingham. I left a message explaining what I was looking for.

Since he basically knew everyone in Brinnon and Quilcene, Jim decided to take Abby and me to try to find somebody to fix the car. Knowing very little about cars, I figured that all I needed was an oil pan and a person to put it on. Easy, right? We climbed into Jim's car with Spike, his dog, in search of Andy the Hawaiian mechanic. I didn't know much about this Andy character, except that Jim trusted him, that he was good with cars, and that we couldn't call him on his phone.

Jim explained to me how a rural economy works. Instead of using money, people in Brinnon and Quilcene tend to use a trade and barter system. Instead of calling someone on the phone, it was always, always better to drop in and chat first.

We drove up and over Mt. Walker, marveling at the lush green forest and high mountains of the Olympic Peninsula. Jim pulled into the first driveway in Quilcene, only to find a closed gate.

"Well," he said, "this is the rural way of saying 'do not disturb." So we pulled into the drive-through coffee shop to ask the girl behind the counter if she knew where Andy the Hawaiian mechanic would be hanging out at 4 PM on a Saturday. She had no idea who we were talking about.

So we drove back to camp. While we were gone, the guys had tried to use jacks to put Edgar up on blocks. But the jacks were too tall. So two of the biggest guys in camp crawled under my Volvo and lifted it up to put it on the blocks. If that's not impressive, I don't know what is. I knew that if I got to camp, and if I got my car to camp, we'd figure something out.

Abby and I spent a wonderful evening hanging out in the common room of the Health Lodge, drinking beer and conversing with current and former Parsons staffers. My Parsons friendships are pretty special. It's the closest I'll ever get to being in a fraternity. No matter where I am and who I am, I will always be a Parsons staffer -- part of a brotherhood that spans generations. We laughed, we swore, and we shared camp stories.

The next day, Abby and I decided to take my dad's van up to the Mt. Townsend trailhead, since he was not planning on leaving camp until the mid-afternoon. We couldn't reach the top of Townsend due to deep snow at 5000 feet, but had a nice hike nevertheless. We passed many creeks and waterfalls on the way, eating lunch in a cool, foggy meadow.

While we were gone, the guys fashioned a patch out of J B Weld (special epoxy glue that is heat resistant) and metal. They put it over the hole in the oil pan, waited for it to dry, and filled my car with oil. Edgar started up right away. I'd done the right thing when I pulled over, and had saved my engine. Phew.

We made it home around 9 PM on Sunday night, tired, exhausted, and feeling like we'd had years of living in the last two days. My friends back home, whom I'd been texting updates to, sent me 'glad you're home safe' text messages.

But see, I knew we'd end up just fine. In what could have been an extremely stressful situation, I kept my head. I knew exactly what to do. I called on the 'grace under pressure' I learned to use when I was a Parsons counselor. I'm no damsel. I knew exactly what to do. I got in a car with a wolf, called a guy named Rainbow Larry, went with Jim in search of Andy the Hawaiian mechanic in Quilcene while two burly dudes lifted my car up on blocks, and drove home with a fancy Boy Scout fix holding my oil pan together.

Oh, and did I mention that I woke up with mouse poop next to my head and did not scream?

The God I believe in has a way of nudging me towards the place where I need to be. Or, in this case, tearing a hole in my oil pan. I think I needed to be at Camp Parsons this weekend. I needed to walk the trails of a place I know so well that its map is written in my bones. I needed to go to the end of the pier, breathe the fresh, salty air, and remember a time when I wore a troop's flag while jumping off the pier to start the canoe race. I was nineteen. One hundred Scouts were chanting my name. I felt like I was on top of the world.

Slipping back into my Camp Parsons self was so easy. I could reassure my friends back home that yes, I would get home safe -- to trust me, I will be fine. I hadn't felt so certain of my own well-being for months. Perhaps for years. But when faced with the adversity of being stuck four miles up a rural mountain road, I knew that Abby and I were going to get out. I knew that we'd get home. And I knew, too, that I'd finish my finals, finish out the rough year, and start my summer with confidence, grace, and the knowledge that I can, in fact, do anything.

All I needed were some Boy Scouts, laughter, beer, and someone to "duct tape" my car with some J B Weld.