Ranger

I remember the taste of that water, iron and cold stone.

The old station at the junction was a place that a handful of locals remembered, men and women who had hiked the district in the 80s and early 90s.

It was not a place that a kid from Boise would have known about unless he had actually been there.

And if he had actually been there and remembered the pump, then what he said was true and normal.

But he said something else a minute later, still talking about the old station.

He said, "'That guy who ran it, gruff old guy, used to sit on the porch with his dog.

The old station at the junction did not have a permanent ranger.

It was a patrol stop.

It had a logbook and emergency supplies and the pump, and rangers from our district would rotate through it on summer foot patrols and sign the log.'

There was no resident ranger.

There was no old guy on the porch.

There was no dog.

I didn't correct him.

I kept eating my stew.

He could have been confusing it with another station.

People do that.

Memory is unreliable.

Maybe he was thinking of a different place and had layered the memory onto the wrong building.

That was possible.

But combined with the first two things, it wasn't sitting right with me.