Declan had been to Treefort "basically every year," which I later learned meant once, in 2019, when he saw half a set from a band he can no longer name and then ate a burrito on a curb for two hours.
This did not stop him from presenting himself, on Tuesday morning, as my official festival-recovery tour guide for the city of Boise, Idaho, where we had arrived approximately four days too late for the actual festival and approximately one day too early for the weather to be doing anything coherent.
"It's fine," he said, looking at 38 degrees and partly sunny like it was a personal invitation. He was wearing a flannel. One flannel.
I want to be clear that I had checked the forecast. I had seen the Thursday showers. I had packed layers in a way that suggested I understood the concept of April in a high-desert city still negotiating with spring. Declan had packed as though he was moving to a Mediterranean villa and had simply not gotten around to it yet.
The plan — his plan, which I had not approved — was to do what he called a "vibe walk" through downtown. This meant wandering the blocks around 8th Street in the specific afterglow of a city that has just finished doing too much on purpose. There were still wristbands on wrists. There were tote bags everywhere. There was a woman outside a coffee shop staring at her phone with the particular thousand-yard look of someone whose group chat had not stopped pinging since Saturday.
Declan looked at all of this and said, with genuine reverence, "You can feel it, right? The energy?"
I was wearing three layers and holding an oat milk latte like it was a handwarmer. I said yes.
We found Wild Frontier Beer Project, which had just opened, and Declan acted as though he had personally discovered it. He told the bartender he had "been keeping an eye on this place," which was a lie he had constructed in real time, thirty seconds after reading the chalkboard sign outside. The bartender was very gracious about it. I tipped extra.
Then the clouds came in. Not dramatically — just the slow Tuesday-afternoon version where the sun quietly resigns and the wind picks up to make a point. Declan's flannel began to seem less like a stylistic choice and more like a cry for help.
"We could go back to the car," I offered.
"We're fine," he said, with the specific conviction of someone who has already committed to the bit.
We walked to Julia Davis Park, which is genuinely beautiful even in late-afternoon gray, and I will give him that. The park did not care about his flannel situation. The park was simply there, doing its park thing, leaves barely starting, that particular Idaho light happening sideways through the clouds in a way that made everything look like a slightly melancholy postcard.
Declan stopped and said, "Okay, yeah. This is good."
And it was. Annoying as it is to admit.
On the way back, we passed the block where Calle 75 used to have its downtown spot. Someone had left a coffee cup on the stoop. The half-dead energy of a city returning to normal was extremely present. Declan read about the food truck pivot on his phone and said, "Good for them, honestly. Adaptation is underrated."
I looked at his one flannel.
I said nothing.
We ended up back at the car as the first real drops started coming in, which Declan claimed to have anticipated. He said, "I knew we had about twenty more minutes," which was not true but was also, technically, not a provable lie given the circumstances.
He turned the heat on full blast and handed me the aux cord, which is the closest thing he does to an apology.
It was, despite everything, a very good afternoon. Boise in the weeks after Treefort has this feeling like the whole city is still sort of buzzing but also desperately needs a nap, and wandering through it with someone who is confidently wrong about the weather turns out to be exactly the right pace.
I made him buy me soup on the way to the hotel.
He said it was already his plan.
I believe absolutely none of that. I love him anyway.