My Childhood Camping Memories
Growing up, I had many camping memories. My first recollection of camping was in my front yard. We lived back in the woods and didn’t really know what a campground was until much later in life, but we had seen kids camping on the Mouse club and decided that was what we wanted to do. My older sister and two younger ones got our blankets and pillows and went out into the front yard on a warm summer night. We folded our blankets to look like the sleeping bags we had seen and crawled between. It didn’t take long for us to realize our twin bed blankets weren’t made to crawl into folded so we divided into twos and used one blanket to lay down and the other to cover. We were camping.
The first of my many camping memories
Image by daveparker via Flickr
It must have been about nine P.M. when we saw the house lights go out and my mom called from the door that she’d leave the door unlocked in case we changed our minds. We all shouted goodnight and for awhile we talked and giggled. Then the mosquitoes started that aggravating little buzz in our ears. Then we began to hear a fox in the distance calling her cubs. Then an owl began to hoot in the trees. Then something big and hairy and heavy ran over the top of us. I don’t remember which of us got to the door first but the blankets were left behind and mom met us as we walloped in the door screaming, ‘It was a bear, momma, a big bear!’, we took turns explaining. Mom listened then finally pointed to the screen door. Our big black German Sheppard stood wagging his tail and hassling. It didn’t matter, Mom had to go out and get the pillows and blankets.
Camping memories with my mom
Another memory when I was older concerned my mom and me. My mom loved to camp so she and I went to a campground close to home and set up for the week. We went on Sunday afternoon and had the camp set up by the time most weekend campers were packing up to leave. By morning when we got up we were in a virtually empty campground, but it was great. It was quiet and Mom and I had time to sit around and talk after breakfast then went for a hike to the lake. Monday night, the ranger came by to check on us several times on his rounds so we felt pretty confident we were fine. We made our supper and then made popcorn and sat around the campfire. It seemed late but when we checked the clock by the lantern light, it was nine 9 o’clock. We decided to go ahead and call it a night. We covered the left over popcorn in the skillet, took the lantern inside the tent and got in bed.
The tent we had with us had a bad zipper so we put a duffle bag in front of the open area. We had just barely gotten laid down and turned out the light when we started to hear scratching noises. I wasn’t afraid with Mom there so I moved the duffle and peeked out holding the lantern up. The biggest skunk I’d ever seen was into the popcorn skillet. ‘It’s a big skunk’, I yelled to Mom. She rolled over. ‘It’ll go away. Just shoo it’. So I did and when I did, it turned and ran directly at me. I shoved the duffle bag back in the opening and then my sleeping bag. That time, Mom sat up. We contemplated on what we would do if the skunk found the hole while we sat in the middle of the tent and listened to it scratch on the sides of the tent. About an hour later, the skunk finally went away and we went to sleep. Second night gone.
On Tuesday morning, it was so beautiful. We fixed breakfast and laughed about the night before. We cleaned up everything and put the food in the car. Mom said if the animals found food they would be back. We had a wonderful day. The campground was so quiet and when we went for our walk, there were deer and rabbits and squirrels everywhere. When the campground had been full, the animals had stayed out of sight but I still remember how we walked almost right up to the deer and they just looked at us with those big brown eyes and munched at the grass. A fawn even came toward us and almost nuzzled my hand. Then there were the buzzards I found out years later were condors. I’d seen them in the sky but never close up and they were huge. They were scavenging the campsites for leftovers.
Tuesday night after supper, we let the campfire die out so we could sit against the tent and watch the stars. There were so many, it looked white and every few minutes there was a shooting star. I counted over twenty in a short time. When we went to bed, I plugged the hole again with the duffle bag and we fell asleep quickly and had an uneventful night. Same kind of day on Wednesday but when we went to bed it wasn’t long before we began to smell something very pungent. It wasn’t a skunk. Mom and I sat in the middle of the tent wondering what to do. We could hear the grunts and funny sounds but we didn’t dare look out. The smell got horrible and Mom whispered she thought it may be Bigfoot. She’d heard he smelled awful. Then there was the scratching and bumping on the sides of the tent. Mom always carried a baseball bat so she reached over and grabbed it. Just then the ranger’s lights lit up the tent on his rounds up the hill. I took a chance and lifted the window flap just a bit. I didn’t see anything but did hear whatever it was rustling through the bushes. It never came back.
The most memorable site we saw was on Friday afternoon. Mom and I were sitting on the hillside in our lawn chairs and looking down in this small clearing we watched a phenomenal thing. One by one, two by two, these quails began to gather in this clearing below our campsite. There was one that was making this cooing clicking noise and only him. Within the hour, there were over fifty of the quails congregating. The bird making the noises suddenly made a noise like a sergeant would to his troops and in total unison, at his command; they all lifted off at once, swinging to the right and then to the left and down the valley as one unit. To this day, I have never seen anything like it and my Mom still recalls the incident. Quails are speckled and we had just been talking about the Bible and the great speckled bird, all races of people. How God will call and all will go in unison. It was a very profound moment for me.
I have so many great camping memories, many in my teens and older age but the time with my mom will always be special.