The best storyteller in the world.By KELSEY ALLEN I don’t even know where Ponca State Park is, which is weird because my family camped there for years. We always stayed at the same campsite. I don’t know where the campground is, but I do know that right across the road from our campsite was the best playground in the world. There were three swings — one for me, one for my brother and one for my sister. The monkey bars were spaced out just far enough that you could skip one bar and still reach the next one. There was a long metal slide, too hot to slide down at noon, but if you came back around 3 p.m. and remembered to bring wax paper, you could slide down so fast you would fly off the end. There was even this wooden jungle gym that I swear used to be an old army fort. As I remember it, the campsite sat at the bottom of a circle, the biggest campsite in the park. It backed up to a field fenced in by barbed wire. Late at night, horses would make their way to the edge of the fence. Sometimes they even came close enough to pet. It was entirely possible that they were wild, so I would never pet one until my brother stroked one without getting his hand bitten off. My brother is younger than I, and at the time was still smaller, yet I looked to him for courage. He had no fear. Or maybe he was just trying to impress my dad. Either way, if he touched the horse I touched the horse. I guess it would make sense that Ponca State Park is in Nebraska, where I spent my younger years. There are hardly any trees in Nebraska even though Arbor Day originated there, and our campsite was treeless, which made shade hard to come by. Fortunately, this also meant that at night there was nothing blocking the stars. It was at Ponca State Park where I learned about the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. I think stars shine brighter in Nebraska because there is nothing to get in their way. There was a picnic table towards the back of our campsite, and every night my whole family would lie on top of it, bundled up in a sleeping bag, and look at the stars, just waiting for one to shoot across the sky. I don’t think there was much to do at Ponca State Park other than pet horses, build fires, and see who can jump the farthest off the swing. But the best thing to do at our campsite was to listen to my dad tell stories around the campfire, and it was there at Ponca State Park where I heard the most terrifying story ever told. My mom was washing the dishes. I was probably pulling my sister’s hair. My brother was gathering twigs. My dad was building an epic fire. We all huddled around the fire ring when it grew too dark to do anything else. It hadn’t been cold during the day, but without the sun we needed the fire to stay warm. I placed my feet along the fire ring for a while, and soon enough my tennis shoes were overcooked. We only knew a couple of the constellations, and when our necks started to ache from looking up, we started making s’mores. I don’t even like s’mores; my dad doesn’t either. Taste buds must be hereditary. I like chocolate just fine, but marshmallows don’t taste like much of anything, and I can never toast my marshmallow just the way I like it. I always burn it or it falls off the end of my stick and gets ashy, but what is a camp out without sticky fingers and chocolate lips? As I was shoving the last bite in my mouth my dad got this look on his face like he knew something we didn’t. After a round of us shouting “Tell me” and “Come on, Dad,” he finally spoke: Montana Joe lived up in the boonies in a mountain town, if you can even call it a town. Only two people lived there: Montana Joe and his only contact with the outside world, a friend and fellow mountain man, who lived in a cabin on the other side of town. Joe had gray eyes that were hidden under his unkempt eyebrows, and he looked bigger than he really was. Over his overalls he wore layers of clothes and a bearskin. Montana Joe didn't have a dog for a pet; he had a wolf. By now, my brother, sister and I were all crowded around the fire, closer than my mom would like, and my dad had started to look like Montana Joe. Even though it was dark out it looked like his hair was getting longer and his face looked worn down by the wind. It even felt like the air was getting colder as he continued:
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