It was almost nine when rswfire got back from the shower, later than he wanted, and he said so out loud — the sun was coming up later now, and the whole sequence had to slide with it. The rangers should have been there by 8:30. They weren't. The gate was still closed, the light still on. He had a theory about that, and he offered it to the camera: they stage out of Umpqua first, all of them together, ranger donuts or whatever, and then they drive down. Until they arrived he could not get into the workshop, and until he got into the workshop he could not get the golf cart, and until he had the cart the day could not properly begin. So he narrated the protocol instead — shower around eight, walk to the lake, check the day-use area, be back by the time they showed. Establishing a routine. He said the cart rounds were part of morning protocol, very important, and then said it had nothing to do with having fun in a golf cart. He promised.
The walk to the lake took him past the dump station toward a trail he was still learning — he noted where the sightlines break, where nobody could see him vaping, that there was a bridge somewhere ahead and a bench up another trail. Somewhere along the way he crossed a park ranger, the same one from the day before, the one he said he liked, and she was pulling a log out of the lake. He helped. The logs were heavy, heavier than expected, probably not good for his core muscles, and by the end of it he was filthy — absolutely dirty, he said, holding it up to the lens, good thing laundry was on the list anyway. They talked for a minute. That was the whole exchange.
At the water the ducks came into frame and he asked if he could feed them. She hesitated. He gave her the out — you don't have to say yes or no — and she said don't feed them bread. He accepted the ruling and registered his complaint with the camera rather than with her: bring some joy to the world, get them some seeds or something. The lake had come up over its edges; everything in the day-use area was flooded. A sign near the water said swimming was not supervised, and he stopped on the wording. It doesn't say you can't swim. It says you're just not supervised. He found that interesting, and left it there.
Then the cart. He tried to be stealthy about filming the drive and admitted immediately that this was hard. A ranger was on the road ahead. I'm not doing anything, I'm doing my job right now, this is a completely normal thing to be doing. There was also a man out there he didn't want to socialize with, standing in the road, talking to the ranger — impossible to pretend not to see, so he drove through it and kept moving. He pressed the pedal and the thing went. He said it was so cool.
The rounds themselves were exact. He had a sheet, delivered daily, telling him how long each party was staying, and he worked the loops against it site by site: someone in a yurt, someone leaving who was kind of attractive, someone whose batteries were dead again and who would be coming to look for him about it, a tent occupant who must have been cold on a cold morning, an awning that didn't look like it worked, people grouped together at one end of a loop for reasons he couldn't determine. He noted who had been there forever and who had come in last night. He greeted campers — welcome campers, welcome back — and noted the ones who ignored him. He called it Ranger duties, then corrected himself: he's not a ranger. Then reconsidered: he thinks he is, though. He forgot about the bump in the road, the same bump he always forgets.
Near the yurts the two of them were still talking, and he decided to see whether he could get around them. He could. Then he circled — three of them, in view, while they watched. He loved that. He said so. Three little circles, no big deal, totally reasonable. Then he went faster because the rangers had moved off, then slowed and said he didn't want them to see him doing that, and rolled toward the closed loop where the day's actual license lived. That loop was his practice ground: a short circuit, some debris, and the stretch where the downed trees had been — the ones still lying across the road when he came through on Christmas Eve, since cleared. He looked at what was left of them and said that's what's going to happen to his RV one day. He called the obstacle course his favorite part. He said the cart was very similar to a toy, and then clarified that he was not calling it a toy.
Reverse made noise, which announced him to the one person standing outside, and he did it anyway — press a button and you go backwards, easy, watch. Then parking, a ninety-degree angle, executed clean. I'm so good at this. That's why we practice. Afterward he sat still for a minute with nothing going on, said he was being a good boy, and wondered aloud where the cameras were. Nobody had ever shown him one. He figured there was probably just the one. The yurt still needed cleaning. He said he'd get there — working up the motivation, or something — and stayed parked a while longer.