I'm a new author, and this is my first submission. So I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know if you'd like more.
*****
Ryan grew up in Boston. He took his first steps on concrete under an ash-colored sky.
"I never realized... how could I?" he would say in later years. "Not until I flew west..." Ryan was normally articulate, but he could never seem to finish his sentences when speaking of this.
A mini-bus, bannered with "Orientation Week," picked him up at the airport. He and four other freshmen climbed aboard. But the university was not the first stop. The driver took them to Spencer Butte, commanding an aerial view of the Emerald Valley and Eugene.
"Get out and take a look," he said. "This is your new home."
"I was born in that moment," Ryan would say. "It was like..." but that was another sentence he never finished.
He saw colors he had never imagined before. He heard the wind through the trees, a totally unknown music, yet somehow familiar. He gazed out at the Coburn Hills, sensed somehow the vast Cascade Mountains beyond, and thought,
"So it was you... all along..."
A wisp of verse rolled off his lips.
.
"O Wind from the West, blow high, blow low.
You come from the country I loved long ago."
.
Then and there, the city boy faded into a dream, and a spirit of the hills and forests was born.
He bought an old, beat-up car, the only kind he could afford, and spent most of Orientation Week driving out to the mountains - just state parks and campgrounds at first. He didn't know how to find the really good roads yet, the ones that aren't on any maps. His camping gear was a blanket, a jacket, and a cooler full of hot dogs. It took him several outings just to learn how to start a fire and keep it going. This, and many other things, he learned gradually and patiently.
He had a piece of luck in his second term: the older brother of a roommate was a forestry major.
Nick was in his last semester (plus one summer term) at U of O, already on his way out - bored and sinking beneath the waves of senioritis. It was his weekend job, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, to man a fire lookout tower some miles east of the campus at Gold Peak Summit. Nick was eager for company, and he happily brought Ryan with him into the mountains.
Five weekends in a row, Ryan manned the lookout tower, learned the ropes, and did more of the observation work (little as that was) than Nick did. On the fifth weekend, Nick hinted hopefully that if Ryan wanted the place all to himself on the following weekend, he was welcome to it.
"Our little secret," he said.
He ought to have waited one more week, of course. The Fourth of July is the most dangerous of all weekends for fires. But by this time, Nick had given up caring at all. He had no intention now of ever making a career in forestry; and if his superiors should find out somehow that he had sloughed off his post to someone else, if they should bust him for it - well, he supposed he didn't give a damn.
Ryan, for his part, was delighted to be rid of the bored and blasé Nick, and he accepted the offer with alacrity.
It was hard for Ryan to contain his excitement that week and keep his mind on his job. He was not taking classes that summer. He was working a summer job to save up enough green for the fall semester. The job was at Cascade Sportsman. Now that Ryan was buying backpacks, gear bags, hiking boots, rain jackets, sleeping bags, and much more besides, he couldn't afford to work anywhere else! Cascade gave him an employee discount.
On Thursday afternoon, he was hanging a shipment of hip-waders on a display rack when the lovely Jeanette St. Geneviève strolled in the front door.
It was Ryan's job to greet the customer at the door and ask how he could help. Busy as he was though, and with his mind far away on Gold Peak, he missed the jingle of the door and did not notice Jeanette standing there.
But she noticed him.
A handsome lad with thick, black hair. He threw the floppy, rubbery waders on the rack absently while his eyes were far away. She found herself watching him. He moved with a kind of wistful, boyish grace. While one hand dealt out the hip-waders like playing cards, the other cradled the weighty shipping carton with easy strength.
When he had emptied the box, he returned to the here and now. He studied the arrangement of waders, shook his head, and began trying to rearrange them.
He's trying to make them look attractive, thought Jeanette. A sense of design. I like that.
She could have told him that the effort was foredoomed. The blackish-green, rubbery mess was never going to look like anything but a mess. But she was enjoying the show too much to interrupt.
After a couple failures, (the sloppy pile on the rack looked even worse than before,) Ryan cast aside the box, took two steps back, and surveyed the situation from a bit more distance.
Now he gets mad and kicks the box, thought Jeanette. But after a few moments of setting his head this way and that, Ryan seemed to spot the joke. He put his hands on his hips and laughed at himself, rocking back on his heels!
A sense of humor, thought Jeanette. Doesn't take himself too seriously. I like that too. She found herself advancing a few paces.
"Excuse me, please," she sang out. There was an extra lilt in her voice and spring in her step. These she saved for special occasions. She was nine tenths of the way to being hooked now, and she knew it.
"I beg your pardon, Miss," said Ryan, swinging around. "How can I..." His breath failed him when he saw her.
Green eyes, Jeanette noticed. There was the other tenth.
"...help you?" finished Ryan at last. He gave her his most pleasant and confident smile. Really blew it for a moment there, he thought to himself. But... Such a girl!
She had radiant auburn hair and eyes a bewitching smoky gray. She was dressed as a runner, and was she ever built for it! The black and pink shorts and tank-top traced perfect feminine curves from her shoulders to her knees.
"I just got these new running shoes," said Jeanette, pointing down and giving Ryan an opportunity for a head-to-toe inspection. "I'm looking for arch-support, athletic insoles - speed laces too, if you have them."
"I'm sorry, Miss..."
"Jeanette."
"Ryan." He held out a hand, and she took it with pleasure. "I'm afraid we're not that kind of store."
"But, I thought..."
"I know. The name. It happens a lot. I wish they'd change the name to 'Cascade Outdoor Sportsman' or 'Cascade Hunting, Camping, & Fishing' - something like that."
"Ah."
"Let me think now," said Ryan, stroking his chin and studying her shoes again. Those legs! "Have you tried Coliseum Sports or Decathlon? They're both on Washington here." Time to make eye contact again, and for God's sake, don't stare at those!
.
(Her well-rounded bosom shone
Soft and fair as the mountain-snow;
Her two breasts were heaving full;
