Daily writing prompt

Have you ever been camping?

View all responses

Actually, yes, I have been camping many times. I have done the fancy camping, which is not really camping, but a small hotel on wheels in a nice campground with showers, and we all sit around the fire, eat well, and pretend we are roughing it. Which is complete nonsense.

However, I have been camping many times on what some would consider the extreme side. For years, my Dad and I would drive from our home in New Hampshire to Greenville, Maine. We would jump on a puddle jumper, and it would fly us into a lake of our choice in the state of Maine. I remember the Alagash Waterway, Rainbow Lake, Coffeelos, and Webster. There were others, but this is going back 40+ years, so that is all memory allows.

This was always Memorial Day weekend, and the only way in or out was by plane. Also, in all the times I can remember, we only saw other humans once, meaning if you got hurt, you were there for days until the plane came back.

One year, we were having coffee, and 10 feet behind us came a huge moose. He walked right past us into the water and swam across the lake to the other side. It was the most amazing sight you can imagine. That animal could have killed us, and it was shocking how quietly he moved. Of course, we did not breathe until he was in the water.

On another occasion, we came back from fishing all day and found the tent a bit mangled; we think it was a bear looking for food. Needless to say, we had to fix the tent, make sure no food was exposed, and sleeping that night was a bit dicey.

We typically stayed for 4 days, as I recall, and I did mention we flew into the lake, which means if you were not fishing, which we did for 10+ hours a day, you were sleeping or eating. As for the facilities, that is 5 days without a shower, and the “restroom” was a log with the bark removed and some good balance!

Since we were so close to the Canadian boarder and it was playoff hockey season we listed to the games in French on a tiny AM transistor radio, remember this is the late 70’s and early 80’s there was no cell phones, internet or electronics. You enjoyed the time with your dad, listening to the game, sleeping in a tent, and just talking. Catching fish was secondary, and coming was not really that important either. But the memories are priceless.