It took a few more days into camping season than is customary, but our 1967 Aristocrat Lo-Liner camper finally got out of the yard for a 6-day excursion at our favorite campground in the Black Hills. Black Fox is a remote campground that has nine first-come-first-serve campsites nestled amongst the spruce on South Fork Rapid Creek.

South Fork Rapid Creek does a lovely job of providing a continuous babbling background to whatever it is you find yourself doing while in camp. A few years ago, I started the personal tradition of reading Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It” on the inaugural camping excursion to Black Fox each year.

South Fork Rapid Creek is not technically a river, it’s a bit narrow and a bit shallow, but what it lacks in breadth and depth, it more than makes up for in its ambient contributions to the Black Fox chorus. Technicalities are trite and tiresome tropes that often sacrifice the good in search of the perfect, so, I say, a river runs through it, and it makes a good read near perfect.

At one point in the biographical story, the author, Norman, writes about trying to figure out how to help his younger brother Paul with various life issues stemming from excessive gambling and drinking.

Norman asks his father for advice on the matter, and his dad replies, “Help is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly. So it is, that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or maybe we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.”

In the end, Norman and his father, come to the conclusion that, “You can love completely without complete understanding, and it is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.” So it goes.

One issue with camping at Black Fox is that once you settle in, it’s hard to unsettle yourself to leave. But, eventually, the trappings of civilization, and the responsibilities that being a part of it entails, rear their heads in search of your time and attention, and perhaps, your help.

As we packed up, and rumbled over the cattle guard to leave Black Fox, I thanked that little bit of good in the woods for its time, and for always being able to give the parts of itself that are needed.

Happy Independence Day my friends. Be well.