Overhead, the summer clouds darkened in the afternoon sky. My silver, Ford Escape was neatly and pristinely packed with all of the essentials. Tents, stakes, tarps, and everything else that would be key to having a successful camping trip. I turned the key in the ignition and began driving out of my small, dusty town. Sam, Katie, and Danny were all sitting in various positions of my car, and as I turned onto the highway, a grizzly yet wise voice came over the radio bringing the weekend’s weather report.
“Stay indoors this weekend folks,” he almost growls. “Hurricane Dean is underway; heavy winds and flash flooding will start tonight.”
I glanced to my friends, and from all of their expressions I could tell that they were on the same plane of thought as I was. We had been planning this trip for weeks, and we were certainly not going to let nature get in our way. With a nod from Sam, I accelerated and continued our journey to our state park camping site.
As I pulled into lot 154, I couldn’t help but notice that there was just one other group of campers in sight. “Wow,” said Katie, “This really is like wilderness now.”
No one responded, and we all exited and begin unloading the contents of my car into the large and familiar patch of dirt. The four of us took this trip every year, and we always made a point to book exactly the same campsite. However, it appeared different than how it was when we last left it. It was not situated quite the same; the dirt was alien; there was more grass.
Birds were chirping merrily above us, in a language that wasn’t decipherable to any of us. I looked into the canopy of trees above my head, noting just how surrounded by nature we really were. It was everywhere; it was closing in on us. But I was quickly snapped out of my reverie as Danny called to me over a small gust of wind, “We really need to get the tent up!”
“Yeah…Where should we put it?” I asked.
Sam was the first to respond. “It needs to be near the back. That way if any cars or walkers pass by, we won’t be disturbed.”
“No,” Katie shook her head. “We’ll be closer to the forest then. Animals are running around and what not. This is nature, and I for one don’t feel properly equipped to deal with some of those things at the moment. I’d really hate to acquire rabies. We’d be safer if we were closer to the road. But I think we should put it in the middle.”
“Won’t it be too close to the fire then?”
“Nah, we’ll just keep it small.”
Content with that decision, we unpacked the tent, and began constructing it. We started by putting together the base and then working our way up until finally, we could stake it into the ground so that it would stand solid.
The rain continued to endlessly fall from the overhead sky. As thousands of drops forced their moisture upon us stinging our bare skin, we were compelled to adapt to this new problem. Luckily, I had managed to pack three giant golf umbrellas which sheltered and protected us from any unwanted wetness.
Soon the sky began to fade to black, and we realized that we still needed to build a fire. Danny argued that we did not need to go to the trouble so late in the day, but I reminded him that a fire was crucial. Without it, we would have no real source of heat, and the hotdogs we brought would be of no use unless cooked. And we certainly couldn’t survive happily on a quick fix of snack food. He obliged to my reasoning, but that is not to say that he did so with out much fussing and grumbling when he had to leave his umbrella behind.
Arms interlocked and flash lights in hand, we entered the start of the forest behind our campsite to find some wood. We searched through endless heaps of fallen leaves and other various forest matter, trying to decipher what was important and what would work best to achieve our goal. However, it became difficult because everything was drenched with the rain. The twigs we found were drooping with the weight of the water, and the pores of the larger branches were so soaked that there was no way that a fire could be ignited from them. Though slightly disheartened, we kept searching, and soon we came upon a small, unoccupied den containing just enough twigs, branches, and bark to create and sustain and adequate blaze.
With our bounty piled in our arms, we made our way back to our site and began loading everything into the circular grate. We used a systematic fashion: small twigs at the bottom with the larger pieces forming a teepee shape on top. When we were content with the arrangement, Danny pulled out the matches and began trying to get the twigs to catch. After many unsuccessful attempts, he threw the five-hundred-pack of matches to the ground in frustration.
As he did so, my attention was called to a lone man walking along the road. He had no umbrella, but he seemed completely comfortable with his surroundings. Dressed in flannel and simple jeans, he was unshaven, a little scruffy, looked well accustomed to the nature that surrounded him. The four of us exchanged glances, and Katie sloshed eagerly through the muddy ground to meet the stranger.
“Hi,” she started. “My friends and I are camping, and we can’t get a fire going. Is there any way you could help us?”
The man stopped, and stared at her with his head atilt. “Why do you think I would be able to help you?”
Katie’s cheeks flushed a slight shade of crimson. “I’m sorry; it’s just that you look like you’re a camper.”
“Well for your information, I’m not an avid camper; I’m an ornithologist, and I was just walking around to see if there were any birds out.”
“Oh…it’s just that…you look…”
“I look like a camper? What, just because I dress comfortably and don’t shave every day I have to be a mountain man?”
“Well…”
The man considered her for a moment. “I will tell you one thing though. First, you need to figure out how not to make a fire. After you’ve done that, you’ll be able to see the way.” He laughed to himself. “I remember this one time—”
“You know, I think we’ve got it,” Katie interrupted as she backed away from the man. “Thanks anyway.” After her abrupt closing, she turned and power walked back to our group as the man grumbled angrily and disappeared into the distance.
“What do we do now?” Sam asked with little lines of worry etched in her face.
“Hold on a sec,” I said as I ran to my car and returned with the previous day’s newspaper. I began crumpling it up into wads and tossing them into the grate.
“Give me a match,” I called out over the rain.
Danny looked at me with a hint of disgust. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to. Logic makes sense, life doesn’t.” Bemused at my rare moment of profound knowledge, I threw a few lit matches into the pit, and sure enough, it soon sparked a small yet effective fire.
As we cooked our food, the storm grew more and more intense with each passing second. The raindrops increased in size and were pelting us with great velocity. The wind picked up, and tried to blow us around in different directions. Its power was amazing, and there were a few times that I was sure that one of us was going to be taken away. Overhead, thunder began to orate across the invisible, black skyline. It began quietly, but as it picked up confidence, coupled along with skill from previous experiences, it grew louder in a desperate attempt to productively communicate its anger. Standing there, we didn’t speak to one another, but instead chose to stand in silence around the fire, umbrellas in hand, listening to nature’s endless speech.
All around us the sound of the hurricane was deafening. It was warning us that we had no place in being here, that we would fail because of our lack in preparation. As we were enjoying our strange noisy silence, a particularly large gust of wind tore through the campsite. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, except for the fact that it took our tent with it. The large, green dome floated up into the air and landed gracefully in the middle of the street.
As we began walking to retrieve the runaway tent, a truck marked Park Ranger turned the corner and drove down the street. The path it was taking meant that it was destined to collide head on with the tent, and by the look of it, the driver seemed oblivious to the giant obstruction in the street. Twenty feet away. We all yelled as we picked our pace up to a run. Ten feet away. We raised our voices to the highest volume possible, but it was of no use; the cacophony of nature’s voices drowned us out. Finally, with a skidding crash, the front bumper came into contact with the tarp, and our tent lay mangled in the middle of the street. It lay there, no longer a tent. A heap of twisted wire, metal, and cloth, it had transformed itself into something else entirely. Sam grabbed the destroyed pile and began dragging it back to our plot. The driver looked at us sympathetically, but Danny waved to him to signify that it was okay, and the man drove off as if it had never happened.
“Why did you let him do that?” Katie shot as we returned back to the fire.
“What else could I do? It’s not like he was going to build us another one.” Danny stopped, ankle deep in a puddle. “Look guys, we’ve lost our tent, the campsite is going to be under water within the hour, and there is no way we’re keeping this fire going. Let’s just go home.”
“No,” I said defiantly.
“Why not?” he asked, lines of anger now showing in his face were disfigured by the torrents of rain separating us.
“I don’t want to miss out on the experience. I mean just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we have to quit.” Despite the fact that my clothes stuck pasted themselves to my skin in wetness, despite the fact that I was quite positive that I would never be able to be dry again, I was not going to completely abort our cause.
“And where do you intend on sleeping?”
“Do I need to sleep?”
“Seriously. Let’s try to be a little more mature about this.”
“I have a car. I’ll sleep there. You can leave if you want. Have fun getting home.” I knew I was pissing Danny off slightly more than necessary, but it wasn’t without purpose. He eventually gave in to my refusal to agree to leave the premise, but it wasn’t without a bit of bartering. I agreed to shorten the trip and leave the next afternoon.
We stood and watched the fire until it cracked and fizzled into ash. Soaked skin and clothing, we looked like victims stranded from a shipwreck. Finally ready to call it a night, we crawled into my car and attempted an uncomfortable slumber. I didn’t sleep much, and opted to watch the raindrops racing down the windshield in synchronicity with the howling voice of the wind and thunder coupled with the spattering of rain. They were constant, relentless sounds that never ceased, but they were saying something. It was in a language I was not all too familiar with, but I knew it was making sense, and trying to teach me to understand its lingo.
Somewhere around three in the morning, I fell asleep only to wake a few hours later to antsy friends. It took about ten minutes to hastily throw everything sloppily back into my car and speed off to the highway. I felt different, as if I had learned some abstract knowledge, but I couldn’t quite place what it was.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I reached the interstate. I had never been so happy to be away from nature. Though, no sooner had I though this than I realized that never in my life had I truly escaped nature. Nature was omniscient, and completely engulfed every facet of my life since birth. Nature would always surround me, and now my challenge would be to learn how to deal with it.
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