2002-09-30 - 10:48 a.m.
Extreme Ultimate Campout Challenge 2002 has now gone down in the annuls of family history. The tent/sleeping bags/ Coleman stove/ folding chairs/camp kitchen have all been returned to their basement shelves, the dishes are washed, the coolers are drying out. I've had my nap. And actually it wasn't such an extreme challenge this year, because the weather was balmy and everything worked out amazingly well.
I drove up to the private campground (about 75 miles away) by myself on Friday afternoon, and met Cary and Kim there. (Skootie had other Friday and Saturday morning commitments, so she came later.) We claimed our favorite little spot, the one the campground owner calls "Cozy Corner." It is a secluded little peninsula of land, surrounded on three sides by a deep ravine and shaded by towering walnut and cottonwood trees. Someone said "If I were on a wagon train, this is where I would want to stop for the night." The spot has an aura of history, as though not just other campers, but travellers with horses and wagons may have sought shelter there. A huge picnic table, a fire ring and a trash barrel are the only amenities. We are not all that far down the hill from the "big house" (as we took to calling the bathroom/store/office building), but there is almost nothing in sight but woods and fields.
Cary helped me pitch my tent, the new one, which was making its maiden voyage this year. It is a very nifty tent, I must say, with three colors, and lots of things to zip and snap and velcro. But I was still a little disappointed at how small it seemed. I guess I expected something bigger from a "four-person" tent, perhaps that it might be twice the size of our old "two-person" tent. I don't know how four persons would sleep in it, unless they were all midgets who liked each other an awful lot. It was crowded for the two of us and one small dog, but It also had a plastic sky light and windows on all four sides, so it is definitely better ventilated and less claustrophobic than the old tent.
We played frisbee for a long time, and I had to reacquaint my arm with the frisbee-throwing technique, because I hadn't done it since last year's campout. It is so much fun just to play. To throw and run and yell and jump up to make dramatic catches, and get teased about your bad throws. It is the thing I always forget about in the world I usually inhabit. There is so little room for just a silly relaxing game to wear me out and make me forget everything else for a while. And sometimes that is just what I need.
It got cool Friday night and we built a roaring fire and roasted hotdogs and marshmallows and drank beer. Darkness is coming earlier these days, but we managed to stay up until eleven or so, just talking around the fire, before giving in and crawling into our sleeping bags.
The rest of the family started arriving Saturday morning. My brother Mike, and his daughter, 13-year-old Whitney. My sister Jenna, and her younger son, Freddie, 11. Mom. My nephew Christian and his girlfriend, Megan. Skootie. Two of the kids in the family weren't there this year. Liam, Christian's younger brother, is away at school-- his freshman year of college. And Josh, Jenna's older son, who is fifteen this year, had opted to stay home so he could go to a school dance. It seemed so funny for him not to be there, because he always had so much fun. The first year we camped he was eleven and loved getting to use an ax for the first time so much that he chopped up more firewood than we could use. Jenna said he was a little sad at the last minute when they were leaving, and wished he hadn't made other plans. Five years is a long time in his life and such a short time in mine. I still have the shirt I wore to the first campout, and he is in a completely different phase of his life. Kids grow up and do the inevitable pulling away from the family. And then find a way to fit back in as adults. During the in-between period we have to save their places.
There is a big flurry of activity with the setting up of tents, and unloading of stuff. We have all brought tons of food, coolers full of drinks, and a variety of items designed for outdoor survival. Chairs are set up around the campfire and soon the croquet court is being established and games are in full swing. And through it all race and chase the dogs: Cary and Kim's big yellow lab, Jenna's shepherd mix, Mike's sheltie, and our little maltese, running as fast as his short legs will go to keep up with the big dogs.
This year's Highlights:
Birds, bugs and snakes.... Cary found a giant praying mantis, and all the guys were catching little green frogs and toads. (When the same little green frog was spotted sitting in the same spot several times, they termed him a "bank potato") A red-belllied woodpecker hung out in a nearby tree, tapping and calling out. We spotted a vulture gliding above us and several times stopped to watch Vs of migrating geese go honking by. Mom was less thrilled, (but still a good sport) when a garter snake slithered near her foot. And then there were the owls.... never seen, of course, but heard all through the night. There were screech owls, and at least one of the voices sounded like a great horned owl. We try to imagine the presence of the giant bird (they are about two feet tall) in the woods.
Mike and Cary have a contest to see who can throw a frisbee all the way across the pond. I narrate it like a sportscaster at an Olympic event. Cary wins, sailing the frisbee onto the opposite bank. Mike's throw falls short and the frisbee bobs in the water near the bank. Whitney tries to rescue it for her father and gets her shoes all muddy. Her father rescues it and her. Thirteen-year-old girls do not like to have muddy shoes.
Cary and Kim play with their dog in the water. The dog loves to leap into the water and fetch the frisbee or anything that floats. Once she even tries to bring in one of the buoys and they have to coax her to come back without it. She lunges out of the water, proudly bearing her prize, and then treats us all to a shower of doggy lake water.
Mike and Cary master the art of playing frisbee with two frisbees at the same time.
Freddie masters the art of throwing a hatchet into a tree. (Well away from the group, I might add!)
Mom made a chocolate brownie cake to celebrate the birthdays of Mike (42) and Christian (22). The blew out the candles together, after we did our usual funny bungling of the birthday song. Cards are read and passed around. Presents opened. Those of us who are Mom's children reminisced about how she always made this kind of cake when we were kids. It is one of our favorites, and it always tastes just the same when she makes it.
And then we sat around the fire after dark, just talking. Christian brought his jaw harp which he is very proud of learning to play, and demonstrated it for us. He also brought his bongo drums, and we handed them around the circle, letting everyone try their hand at drumming. Surprisingly Mike and Freddie were naturally good drummers, and Freddie made everyone laugh with his personalized technique of interspersing scratching with the drum beats.
It was a restless night for everyone, and very little sleeping was done. Sleeping well is not one of the reasons we do this. There was a continual cacophony of animal and insect noises through the night. Crickets and cicadas keep up a continual undulating hum. Cows bellow in the distance. Coyotes howled at the moon, and the owls kept up their hooting and screeching. There was some other sound, too, an unearthly sort of screaming I had never heard before. We were told there were bobcats in the area, and I wondered if that was the sound they made. Then there was the constant rustling and thumping of things (leaves, walnuts) falling and creatures (squirrels, raccoons, possums) scampering. And not least, the sounds of zippers quietly unzipping, and footsteps crunching as people sneaked out of their tents to find a "secret bathroom" in the woods. Because (Murphey's law of camping: ) the fullness of the bladder is always inversely proportional to the inconvenience of getting up in the night. There were a few snores, a few woofs and whines as our wide awake dogs responded to the noises outside. And yet it is "quiet" in a way that we are not used to. No traffic noises, no horns or sirens or car alarms. No voices. No fan or air-conditioner "white noise" that we are accustomed to to hum us to asleep. Something about being awake in the woods at night makes me think about things I would never think of at home. About the power and mystery of nature, about all the people who passed this way before us and how immense the world must have been for them.
Each family had the responsibility for a meal, and so Skootie and I masterminded and prepared a big breakfast on Sunday morning. Sausage, cheesy eggs, hashbrowns, apple strudel bread w/butter, coffee and juice, cooked on two coleman stoves. Everyone loves a big breakfast, and it was gobbled up immediately, with much appreciation. And then we all start the long task of cleaning up and dismantling our campsite. For a while we have had a bustling little compound: five tents, six cars, eleven people, four dogs. But soon after breakfast, the tents are coming down, tarps and rainflys are drying in the sun, and there are cries of "Who does this belong to?" as the melange of food, and cooking utensils is sorted out. We always notice how the volume of gear seems to expand on site, because it is so carefully organized at home, and then at the end we just want to throw it into the car and go. Packing takes most of the morning, and we work until almost everything is loaded into cars except our chairs. And then we sit in the shade and talk a while longer and get out some sandwiches because it is now lunch time. I am always amazed at how quickly it can be over. We say our goodbyes and crawl into our little cars and roll out across the grass toward the gravel road that will take us to the blacktop road that will take us to the highway......
Maybe we were a more subdued group this year. Some of us are in stressful work situations, and some of us are just incredibly busy. It is amazing that we can all make the time to pull ourselves away from our lives and go out to the woods together for a weekend. What happens here is something that can never happen at home. Because no matter how hard you try to relax, or believe you are relaxing, there is always something to do. Electronic entertainment lures us to spend our free time in front of a screen. But once you arrive in the woods, you have to let go of it all.
I can't describe everything we did, but I keep thinking of this occasion as part of the continuity of five years of our lives. How things have changed. How I don't want some things to change. We as a family like to talk about ourselves, and we spent a bit of time reminiscing about previous campouts and things we have done together and know about each other. It is our time to come together as a family.
When I remember this campout, I am sure I will think of the faces around the fire, the certain kind of warm illumination that comes from a flickering flame. It makes skin glow and eyes gleam but the surroundings just fall away into darkness. It makes everyone look beautiful and mysterious and wise. I was thinking about how families have been looking at each other across fires for thousands of years. There must be something to it.
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