I went camping last Wednesday night for the first time in my new found sobriety. It was a long 5 mile trek out spring road to my favorite camping spot. I had my pack full of all my gear and my Kelty tent. It must have weighed 80 pounds. My favorite camping spot is a creek fed pond amidst hardwoods and pines out in the country on the edge of town.
It was abnormally warm that afternoon and the skies threatened rain. The temperature was hovering around 75 degrees (24 Celsius) and it was muggy. I knew a big storm was coming from reading the weather forecast but decided to go anyway. I love camping in acclimate weather.
Upon arriving at my favored spot I pulled off my pack and begin setting up my tent. I prepared for the worst case scenario and used all my tie downs on the tent. I then got to work gathering up the wood for a large fire and for cooking supper. After gathering the wood, I made a ring of rocks to define the fire and scraped away all the nearby leaves and debris. In good time I had a roaring fire going.
That night I brought along all the provision to make hoboes; my favorite camping food. It is a large beef patty smothered with onions, carrots, potatoes, and a mixed sauce of ketchup and mustard. I prepared all this before I left home and had it packaged in zip lock bags. I put it all in some heavy sheets of aluminum foil and placed it in the coals of the fire to cook. It took almost two hours to get good and done.
In the meantime, I sat by the fire listening to my little am/fm/weather band radio and taking long draughts of tobacco smoke from my pipe. The fire flickered and glowed in front of me. The heat wafted up and made the orange/red foliage above me shiver in the heat and the light. I sat for the longest time getting lost in my thoughts and listening to the constantly repeated weather report on the weather band. There were all kinds of weather warnings being put out.
By the time my supper was finally cooked enough to my liking, the sun had almost set and you could see bright flashes of lightening on the horizon. It was still too far off to hear the rumbles of thunder yet. I cleaned up my mess and trash and got all my gear inside the tent. It was too hot for my down sleeping bag so I just slept in my fleece bag liner on top of it with it zipped up.
I couldn’t go to sleep. This was where my old stand by, Southern Comfort, would come in to play in subsequent camping trips. I would drink a pint until it was finished and I was comfortably numb. It would help me go to sleep. So that night I just lit my candle lantern and read The Last of the Mohicans. It was a fitting setting for reading about Native Americans and helped me get into the feel of the book.
Around midnight, a huge storm had blown up upon me. I could hear the thunder and see the lightening vividly for an hour preceding it. Boy, it was a big one with very strong gusts of wind. I lay in my tent with the sound of very hard, beating rain falling on its lining. Man, I love times like this I thought. I felt so alive and at one with nature. I also get scared as well but that is part of the adrenaline rush. I got worried my tent was going to leak and all my gear would get wet. Luckily, I had the foresight to bring my nice Kelty expedition tent and not my cheap Wal-Mart tent. She held up just fine and I was high and dry in the morning. I ended up eating a lukewarm bowl of oatmeal for breakfast and hiking the five miles back to home just in time to go to my volunteering session. It was a good time and one that I will remember for many days to come.
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