Panic at Purgatory: Part One

Remembering summer of 1960, I guess. John Dan was real young, and Jim must have been eleven and in Boy Scouts. We rented a travel trailer to pull along and we filled it so full of "stuff,” all six of us couldn't sleep in it. But we reached Colorado, Purgatory Canyon Camp Ground late in the afternoon.
We talked about everyone helping to get camp set up before nightfall, but "everybody" wasn't listening.
We got the tent set up and kept looking for Jim. Thought maybe he was taking a long time in the two hole privy up the way. There was no one in the campground except us and the busy beavers in the cold stream nearby. Still no Jim.
We got the whole camp set up, and still no Jim.
We were getting worried by that time. There was a sign at the back side of the campground saying "5 miles to the Animas River.” Ten miles there and back. He needed a ten mile hike in Scouts, but surely he wouldn't have done that. Alone!!
Dark was coming, and I began to panic. Ten miles up and down and all around with mountain lions and goodness knows what all along the way.
We had seen a Rangers station nearby as we drove in. We went over to talk to the Rangers while Carolyn looked after the Little Ones. They assumed that he had walked down to a honky-tonk place a couple of miles away, and we knew that he hadn't.
They took our names, and began asking us if we had been fighting with him in the car, and a bunch of nonsense stuff like that.
But finally one Ranger said he'd be over shortly. He drove into the campground and started preparing to go down the trail. He had his climbing boots, first aid kit, and a portable stretcher. When I saw all of that gear, I almost panicked! I can hear those ropes and pulleys and gear rattling now as the Ranger started down that ravine.
Night was coming soon. John and I went into the trailer and prayed earnestly! What else could we do?
Not long afterwards, here came Jim up that trail with the Ranger behind him. I was never so glad to see anyone!
But I was a little angry with him also. Lots of mixed emotions. I just cried
We thanked the Ranger and he left.
John and Jim went across the way and sat on a picnic table. I don't know what was said, but the conference lasted quite a while. Afterwards we prepared a meal and all settled down for the night.
Jim chopped lots of wood for lots of fires the rest of the week.
Jim never told us how near to the River he got, but later in the week, we all took the hike to the River together, and it was an all day’s journey.

One day we decided to go into Durango for supplies. John stayed in camp, fishing, or something, I guess. Carolyn and Jim had seen a public swimming pool on the edge of town and they wanted to swim, of course, so did I.
We paid our admission and went into the dressing room. There was a sign in the ladies room that said "No swimming in the pool without a cap." Well, Jim had gone to the men's room and there was no sign in there so he was swimming.
There were hot showers, and we were all dirty, so Carolyn and I decided to bathe ourselves and the Little Ones. We had a leisure shower and cleaned up John Dan and Mary Ann and were preparing to get Jim out of the pool and leave.
Carolyn told me I should ask for my money back, and I thought I'd had my money's worth of hot water. But I gave her the tickets and told her she could get the money back if she wanted to. She did, and that money went in her pocket.

Jim had a bladder infection soon after we returned from the vacation. The streams that we explored looked so cold and clean and beautiful, and we all drank some out of them.
Later we realized that some of them were flowing through abandoned gold mines that might have been laced with arsenic. We wondered if that caused Jim's problem. He never had a recurrence, but we were careful not to drink from those streams again.

Aunt Sister died on the 22nd of December, 1960.