So much of what we encounter daily is beyond what we see. Take a moment. Close your eyes. What do you hear? What do you smell? Is it something in the room? It is you?
I lay in my tent this past weekend, having just awoken. I was in a campground in the Rocky Mountain National Forest. Typically keeping to the backcountry where I rely on very little to maintain sanity and avoid the crowds, I reveled in the sounds and smells of a waking campground. It brought me back to my childhood: one full of dirt and playing on a lake much like the one I had slept near that night.
The morning light had not quite reached my tent. Inside my sleeping bag, I was very warm and had very little clothes on. There was a definite chill in the air, and I wondered how I could be so much warmer with less. Outside was quiet….for a moment. I heard a cooler lid slam shut. Then ice settling…perhaps sliding under some hotdogs, or rubbery cheese sticks. I heard the crackling of firewood followed by the smell of burning paper. Crows cawed from the treetops, planning their strategies for morning breakfast. There was a crow right above my tent…seeming to squawk the same language as one in the distance: caw caw caw…..echoed by caw caw caw. I wondered what they said. Was it “this campsite is a dump…I’ll be right there”?
The sun soon shone on my tent and I watched the dewdrops shrink as minutes ticked by. I soon heard dogs shaking the sleep off of their fur. I envied them. Bacon smells floated through like they were sent to lure the dead from their sleep. It worked.
I rustled out of bed to find that I needed clothes immediately. My dog, Sadie Lou, looked at me and panted. It’s weird getting dressed with your dog looking on. Tent life is very intimate.
I unzipped my temporary home and lumbered out. Dang. That sun was bright. And wasn’t even hungover. I recalled how familiar the last half hour had been. I’d camped with my parents, both sets, several times. I knew how to camp. I knew how to survive in the dark when I was scared. I knew how to avoid swimming because I was terrible at it. I knew that dirt wouldn’t hurt, and scrapes always healed. These were life lessons that stuck.
I walked to the outhouse…and knew when I was close (you always know when you are close). I heard a man sneeze as loud as he could…followed by a banshee scream and a woman’s voice saying “shut the fuck up, Zach”. I chuckled. Oh, there are all kinds in the campground.
I returned to my campsite and started the stove. The damn BIC lighter didn’t work (they never do) and I drug out the real matches. Thank the universe for real matches. I wondered how much I paid for that stupid lighter. In the campsite above me, I heard a woman’s voice say “just give me FIVE minutes, please. Can you do that?”. I chuckled again. Later in the day, I would hear that woman’s son say “Daddy, where did Mommy go?” and he would reply, “she ran away”. And I would laugh again. I knew how she felt.
I remembered all of this…that morning at Green Ridge Campground. It was familiar. And I knew that I was that same girl from long ago. I had friends that screamed in their tents just to be assholes at the break of dawn. I was like that mom taking my kid camping and wishing for five minutes of peace.
I now no longer avoid the lake because know how not to drown. I don’t have bad dreams because the nights now bring sleep after a long day of play. I no longer want that five minutes or to run away. I cherish every moment, every memory, and am brought right back to each of those moments with the smells and sounds of the campground from that morning.
It reminds me to stop and smell the roses…or outhouses….and that I am still that girl, that teenager, that friend, that mom.
Just a girl 