I was sitting in the lobby of Sea-Tac Airport, reading my Kindle waiting for my flight to be called when this woman stumbled in front of me. “What the hell you do that for?” she yelled at me.

I looked up at her, “What are you talking about. I’m just sitting here.”

“You fucking well know, you tripped me!”

God, I hadn’t expected to meet the Wicked Witch of the West in the airport. I looked her up and down quickly. Who knew the Wicked Witch could look like that!

“Lady, you might be gorgeous, but you’re apparently clumsy as hell to make up for it. I was sitting here, you stumbled.”

She was still muttering when she found a seat far away from me. I went back to my kindle, but the view of that ass in those tight denim jeans was embedded in my eyes. Tits weren’t half bad, either!

I couldn’t get my interest back into the book on my Kindle. Too damn bad she’d turned out to be such a she-devil. I couldn’t help but glance in her direction, though, damn!

Fifteen minutes later, they called for boarding of my plane. I was going to a wedding in some god-forsaken place way out in the middle of nowhere mountains, Eastern Oregon. They told me I’d be sleeping in a god-damned tent, of all things!

Unfortunately, the groom was my best friend. We’d been together since we were kids, until he moved to a tiny little town in Eastern Oregon, Ukiah, population 191. After college, he’d gone to work for the US Forest Service and they had a big office there. He said big, but he also told me there were only five employees. I’m not sure exactly how he defines that as ‘big’.

We’d grown up in Sammamish, a suburb of Seattle, not big ... but I guess if five employees is ‘big’, Sammamish is gigantic. Population 45,870. We’d been best friends since his family moved there when we were in the third grade. I’m still there, but in my own little house.

Anyway, Brian had sent me a picture of a girl he met in Pendleton while he was looking for a place to live in Ukiah; a cute petite redhead, going to Blue Mountain Community College to be a nurse. He’d kept me updated on their romance and now they were going to be married tomorrow. That’s why I was flying to Pendleton, to be the best man at his wedding.

As I was boarding the plane and found my seat, I didn’t give a lot more thought to the wicked witch. Until I heard an ‘oh crap!’ and she sat down beside me. Just who I wanted for a seat-mate. NOT! How the hell do you start a conversation with someone who already hates your guts? ‘Hi, I think you have a great ass and tits.’ Nah, don’t think that’d work so well with her. Maybe best to just try and ignore her. Besides, a ladies’ man I’m not. Course, this was no ‘lady’, either.’

Apparently, the somewhat same conclusion must have run through her mind as well. She never said a word to me, either.

The plane took off on the two-hour flight to Pendleton. I hated to sit and ignore the person next to me for a full two hours. It’s a small plane, two narrow seats on each side of the aisle, so it wasn’t exactly like I could pretend to be visiting with the person on the opposite side. Forty minutes into the flight, when neither of us had said a word, I couldn’t take it any longer and thought maybe if I mollified her, we could at least have a civil conversation.

“Okay,” I told her, “I admit it, You’re attractive and I just wanted to meet you. Sorry about that.”

“Asshole!”

Well that worked out well. She scooted as far away as she could in the narrow seat, maybe another quarter-inch or so, closed her eyes and let it be known she didn’t want any conversation. Fine! I could play that game, too. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, but the fragrance of that perfume just wouldn’t go away. Didn’t she know you’re not supposed to wear perfume on an airplane? Guess not. Either that or she just didn’t give a damn. I ignored her the rest of the trip. A little hard to keep my eyes off those legs, though.

We landed in Pendleton, I grabbed my one bag from the overhead and paid no attention to her sexy ass as she walked down the aisle right in front of me. Really. I didn’t. Much.

Then I stepped out of the plane ... into a freakin’ furnace! Crap, Brian didn’t tell me that Pendleton was a damned oven. People live here? Voluntarily? Just the short walk from the plane to the terminal was excruciating. Thank God it wasn’t far. And especially that I didn’t live here.

Brian was there waiting for me, along with Cathy, his fiancée. “Devon, thanks for coming, man,” Brian told me, “you’re gonna love it up there.” I doubted it.

Then, Cathy greeted the witch, much the same way. “Dev, I guess you met Sabrina on the flight over?” Brian asked me. I tried not to roll my eyes in dismay.

“Sabrina’s my maid of honor,” Cathy announced, “she tell you that?”

Uh, no. How do I mention that the only word ‘Sabrina’ (what an appropriate name!) had said to me on the entire flight was ‘asshole’. Sabrina put a forced grin on her face, more like a grimace masquerading as a grin, and said, “We met.” Guess she didn’t want to get into the circumstances of that ‘meeting’, either.

“How damned hot is it out there?” I asked Devon.

He laughed, “Wondered if you’d notice, coming from Seattle. It’s a hundred-three, supposed to be a hundred-nine later this afternoon.”

The witch groaned, “It was sixty-seven when I left the car at the airport.”

We’d gone outside in the sweltering heat again. “It’s not ... gonna be like this ... all weekend, is it?” I prayed to God it wouldn’t!

Another laugh, “Nah, It’ll be a couple degrees cooler where we’re camped.” Shit! He’s gotta be kidding. This heat ... and we’re outside? No air conditioning? “Just kidding ... it’ll be at least twenty degrees cooler up in the mountains.” I glared at the butthead. NOT funny. I did a quick calculation. That still left it almost ninety.

Brian had a two-seat, four-door, Ford F-150 pickup. He and Cathy climbed in the front seat, leaving the back seat to the witch and me. It’s wide enough to seat three fairly comfortably, but the way Sabrina and I hugged our doors, there would have been room for two adults in-between. This was going to be a loonnngg weekend!

If it hadn’t been for my ice-cold seatmate on the trip to where they were camped, it would have been a very enjoyable trip. About twenty miles past the little town of Pilot Rock, through mostly desert sagebrush and dry grass, Brian pointed out an ancient, old house and barn a couple hundred yards off the highway, “Used to be a stagecoach stop between Ukian and Pilot Rock,” he said.

I didn’t know Oregon had desert-like that and mentioned it to Brian. I thought Oregon was wet and green. “Nah,” he said, “that’s Western Oregon. There’s way more desert than anything in Oregon.” He went on, “We’re camped in a forest, but a little further south, it’s almost all desert.”

Surprised the hell out of me! Of course, the hundred-three degrees was a bit of surprise, too.

I had to admit that it’s beautiful. We went through the tiny town of Ukiah on the way, it’s in a huge, meandering, green meadow, probably five or six miles in every direction. He pointed out the Forest Service office where he works. It is an impressive building; he said the center column supporting the roof is a big, whole fir tree. There’s an outhouse out front, next to the parking lot, for the public to use.

I could see why the outhouse, we were out in the middle of nowhere, there’s one store and the ‘Ukiah Thicket’; a little tavern/café where he said hunters gather after traipsing through the ‘thickets’ all day looking for a deer or elk.

Then, several miles past Ukiah, we went through a huge forest fire burn from several years ago. Brian said that was why he was working here; they were trying to reforest it and study the after-effects of the fire. The burned-out area went on for miles and miles, then there was a tiny little pocket that hadn’t burned, a historic Forest Service cabin and a few acres of green trees around it that they’d managed to save.

After winding through the forest another ten miles or so, we stopped at a tiny, little creek, named, appropriately enough, ‘Big Creek’. Hey, no kidding, you can’t make this stuff up! It’s a beautiful little creek; right below the culvert under the highway, it opened into a hole with little fish and beautiful, colored gravel and sand. Even the witch seemed to enjoy it. She took her shoes off and waded out into the water, first dipping her big toe and giggling how cold it was. God, even her toes were sexy!

I think it’d been far too long since I’d been with a woman. Matter of fact, I couldn’t even remember how long the last time had been. Never thought I’d have thought of a witch as being sexy. Of course, I’d never seen a witch that looked like that, either.

Witch chatted with Cathy and occasionally Brian, but never acknowledged that I was on the same planet. Prob’ly just as well, not sure what that ‘acknowledgment’ might have consisted of, undoubtedly a pretty strong hint to the happy couple that things weren’t perfectly fine between their best man and maid of honor. No reason to spoil their wedding.

The rest of the trip was just as pretty. We went through what’s called ‘Trout Meadows’, another big, beautiful meadow with a tiny, meandering creek, scattered trees and tall mountains in the background. I’d love to get back there at sunset with my camera. What a beautiful spot for a sunset picture.

Brian glanced in the rearview mirror, “I know what you’re thinking, buddy, beautiful spot, hunh. Lots of elk in this meadow at sunset, too,” he interjected.

God, I don’t think I’d ever seen anywhere like it! So different from Seattle and Western Washington. No wonder Brian loves it here, I thought.

I wondered if we were ever going to get there. We came to the North Fork, John Day River and drove up it until Brian finally pulled over in a tiny wide spot. “This is where the wedding’s going to be,” he announced. I looked around, nothing. Well, not ‘nothing’, but not a place for a wedding, either, just forest with a narrow highway through it.

“Here?” I asked him, surprised.

Brian and Cathy both laughed, Witch looked at me like I must be the dumbest person on the face of the planet. Finally, Brian took mercy on me, “Not RIGHT here, but out through there,” pointing to a little trail through the Aspens. We all got out and walked a hundred yards or so, until the trail opened up into another meadow, this one small but absolutely gorgeous; tall, green grass, surrounded by a beautiful Aspen tree grove and a mountain peak straight ahead of us.

He found a spot in the meadow and told us, “Built a little pole gazebo, going to put right here and we’ll be underneath it,” then pointed to the peak, “with that in the background.”

God, what a perfect spot for a beautiful wedding! “How the hell, how’d you find this spot?” I asked him.

He grinned, “Cathy and I were just looking for a nice place and found this. Nice, huh?”

Even Witch seemed impressed, “I love it!” she said.

“You wanna know something interesting?” he asked us.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, having no idea what he was getting at.

“Those aspens ... that big grove, did you know aspen groves are the biggest organisms on Earth?” Huh, what? I didn’t know what he was talking about. “The whole grove, it’s all one big tree, all interconnected, a single root system for the whole grove.”

God, I looked around, there must have been a thousand trees, and he’s saying it’s all one?

It was another mile up to their camp spot, a place called Peavee Meadow; right alongside the river, which didn’t seem like a ‘river’ at all, but another small stream. It had a sand-gravel bottom, the same pretty, gold-colored as Big Creek, with clear, very cold-looking water tumbling down. I reached down and felt the water. It was every bit as cold as it looked.

I realized something; since leaving Pilot Rock, we’d passed a grand total of one car. Almost a hundred miles, one car!

Brian and Cathy had a travel trailer set up in the camp underneath trees with a stone fire ring in front. Their parents were in another spot a couple hundred yards up the river. I’d never camped, but if I did ... this is where I’d want it to be. It’s not a ‘campground’, just a pretty spot in the forest.

I sort of wondered where I’d be sleeping, though. There was a small, single tent set up. I presumed there.

It’d been over seven hours since I’d had breakfast at my house in Sammamish and was hungry. Brian fired up his grill and threw on some hamburgers for the four of us. I didn’t realize how good a grilled hamburger in the mountains can be. Of course, it didn’t hurt, how hungry I was, either. Still nothing from Witch.

After we ate, it was mid-afternoon and Brian asked if I’d go help him with the gazebo, so we loaded it in his pickup and headed down to the wedding meadow. He’d peeled the logs, stained them and bolted them together to make a little cover, about six-feet wide.

We carried it over to the spot, then set it in the base he’d built and stood back, looking. It looked good, really good. I hadn’t noticed, but he also had a lot of greenery in the pickup that we carried over and wrapped over and around, giving it a much more decorative look.

When we got back to camp, Cathy and Witch were in the river, splashing and appearing to have a wonderful time. And no wonder, it was still hot. Cathy was in a one-piece and Witch in a bikini; a triangle-shaped, string-bikini. Like I’d said, it had been a long time and, witch or not, I was almost instantaneously hard. She had almost waist-length, jet-black hair, I guess appropriate for a witch; flat tummy; curved hips; and god, that ass and tits! Nothing too shabby about her pixie-like face, either. I’m guessing she was probably close to twenty; she looked a few years younger than my twenty-five. But maybe witches age differently than normal people.

I tried to not stare but kept averting my eyes from that direction, trying to remember what she thought of me and the kind of personality she seemed to have. I wanted nothing to do with her!

I don’t know if she shaved or what, but that little triangle was tiny and there wasn’t a single hair poking out; not that I noticed.

We spent that evening sitting around the campfire, taking pictures, roasting marshmallows and visiting. Brian had us in stitches with some of his experiences trudging around the mountains for the Forest Service, like the time he was sure a tree falling behind him was a bear attacking him, waving his arms mimicking the ‘bear’ and his voice screeching like he said he had been trying to scare away the bear; perhaps, a small exaggeration.

Around ten, we decided it was time for bed. I still wasn’t sure about the sleeping arrangements, and Brian cleared his throat, obviously a little nervous, said, “We ... uh ... only have one tent ... but there’s two sleeping bags.”

And he was suggesting what, exactly? I thought I was getting the picture ... and wasn’t liking it, that they expected Witch and me to be in the same tent. A little tent. It looked barely big enough for two people.

“Cath, I don’t think...” Witch started to say.

“Hon, I don’t know what else to do, there’s only room for the two of us in the trailer. We figured as long as it’s two bags that you guys’d be fine.” What she wasn’t saying is ‘we didn’t know you’d despise each other.’

Witch rolled her eyes and just said, “Fine!” then looked at me and told me, in a not very attractive tone, one that I’d come to get kind of used to from the witch, “Me first. I’ll yell when you can come in.”

Brian and Cathy sat at the campfire with me while Cathy’s friend (how the hell did a nice girl like Cathy meet someone like that?) got ready for bed. Several minutes later, we heard the yell from inside the tent, “I’m ready, you can come in.”

She had pushed her bag as far away as she could and as soon as I opened the fly and stepped inside, she announced, “Don’t you dare...”

“Sweetheart, I wouldn’t want to quick-freeze my dick off!” Maybe that was a little crude, but she deserved it.

Witch had her bag pulled up tight around her neck and her nose in the opposite wall so I could undress in at least some degree of privacy. Good thing, too. God, I was horny!

I discovered two things that night: One, it might be hot during the day, but it gets C O L D in the middle of the night; Second, that that sleeping bag is NOT a cold-weather bag. I spent the majority of the night shivering, rather than sleeping. Pretty sure I heard Witch’s teeth chattering from the cold as well. I thought about that other warm body in the tent more than once.

The next day was the day of the wedding. Their parents spent the morning setting up and decorating tables in the meadow we were camped in for the reception dinner. One of Cathy’s friends showed up mid-morning with flowers and the cake and Brian’s dad was busy with a prime rib and barbecue ribs on his pellet grills.

When it got close to the wedding time, Brian and I got dressed in his trailer. It wasn’t formal, but he looked good in his sports jacket and slacks. I hadn’t brought a jacket but did have a nice, short-sleeved shirt and slacks. I brushed my teeth, shaved, and when I looked in the mirror, thought I didn’t look half bad. Not that I was trying to impress anyone, least of all, Witch. I started to have pangs of conscience, that I needed to be nice, think of her as Sabrina, rather than Witch. Nah, Witch is fine. Appropriate.

Brian and I drove down the highway to the little wide spot, followed by his parents. It was filled with half a dozen cars. Brian said they hadn’t wanted a big crowd so just invited very close family and friends. Brian, his parents and I walked over to the ‘Wedding Meadow’ as he called it and waited. There were maybe a dozen people there, in the folding chairs the parents had brought and set up.

The preacher was a guy from Pendleton that apparently Brian knew somehow. How he had enticed him this far out in the wilderness for a wedding, I’ll never know. When the clock ticked around to the actual time, Brian waited in front with the preacher and I walked to the back as I’d have to walk Witch up the ‘aisle’, arm-in-arm. Oh joy!

When she and Cathy walked down the little path, I was like, Wow! Cathy had on a tight, satiny-white dress, showing off her petite figure to perfection, full length, with a short train. She was beautiful! Witch, on the other hand, was wearing a light green, silky dress, deep ‘V’ between her breasts, low-cut back and short, several inches above her knees, hemline. I was reminded again by the bulge in my pants that it had been a very long time since ... you know what.