PINERS

One summer, my friends and I were camping, and we decided to go swim at a little desert pond. To get there, you had to drive a criss cross of dirt roads across the high desert. You knew you were close to it when a group of towering cottonwoods and a shock of bright green materialized out of the washed-out, yellow land.

So we rolled up and found there was no one else there. This was pretty cool, and we sunk into the murky water. Once in the water, if you stood still for only a few seconds, you'd start to feel it, the not-unpleasant little bites of the fish on your feet. Apparently you can go to spas where you stick your feet in boxes of water with the same kind of fish, and they eat all your dead skin.

But here we were, out in nature, doing that for free!

Not long after we got in the water, two sagging mini vans pulled up. Upon stopping, they disgorged a horde of sticky faced, overweight children and a pit bull. One of the two moms in charge of the group grabbed the pit bull's leash, which looked suspiciously like random bits of string, and tied the dog to one of the trees.

"HEY. WHERE ARE YOU FROM?" one of the women yelled at us.

I realized, she was my age, but we looked very, very different.

We told her, and she yelled, "WE'RE PINERS. CAN'T GET MORE LOCAL THAN US."

Which was probably debatable, as long before her town, which did have the word Pine in the name, had its first log cabin, apparently in 1861, there were people living there, they just weren't white. But, we conceded the point; we were not from her town.

"BORN AND BRED, PINERS," she cackled.

She wasn't mean, per se, but I've always hated the local game. After all, statistically speaking, at least one of her passle of kids would probably move out of their home town, and then some other person would try to out-local that kid while all they were trying to do was have some desert fish eat the dead skin off their feet.

At this point, at least two of the kids were crying, and one of them kept cannonballing into the pond right in front of the pit bull. Every time the kid jumped, the pit bull lost its mind and jumped into the water too, but since it was tied to the tree, it then nearly broke its neck. The fact pit bulls have necks the size of their rib cage was clearly helping the dog not kill itself. The dog would then swim, barking the whole time, straining against its suspect leash, until it got sick of that and scrabbled up the muddy bank, only for the kid to do another cannon ball and start the cycle over again.

"WE'VE BEEN COMING HERE SINCE WE WERE KIDS. WE'RE PINERS!"

The pond wasn't big enough to warrant this level of volume all the time, but we nodded politely, and moved so we weren't facing the kids, moms, and the pit bulls

Then, a brand new, pimped out Toyota Tacoma rocketed out of the desert and came to a stop at the pond. This thing was immediately identifiable as a Bay Area tech bro's top-dollar, nascent descent into over landing.

It had all the bells and whistles, not a scratch on it, and the doors opened. A lanky model-like woman with jet black hair and porcelain skin, and an average looking-dude stepped out. They opened the truck's rear doors and two dogs, a well groomed black poodle and a labradoodle, exploded into the desert.

"YOU SHOULD PUT YOUR DOGS ON A LEASH," yelled the Piner.

Her dog was still on its leash and while trying to kill itself every thirty seconds or so, it had not succeeded, yet. It also wasn't running full tilt into the blistering desert.

The Bay Area man and woman looked at the Piners like they had stepped on something. Finally the woman gave an imperious nod to the man, and he said, "They are on a vocal leash."

I watched the dogs disappear over the horizon.

"Those dogs will die out there," my husband said, quietly.

"THEY AREN'T ON NO LEASH. I CAN'T EVEN SEE THEM," the Piner said.

"They are trained," the man assured.

He and his lady friend then took very expensive, very new, camp chairs out of the Tacoma, and they sat down, doing their best to convince us they were having fun. The woman was so tense I wasn't sure she was breathing, and the man refused to look at any of us. They both tried to hide that they were occasionally looking in the direction their dogs had run.

The pit bull continued to bark and jump and thrash in the water. The Bay Area couple looked over all our heads, and at least one kid was always crying. The designer dogs did not return.

After a while it appeared to be lunch time for the Piners. I saw the moms pull out a jumble of bags of chips, sodas, and what appeared to be cold hot dogs. The rail-thin, San Franciscan woman visibly recoiled.

One of the kids started to cry, but louder and more performative this time. The woman who had been talking to us screamed, "TIMMY, YOU WILL EAT YOUR HOT DOG AND YOU WILL LIKE IT."

Timmy wailed louder. The pit bull continued to bark, and the Bay Area over landers broke. The man hadn't stopped looking in the direction his dogs went since he'd told us they were well trained. Suddenly, both he and his lady friend jumped up, threw the very nice, hardly used, camp chairs into their truck and sped off, coating us in a shower of dust.

"You know," my husband said. "I think I'm ready to go."

And so we got out of the pond, saved from the snapping, barking pit bull thanks to its leash, waved to the Piners, who were all eating cold hotdogs, except for Timmy, who stood in the sun scream-crying with a red splotchy face, and got into our cars.

We drove back into the desert, wailing Timmy in our rearview mirror. I wondered if Timmy would be the one to leave his home town. I wondered if the know-it-all Bay Areaites would find their dogs. Then I marveled at how smooth my feet felt. And to think, I could have paid for the same experience, minus the people. How boring that would have been.