February 18, 2017
9:05 p.m.
There's just no denying the fact that I have no business camping.
Don't get me wrong; I love to go out into the great outdoors, sit around a campfire, roast potatoes in a dutch oven. I love to dip a line in the water and hopefully catch a fish.
But I am ill suited to it these days--now I am apparently allergic to all things wilderness.
And I guess I should have foreseen this happening even when I was a kid.
I am going to tell you a story of my worst camping day ever.
It was some time in the 1970s. I'm old; there's no way I can be more specific than that. My memory is simply not that good.
We had driven up into the mountains with friends to a campsite that we'd visited before. There was a creek running through the camp; fast moving water teaming with brook trout.
I loved to fish, but I didn't like doing it around a lot of people, so I took my little tackle box and my fishing pole and made my way upstream, following the brook first on land and then in the water.
I was probably over a mile from camp when I turned around to go back downstream. I had a few brookies on a line, and I was tired of walking through waist high water against the current.
Like all mountain streams, this one twisted and turned, meandering down the mountain. The banks were overgrown with lush vegetation, so I could generally only see what was right in front of me.
Sloshing through the water, I rounded a bend and came face to face--literally--with a moose! I jumped backwards. So did the moose, luckily for me. It went one way and I went the other, until I was on the bank, breathing hard and more than a little aware of the rapid pounding of my heart.
Nothing had prepared me for a moose encounter; I had no idea how big they are--how big their heads are! And, might I add: a face only a mother could love. They are not as pretty as deer or elk, they're a little...er...lumpy.
As I stood there, dripping, it slowly dawned on me how lucky I was. Moose are more at home in the water than on dry ground. It could have stomped me flat! I'd be drowned and squashed into the mud and no one would ever find me.
Thank God I scared the moose as much as it scared me.
As my heartbeat returned to normal, I realized that I had lost my fish. Dang it!
I shouldered my fishing pole and started walking downstream, now on the bank. I swung my tackle box, held in my left hand, forward and back against my thigh. I figured I'd be fine if I stayed out of the water, and it was high time I got back to camp.
I'm not sure how far I'd gotten before I stepped into a hole. Whoosh, down I went. What saved me was that I was holding my pole over my right shoulder with my elbow up. I was wedged in up to my shoulders with my left arm inside the hole, still clutching my tackle box, and my right arm awkwardly holding me there instead of allowing me to fall in deeper.
I wiggled my feet. Nope. I couldn't touch bottom. Not cool.
I dropped my fishing rod, and tried to pull myself out.
Nope. I needed to get a little higher before I could put my free arm to work.
I started wiggling my left arm and hand, using the tackle box to sort of push my way up, digging into the ground with my toes and pushing down on the surface ground with my right elbow. Leverage, you know. Wiggle, dig and push, wiggle, dig and push.
Okay, obviously, I got out of the hole. God knows how long it took me to get up high enough to really use my free arm to maneuver my way free, but I made it.
Clearly something was out to get me, I thought and I scooted my way backwards, away from the hole.
I was covered in mud. My tackle box was covered in mud.
I didn't care; I was out of the hole, and that's what mattered.
Giving the hole of death a wide berth, I started back downstream, keeping careful watch on the ground ahead of me and the bushes around me.
I was no longer comfortable with my surroundings. Who would be?
I got close enough to see the campers and trucks, got back into the water and sloshed my way back to camp. I submerged in the water and scrubbed off mud. Then I went to the bank, opened my tackle box, and cleaned it out--it was full of mud!
I put my things under the truck, climbed into the camper my parents had built for we kids on the back of the truck and changed into dry clothes.
Then I went and joined everyone else in camp. It was dinner time. I loaded a plate for myself. I sat down, and then, I decided I wanted a soft drink to go with my dinner. So I set my plate down on an empty lawn chair, stood and took about three steps forward to the cooler, stepped back without looking and sat down in my chair--and my dinner!
Someone had decided to sit in the chair I'd set my plate on and moved it to my own chair, just that quickly.
I stood up. The plate went with me, then plopped off my butt and onto the ground.
Sheesh!
That was it for me. The clothes on my back were the clean clothes--the ones I'd changed out of were drying on some bushes. Without saying a word, I picked up my plate and put it in the garbage, went back to the camper and closed the door.
I dropped my jeans, pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms and grabbed a book.
Reading is safer. Yes. I could have all the adventure I craved and never meet a moose, fall in a hole or sit in my dinner.
That was not a great day of camping, my friends.
I've spent a good deal of time since then out in the great outdoors, but I suppose it should come as no surprise that over time I came to go out less and less. I was not one of those people who outgrew allergies, but instead developed more and more over time.
And, besides--mosquitoes.
Also, since my house burned down, I no longer enjoy the smell of a campfire.
But books? Yeah, books are safe, man. So far I haven't had a bad reading day!
Anyway, I recently remembered this day while chatting with my parents about the good old days, and thought you might enjoy hearing about my particular no good very bad day.
And now, I'm going to go to bed and read something.
Good night!
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