“You know what I like best about camping?”
The girls were settled in the tent for the night and I could hear them talking.
“What?”
“You can’t fall out of your bed.”
I could see the light of their pink dollar-store glow sticks bouncing around as they talked, snuggled in their sleeping bags. I knew they were happy to be here.
Ah camping. This was our third year. It was so busy that I hardly know where to begin. There was so much to do at Charleston Lake. We went on a couple of short hikes, went canoeing, caught fireflies, went to town to for ice cream and to replenish our ice supply. We did a lot of swimming and collected rocks. Raspberry bushes flanked our campsite. We caught frogs and spied on birds and turtles. It is a great place to go and I would recommend it to anyone.
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Sleep
For me, a perfect night’s sleep was an unreachable dream. It poured rain on the first night, and it was also extremely humid. We lay sweating on top of our sleeping bags, listening to the rain, which sounded like someone spraying a sheet of tin foil with a hose. I eventually fell asleep from the sheer exhaustion, only to awaken about 20 times that night (as I did every night) for the following reasons:
Bugs
I still don’t know the difference between a horse fly and a deer fly (if you want to know, some info is here), but it’s safe to say that although I love most creatures I hate these little buggers and feel no remorse killing them dead. They bite. And it hurts. And then it itches. A lot. I saw a few people jogging around the campsite with fly swatters around them. At first I balked, and then I understood. When I walked around I was essentially doing the same thing, except with my arms, and failing them so randomly didn’t ever improve the situation. Perhaps a well-timed thwack with a swatter works?
The worst is when they come at you in the water. There you are, la di dah, enjoying the day, when all of a sudden you are divebombed by a horse fly. It’s big, black, and with a one track mind. They want nothing but to take a hunk out of your skin. Fortunately they are fairly slow as far as bugs go. It’s not impossible to kill one with your hand. And when you do, it’s pretty sweet to see it fall to the ground. I like to stomp on its lifeless body and give a little cheer.
During day two of camping I developed a ghost itch. It’s the kind of itch that you slap because you think it�s caused by something that’s going to bite you, but most of the time it is just a blade of grass tickling your leg. I wasn’t just being hounded down by bugs, but by their phantoms as well.
At night we always tried to clear the tent of bugs before we went to bed. We did the best we could yet always missed a few. Like the night I woke up, clicked the lantern on only to find an earwig strolling up my leg. Strangely it had assumed a war-like position, pincers up, as if it knew what was coming. FYI: Earwigs mainly are a nuisance pest. Their reputation is made worse by the widespread fear that many people have regarding these insects. Several tales exist concerning alleged damage of earwigs: how they like to crawl into ears or how the forceps cause a painful pinch. These stories have little basis in fact, although earwigs have been known to cause a mildly painful bite when sat upon or handled.
You don’t hear them coming, not like the mosquito. Now that’s a good topic for psychological study. What feeling does this tiny sound arouse in us: fear, panic, annoyance, craziness? Few sounds that get us moving faster than that of the mosquito.
Peeing at night was a challenge for this reason. In the middle of the night, the last thing I wanted to do was hike out to the comfort station. So, off we go into the forest. The downside: newly revealed white parts act as a beacon to all the bugs in the forest and they attack sensitive formerly bite-free areas en masse. The upside: perhaps the perimeter of urine around the campsite acts as a barrier and frightens animals away?
If a genie suddenly decided to bestow a wish upon me I would respectfully request immunity from any manner of bite or sting. It would be a priceless gift, especially in regards to mosquitoes. For some reason they always go for my feet. It drives me crazy. During our first day of camping I had a mad fit of scratching and actually tore a piece of skin off my big toe. It was itchy all week. I doused my toes in calamine, although I would have preferred kerosene or surgical removal. The skinless toe got infected and then scabbed over, but it still looks disgusting to this day.
And then there was the day we almost lost an eye
We had arrived back from a trip out on the canoe. We had just taken about 5000 photos of the girls in various poses with the canoe and with the paddles. Emma marched away with her paddle. I’m not talking about a kiddie paddle, it’s an adult-size paddle with a thin hard plastic blade at one end. She swung it around only to hit Sarah in the face with it. Hard.
I yelled something. I can’t remember what, although I think it was something blunt and accusatory yet stating the obvious like “you hit her in the FACE with your PADDLE!” I was shocked and upset. Emma started to cry. She felt awful. Mark and I felt awful. The people on the beach probably thought we were all crazy and wanted us all to shut up. Sarah was crying the loudest and when we checked her face for injuries we saw that she was bleeding out of the corner of her eye. Her eye! Eyeball and teeth-related accidents make me extremely squeamish. I freaked. We’re talking about her EYE for chrissakes. I was envisioning a trip to the hospital (who knows where the nearest one was) and surgery and potential blindness. But fortunately Emma missed her actual eyeball, it was by a few millimeters, but by jim it was close. The cut was a thin one, and started right at the corner of her eye and went outward about one centimeter. We decided it didn’t warrant a trip to the doctor, and walked back to our site with two wailing children to get ice for her eye, which was already starting to puff up.
Emma got a lecture about being careful, as did Sarah because she was standing too close and wasn’t paying attention. It was a terrible ending to what had been a lovely canoe trip.
Speaking of animals
There is a ton of wildlife at the park. There are lots of birds, chipmunks, red squirrels, snakes and there was even a tree frog at our site. We also saw a beaver, which is apparently a rare sight for the area.
I was awakened almost every night by raccoons. And why wouldn’t they be drawn to our site, given the amount of food the girls dropped and strewn all over the place?
There were two memorable raccoon-related nights. (1) Mark poked me because he thought I was snoring. Ha. It wasn’t me this time. There was a raccoon making weird piggy-like snorts on the other side of the tent wall. And yes, the fact that it could have been a bear definitely crossed my mind.
(2) I was awakened to the sound of scratching. It was a distinct kind of noise, and I was immediately able to recognize the source. Someone was trying to get into our backpack. My first thought: how on earth did they get it out of the car? If it’s a raccoon, which it likely was, could they have figured out the door handles?
I emerged from the tent and flashed the light on them. It was a mamma raccoon and two babies, and they were trying really hard to get into the backpack. The zippers were giving them a little trouble. I stomped my feet and made chase-away noises. They weren’t budging. I walked closer. They still weren’t budging. And then I realized why. They had snuck under the walls of the screened in tent that acted as our “dining room.” They were effectively trapped.
What I didn’t want to do was anger a mother raccoon. But at the same time, my camera was in there and I had to get it quick. I backed off, made a few scary-but-less-threatening stomps and they darted back under the wall and out into the forest. But they were loathe to leave. I flashed the light at them until the forest obscured by view.
I reviewed the contents of the backpack. We had taken it with us on a canoe trip and it was full of snacks. There was half a bag of marshmallows, trail mix, goldfish crackers (eXtreme cheese flavour) and the camera, which was not damaged.
At the beach the next day Mark asked me where the cashews where. I looked for them but couldn’t find them. Aha! This was what they had snacked on last night! A six-dollar back of jumbo roasted whole cashews. They probably thought they hit the jackpot.
Anyway, it was a wonderful trip. We have tons of photos, and I hope to format and post some of them later today. So check back. :)
