The headwaters of the small Bumping River are well up in the Cascade Mountains.  There the water runs snowbank-cold, as clear and pure as an angel’s thoughts.  It tosses back the August sunshine with careless joy.  Through that cold water a newlywed couple came wading, fly-fishing and whiling away the warm afternoon.  Not for them the sissy affectations of waders and the other accoutrements of fly fishing.  She wore a tank top bathing suit and he only cutoffs, letting their sneaker-clad feet and bare legs brave the mercy of the water.  Then, around a bend in the river, they encountered a little gravel bar island, maybe only twenty feet wide and fifty feet long, adorned with head-high buck brush.  They decided to sit down on the sun-warmed gravel for a rest.  But the discovery that the buck brush concealed a little clearing – a clearing in name only because the tops of the bushes formed a leafy roof – set their minds off in a different direction.  They teasingly undressed each other, a garment at a time, interspersed with kisses and caresses.  A little breeze kicked up as they crawled back into their secluded bower.  She lay back against the warm gravel, his arm behind her neck, and ran her hands over his back and hips as his kisses turned up the heat of the August afternoon.  The only sounds were the susurration of the leaves over their heads, the lapping splash of the river, and her soft moans of anticipation.  At first she paid no attention to the sensation of something falling onto her shoulder, until, that is, it started to move.  Prickly, crawly little insect feet marched across her skin.  As she reached up, she dislodged another critter from his hair.  The breeze rattled through the buck brush again, and suddenly they were engulfed in a shower of nameless green beetles with big, red eyes.  Her moans of pleasure became screams of panic that nearly deafened him, especially when she touched his back and came up with a handful of bugs.  She twisted away, scrambled out from beneath the brush, and ran for the water, only a second ahead of him.  Far up the hill a brown bear raised up to see what all the noise was about.  He saw the two naked figures splashing frantically in the river.  But they were too far away to be a threat and not worth bothering with, especially when he had his nice patch of gooseberries.  Calmly he ignored the fuss and went back to his foraging.  And don’t ask me how I know about those little green bugs with red eyes….

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Yes, anything creepy-crawly with red eyes would definitely pour a bucket of ice water over any moment of heated passion, I think.

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Finally, Tiffany Green, that’s me–the Brunette Goddess, is thoroughly convinced a beach is not the best place for a love scene, no matter how romantic it sounds.  Reality has this nasty little habit of destroying a perfectly good theory: