An entry that has nothing to do with blog prompts or place entries but does deal with nature

The weekend camping trip that lasted a night

Our first clue that this camping trip wasn’t going to go well should have been the fact that our city slicker Honda Accord was having issues navigating the deep ruts into Horsethief Reservoir. If I subscribed to the Ancient Greek belief that there were omens to be seen in every bird wheeling overhead, I would have read the omens in every mud caked, heavy duty truck towing a trailer that rumbled past us. But we bounce happily along in our little blue car, nine months into our marriage and excited about showing off the camping prowess we had developed as kids.
When I was younger, my family went camping every summer with my grandparents (who had all the camping stuff). Grandpa and Grandma did most of the preparation. They also had the tent trailer, which was the only way Mom and Dad would go camping. Gram would have breakfast hot and ready by the time my brother and I rolled out of bed and we would spend our days hiking, splashing in the lake or reading and our evenings playing cards, roasting marshmallows, watching meteor showers and listening to Dad teach us all about the stars and the constellations. This is what I had envisioned for our camping trip that June, and it is exactly what didn’t happen.

“Well, we can’t go any further,” Brian says, pointing to a sign that said “No Trespassing.”
“Looks like it,” I say, frustrated. He hadn’t turned down any of the roads we’d passed that had signs promising camp grounds. He always has to explore everything and I hadn’t figured out how to handle that yet.
After a very long time and a rather tricky turn around, bookended by two large trucks waiting for us to quit trying to turn around so they could roar past us, skimming over holes we kept trying not to sink into, we head back to the campgrounds.
The Horsethief camp ground we finally bound into isn’t at all like I remember. It is a small, flat plain of grass populated mostly by campers and tent trailers, with a few tents sprinkled in for good measure. Where are trees? I remembered a forest populated by fir, hemlock, pine, and spruce. But all I see is grass and a few token trees scattered here and there.
We snatch up the last camp site available. A campsite entirely devoid of trees and backing up to a large camper.

“This is Horsethief?” I ask, getting out of a car that is more brown now than blue.
“Yes, ma’am.” Brian bounces out of the car. “Do we have any food?”
Do we have any food? I laugh. Of course we have food, I personally packed the food. I am so good at food packing that I have enough food for a very long weekend. Well, actually, Gram told me what to pack and gave me her “camping kitchen” box with all the stuff I could possibly need to make meals. But I like to think I’m good at it. I even packed steak for dinner.
I toss him some trail mix. “Shall we put up the tent?”
We break out the tent we got for our wedding, the tent we haven’t opened yet. The only thing I know about any tent is that it has to go up. The only other thing I know about this tent is that it’s bright green. It wasn’t until that night that we realized it is a summer tent and not meant for keeping in warmth at high altitude early in June.
I unzip the tent bag, forgoing the instructions because I have to look like I know what I’m doing, and dump out the contents.
“So, we stick the poles in these holes?” I ask, awkwardly poking a still disassembled pole at the green canvas. Maybe I should have read the directions.
Brian’s blue eyes are twinkling and he’s trying not to laugh, “Something like that. How about we lay the tent out first and then stick the poles in.” He then proceeds to wander over our camp site, sitting or laying down at intervals rather like a dog. I just stand there holding my limp tent pole.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to find the best place for the tent. We don’t want our heads on the down side of a slope and we don’t want a place with lots of holes. Or rocks,” he adds as he tosses a few into the gravel road. “Let’s put it here.”
We put the tarp down over a patchwork quilt of wild grasses and tiny wild flowers-blue and white and pink.
Not long afterwards a lime green tent sprouts from the ground. Looking at it, I realize that I’ve never actually slept in a tent before. This could be interesting.
Brian wants to go fishing off the bridge. I hate fishing. When I was a kid, I went with my grandpa once or twice and only ever succeeded in catching logs, sticks, algae, or myself. But I go fishing with Brian because he wants to and I want to make him happy. We take our poles and join a few other couples on the edge of the bridge. Brian tosses me a worm.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I ask. I’m sure my face registers my disgust.
“Stick in on your hook like this.” He sticks his worm on his hook and casts, very nicely I might add.
I stand there with the worm in my hands, looking very grossed out.
“Here, let me get that for you,” he leans over and hooks the worm for me. “There you go. Now you cast.” He kisses me on the nose.
“And how do I do that?”
He laughs.
“What? I haven’t been fishing since I was, like, ten, okay? And I almost hooked Grandpa!”
He laughs some more and shows me how. I have to concede, he knows way more about camping than I do.
I mostly just sit with my line in the water until Brian tells me to reel it in and stare at the beautiful, welcoming trees across the reservoir. That must be where we camped when I was a kid. There’s five times as many trees over there as over here.
Night falls quickly in the mountains, as does the temperature. At night fall, we toss our Walmart brand firewood onto the fire, hoping for a raging one like our neighbors have. We get a few small flames. That’s it. It isn’t even enough to roast marshmallows by, let alone stay warm. There is a sign that tells us we aren’t allowed to gather firewood here, which is unfortunate since there’s a huge pile of wood down by the water from a dismantled dock. I shake my fist in protest at the sign. Next time, we’re chopping down our own firewood and not letting Walmart do it for us. In the mean time, we huddle by our almost nonexistent fire and shiver until we can’t take it anymore. We didn't play cards, we barely read and we didn't go on a hike. We did look at the stars, and there I did know more than Brian. But they didn't look like the warm, happy stars I remembered. They looked like cold points of light, shivering in the frigid and airless void of space.
But that may have been because I was freezing.

We decide to crawl into bed where it will be warmer. Or so we think. Unfortunately, we neglected to bring sleeping bags. We have a pile of blankets and sheets to throw over our split double air mattress, but as we find out later that night, none of them were warm enough or big enough for two frigid persons at three in the morning.
I wake up from my half dream state to find Brian trying to share my side of the mattress-which is only barely big enough for me.
“Wha?” I ask. I think I’m trying to ask what he’s doing, but it doesn’t come out that way.
“My side deflated,” he moans. “Can I share yours?”
“No,” I mutter. He squishes closer anyway. At least he’s warm.
As an added comfort, we are serenaded all night by a generator huffing on and off, despite signs that tell people not to run generators at night. The inconsistent growl keeps lurching me out of my sleep and my wonderful dreams about Grandma and Grandpa coming to save me with their tent trailer.

We leave at eight the next morning. When I'm unprepared, nature is not my friend.