It's o.k.? They're permitted to roam free?

I inserted the key into the front door lock and clenched my teeth as I twisted my wrist. My wince was audible as I grabbed at the key a second time, changing the angle of my arm as I unlocked the door. The pain caused by 20 years of untreated carpel tunnel was exacerbated by the increased barometric pressure due to the approaching storm front. It was a long day and even though I knew sleep would not come easily, I looked forward to my bed and the relaxation I planned to revel in.

Weekends are exhausting and long, and it was only Friday night. The preparation starts as the previous weekend ends. Monday morning you awake with anticipation of accomplishing all that needs to be done before the campground fills. The weather forecast will dictate the order as well as the timing in which the various jobs must be completed. Weed whacking needs to be done again as well as re-mowing the grass. Bathrooms and showers are scrubbed from the weekend that just ended, reservations need a double check to be sure all deposits are received, and no sites have been double booked. Rental trailers and cabins are cleaned and readied for the next occupants. Garbage and recycling needs to be picked up and set out so it can be hauled off the premises only to repeat the entire exercise again. Needed repairs are always multiplying faster than anyone can keep up with. Soda, ice cream and candy vendors must be called with orders so you are fully stocked for the onslaught of campers that will arrive on Friday. Stockrooms are plundered; and all the while the phone rings non-stop with people calling with last minute plans, hopeful that you will be able to pull new sites out of thin air, so that they may disprove the lesson of Aesop’s fable depicted by the ant and the grasshopper. Every year we are amazed how many people do not plan ahead on a beautiful weekend of the summer?


I walked into the foyer without the need of lights; the route to my bedroom imprinted on every cell of my being. I’m grateful that my home is a split level and has 5 less steps to navigate than a 2-story house. My movements were as fluid as a well rehearsed dance, as I shed my clothes walking toward the bathroom, and donning the nightgown hanging behind the door. I brushed my teeth, swallowed my pills and collapsed onto the bed without enough energy to pull the heavy quilt on top.
One deep breath and I exhaled just as the muscles in my body began to release their white knuckle hold which kept my bones erect. And then it happened. I am convinced there is some neurological anomaly in my brain that causes a tune to permeate my subconscious at the very moment it should be shutting down for sleep. Tonight’s torturous selection was the theme song from the “Flintstones” cartoon. I was not having a yabba dabba do time!

Tossing and turning trying to remember any other song, I kept returning to “that modern stone age family”. It was amazing how the lyrics were stored in my brain without my knowledge. Perhaps that explains the inability to retain something I wanted to remember that occurred only moments before. The recesses of the brain fills with inconsequential junk which pushed the more recent mental notes to the forefront causing them to fall off the cranial clipboard with no hope for retrieval.

I decided to put into practice something I read about insomnia. Don’t lay awake, get up and do something. I grabbed my Kindle and went downstairs to read. I read for a few hours when my eyelids began to droop. First I tested my brain by flashing a mental picture of Fred and Barney, and finding no compulsion for replaying their song in my head I walked up both sets of stairs to the bed. It was now 3 o’clock am and I held little hope for a good night’s rest not to mention sleep.

I lay in bed thinking of how to organize the day so that it unfolds without a wrinkle. Put the coffee on first, put in the register drawers, check through the restrooms to make sure they are clean and toilet paper holders are filled. Next look to see what event is on the schedule and organize the needed supplies to carry it through to completion. 9:30 until 10:30 will bring the commotion of wolf watchers signing in, getting tickets, and directing them where to park; which way to go if walking up and where to wait for the bus if they decide they need to ride. There will be a lull between 10:30 and noon where it will just be campers getting their morning coffee and firewood. Then at noon, the morning wolf watchers will descend on the store to look for gifts and souvenirs. From 1pm to 3pm we return to being a campground, 3-6pm will start another round of wolf watchers and finally at 6pm we will be back to only campers filing in and out until 11:00pm when we cash out the drawers, run the reports, walk camp to be sure everyone is quiet and stumble up the steps again.

During this mental planning, I must have fallen asleep. In my dream I imagined a phone ringing. Hearing the rhythm I started to count them, one….. two…..on the third ring, I realized I was not dreaming, but listening, and I grabbed blindly for the phone trying to see which line was ringing. It was 6:30am.

“ Camp Taylor” I answered. Hearing the caller identify herself as the 911 operator jolted me into a full alert. “What is the problem?”, I asked, not really wanting to know but running all the possible scenarios through my mind in a flash. Heart attack, stroke drowning, fire, 3rd degree burns, broken leg…..the possibilities were endless. None however were the case.

“I have a camper on the line and he said there is a bear in their campsite” she explained. As my thoughts collapsed on each other, I could only respond with a single word. “So?” I answered.
“Oh, it’s o.k.? …. Are they permitted to roam free?” she responded.
I was too tired and baffled at that implication to have asked her to send the police to arrest the bear, so instead I simply requested to speak directly to the camper himself and she patched me through.

“You did not put your cooler in your car as you were told, did you”
it was more of a statement than a question. His meek response confirmed my suspicion. “It won’t leave”, he said in a worried tone. “It keeps coming closer to the tent and I have children in here”
“I’ll be right there” I answered, put the phone on the cradle and with reluctance, pulled on my jeans and searched for the rest of my clothing and car keys. My husband joined me and now that we were awake, rehearsed witty answers for the 911 operator in the unlikely event this circumstance should repeat itself. The absurdity of the situation brought back the familiar lyrics. …”lets ride, with the family down the street, through the courtesy of Fred’s two feet….
The car coming toward him was enough to move the bear away from the ransacked cooler and we approached the camper who was peeking out from under the tent flap. We surveyed the contents strewn about the overturned cooler as the camper crawled from his igloo- like shelter.
When the gentleman apologized and explained he thought we were just kidding about the bears, I was starting to seethe. Who would joke about something like that?. The seethe however soon dissipated into a laugh when he proceeded to demonstrate how from inside the tent he was whispering “shoo” to the bear so as not to awaken the other sites around him.
I shook my head in disbelief as my husband tried to explain to him the futility of his actions. “Seriously? A little purple dome whispering “shoo” or a cooler full of bacon, cheese and hotdogs, which would you choose if you were him?” I asked, as I reached for the car door knowing full well that the opportunity for sleep would have to wait for another 17 or 18 hours. By now every corpuscle of my body was clamoring for coffee.
I dropped my husband back at the house so he could get his vehicle and went to the office to make the first pot of Folgers. I began singing to my self…”have a yabba dabba do time, a dabba do time, we’ll have a gay old time”. As the door opened and my husband walked in, I was half expecting him to call for Wilma!

I poured my first cup of coffee, walked into the lounge and sank into the large chair in front of the fireplace as I let the flow of caffeine enter my bloodstream. I glanced at the clock. One hour before we open… I closed my eyes and willed the tension from my body, mentally preparing for another day.

Love is Blind

When you are young and in love, you look at the world through rose tinted glasses. When I accepted my husband’s marriage proposal, I told him I did not care where we lived as long as we were together. I believe I even went so far as to say I’d be willing to live in a tent with him, since we needed to be close to the family owned and operated campground. I was encircled by the whirlwind of romance. Looking back, it would be more accurate to state that I was in the eye of a hurricane.
What can I say? My glasses were as thick as coke bottles, and well tinted!
In retrospect, a tent would have been an upgrade from what we had to live in. It was a 20 year old 10x50 foot mobile home that was not maintained by any stretch of the imagination. When their renters moved out, we spent a week cleaning the nicotine off the ceiling and walls. The counter that held the sink was collapsing, and had to be propped up by a pair of 2x4’s so the food did not slide off onto the floor. The sink was pink, the stove was gold, and the fridge was the original Frigidaire that my husband’s parents bought when they first married back in the early 1940’s. You know the kind--, rounded top-- tiny box in the middle of the top shelf that held one ice cube tray and one half gallon of ice cream. You had to finish the ice cream fast, otherwise the frost would develop around it, entombing the contents until you unplugged the fridge and hacked away the ice with a hammer.

The amount of nicotine on the paneled walls and ceiling was repulsive to me. The latest tenants were told to leave in February, so that we’d have time to clean and do necessary repairs. After the third scrubbing on the ceiling, we made the decision to paint. It was impossible to remove the swirls of brown on white, since the years of nicotine coating would shift with every wipe. The first coat of ceiling white served as a primer, and we left our paint rollers standing on paper towels to drain on the kitchen counter with a small sense of accomplishment. I might mention the accomplishment was not only that the ceiling was painted, but that we were able to get the rollers to remain vertical. This was due to the fact that the kitchen counter was collapsing and was tilted at about a ten degree angle.

My heart sank just a bit the next day when we entered the trailer to apply the second coat of paint on the ceiling. It wasn’t just that I was hoping the paint would have hidden the swirls of nicotine more than it had; it was because our paint rollers were standing on the paper towels and filled with dog food! That was when it hit me. We were not going to be living alone! The years of tenants with dogs, the age and level of deterioration of the unit, and the resourcefulness of the uninvited squatters had turned my home into a food shelter for mice. To this day, I hate the thought of sharing even the tiniest corner of a room with those little rodents.

Another distinguishing feature of our first home was the total lack of insulation in the walls. There was the aluminum skin of the mobile home, four inches of air space and about 1/8th inch thick paneling which was the interior wall. We realized tinsel on the Christmas tree was not an option, since it kept blowing off due to the lack of insulation. It was the only place I knew of that you can sit inside watching TV and leave with a windswept look to your hair.

A hole in the wall above the guest room bureau was repaired by the previous tenant by screwing an old framed mirror, (which no longer had any silvering on the back side) over the gaping hole in the paneling. This same flair for repair was used in the shower above the faucet. Judging by the height and placement of the shiny patch, I believe the previous male tenant thought himself quite the ladies man.


I would not have described myself as a city girl, even though I was from Trenton. My neighborhood back then still had woods, a swamp, and blocks that remained undeveloped. My father and brothers were into hunting and fishing and our yard, though not huge, had almost every kind of tree, shrub and flower that you could imagine. Hence the reason there were only patches of grass where the sun managed to slip through the boughs of overlapping trees. We were raised with bb guns and bows and arrows. No toy arrows with suction cups, they were for sissies. We ate venison, pheasant and fish quite often, since my father was either hunting or fishing every weekend that I could remember. We also had plenty of meats because that was his business. He was a butcher and owner of a wholesale meat co. It was the vegetables and fruits we yearned for on a regular basis. When we did get them, dad went to the extreme. Mom would complain she’d like to have bananas, so dad would bring home a case of bananas, not just one bunch. Everything arrived by the case, so you’d have to gorge yourself on that particular treat until it was gone or ‘til you couldn’t look at another piece of that particular fruit.

Still, I was not prepared for the culture shock that hit me when I started dating a Taylor.
I learned early on that dating a campground operator, meant I would have to come to him from April through October, which was the camping season. I tried to come up to the campground every weekend I could. I’d tag along with him while he worked. As I stated earlier, my rose tinted glasses were as thick as coke bottles. Picking up garbage at the sites and walking camp at night were our “dates”. Yet being young and in love made even the dirtiest of jobs fun.

Eating at camp was another story altogether. I realized with some trepidation that the Italian cuisine on which I was raised would not be on the menu in Columbia. I never knew what Clate’s mom would be serving. To be on the safe side, I’d make a slight detour through the drive thru McDonald’s and eat before I arrived. Venison, and chicken were totally acceptable, but each time the frog legs, rattlesnake, duck, squirrel, eel and turtle were served, I made a mental note to support Mickey D’s to ensure they’d never go out of business, and I would never starve to death in this culinary black hole I ventured into. Rodent pot pie was not something I ever cared to become accustomed to.

I was however, accepted into the family from the first day they met me. That is, until we announced our engagement. From then on, any mention of a wedding prompted an immediate change of subject. I was sure they hated me. Instead, as time passed, it became apparent to me that they worried I would not like living so far from my family Their biggest fear was if I left, their son might leave with me. Clayton was the one they depended on for running the business. Once they realized I was here to stay, I do believe they treated me as well as if I was their own daughter.

Over the years, the lenses have thinned, and the rose tint has faded, though thankfully not where my marriage is concerned. I do not need any glasses to see how lucky I am in the choice I have made.
I am now firmly rooted into the lifestyle of campground owner/operator. Well, rooted may not be the correct choice of words. More like Alfred Lloyd Tennyson’s poem “Flower in the Crannied Wall”. I’m just waiting to be plucked from the cranny!

Getting Healthy

Operating a campground is not your ordinary 9-5 forty hour work week. The days are long and your weekends are busier than the previous five week days. There is an occasional rainy day that you may escape for the afternoon and do something unrelated to work but not on a regular basis... While friends and family relax and have parties and picnics, you are working 14 hours per day after which you collapse onto the bed hoping to get a sound sleep so you can put in another long day all over again. I am not one who is able to sleep with ease, and over the years, spend more time in the office and less time walking the camp. Hence over time, I have become much more out of shape than when I first began this lifestyle. The lack of sleep, poor and irregular eating habits in addition to being tethered to the office, has long term effects that are not only unattractive but unhealthy.
After a year and a half of taking Ambien CR and still getting only 2 hours of sleep, I needed to try another approach. After all, prescription drugs are not always the safest and most beneficial way to go, and decided to try and take a healthier approach to life. Venturing into a health food store intending to take the “all natural” route, I stood in the aisle and looked around me. In my wildest imaginations, I could not have been prepared for the thousands of products that bombarded me and vied for my attention. It never occurred to me I might be lacking in so many vitamins, minerals, and supplements. I did not know I might be so full of so many toxins and parasites! Feeling guilty that I would have allowed myself to deteriorate to my present state, I came face to face with my own mortality and realized if I did not make some changes, I’d be speeding to the end of my days at an alarming rate!
Hurrying to the front of the store, I grabbed a shopping basket and began filling it with various products that promised to cleanse and extend my life - and not a moment too soon. It took two trips and a few hundred dollars, but I was confident that my life was turning around and felt invigorated. One can’t be positive, but I think there was already a spring to my step as I walked to the car. No doubt by the end of the month, I would be sure to feel the effects of the new healthy me. Next step was checking the calendar to know when I would need to restock, and with any luck it would coincide with the third Thursday of the month when everything is 20% off. Added to the purchase was a new pill box so that I might always have my various vitamins with me and start the routine of taking them with my meals. And to ease me past my self admitted forgetfulness, I grabbed a bottle of gingko biloba to improve my memory. Anxious to meet the new me when I gazed into the mirror 30 days from now, I wondered if anyone would notice the change I was already feeling.
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If that is true, I believe I have secured myself the smoothest ride possible. Though I have been to the health food store several times, the greatest visible change is the amount of clutter on top of my bedroom bureau. The new pill box proved useless the first time I started to fill it.
It had room for less than 1/3 the number of pills I needed to take for the new improved healthy me. But a larger box would not have solved the problem of me forgetting to take them. I came to realize how blessed I was that there was no illness to medicate regularly to stay alive, because if so, I’d be dead in a week. The gingko biloba does absolutely nothing while still in the bottle, and until someone comes up with a dose that will jettison into my mouth at the precise moment my lips and teeth part to bite into that forbidden biscotti, I am doomed. The store is not without its redeeming properties however. They have some things like the almond crisp crackers, dried pineapple, wasabi peanuts, among other tasty snacks that seem to defy the need for the memory enhancers. Miraculously, the 30 day supply disappears in considerably less time. I have also accepted the fact that I will not live to be 100 and I’m o.k. with that. Now 54 years old if I look at the progression at which I have aged, I don’t want to think of what I’d look like at age100! I have every intention of informing my family that I would like a closed casket since I missed my opportunity at the age of 23 for anyone to kneel before my corpse and remark “she looks good”.
In addition to nutrition, there is exercise, or the lack of it. Although it took weeks of searching before and after Christmas to find the wii fit game, it baffled me why this game was all the rage. The first thing it does is insult you with an audible wince when you step on the board. In addition, it tells others who step on the board that I’ve been sloughing off! Obviously the patient privacy act doesn’t cover the wii with its patronizing trainer. Yet, I also was swept up in the self flagellating habit of stepping on the board and allowing a 15” tall avatar order me to the point of exhaustion for an hour every day for weeks. Having then had the opportunity to go away for two weeks, the Wii was left behind. On my return, I was insulted for not stepping on that board, and found my avatar asleep. Did I mention that after exercising for a minimum of an hour every day for over two weeks I gained a pound and a half? I have stood up against grown drunk men the size of gorillas, as well as some of the bitchiest women on the planet, and never felt as intimidated as with the little avatar on the wii game. I’ve been home for more than a week and haven’t mustered up the nerve to start again. I am willing to admit defeat, thankful that we do not have tails – I'm not sure the diameter of my thighs would allow for the customary retreat!

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream....

I opened one eye to look at the clock. It was 2am and I still hadn’t fallen asleep. No worries I thought to myself, I didn’t really have to rise until 7:30. At 3:30am, I dragged myself out of bed and added 2 melatonin tablets to the Ambien cr I had already ingested at 11:00pm. By 4:30am, the jingle for the old Pepsodent gum commercial had infiltrated my subconscious and I was on the brink of a total breakdown. As I lay in bed trying to think of something else, the rhythmic breathing of my husband set a new background beat. I am always amazed at his ability to sleep whenever and wherever he chooses. I tossed and turned in bed, trying to jar him awake so that he could experience just a small amount of the sleep deprivation I had to endure on a nightly basis. But the tossing of the covers combined with the rhythm of his breathing only changed the tune in my brain from “You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!” to “in the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight….”

At 5:30am I surrendered to the god of insomnia and went downstairs to the family room. As I flipped the light on, Snow, our white Shepherd was sheepishly walking across the room. She glanced back at me with a look of annoyed resentment that I had invaded her space and caused her to move from the large overstuffed leather chair to the dog bed by the sliding glass door. The reluctant wag of her tail confirmed my suspicion that she heard me coming down the steps. I didn’t have to look at the chair to know she’d broken the rule of no dogs on the furniture. I was sure I could hear the cushion refill with air and there would be a tell tale amount of white hair left behind.

I clicked on the TV remote and channel surfed for about 30 minutes trying to find something worth watching. At last--I hit the power button, satisfied that if I ever do get a good night’s sleep, I won’t be missing anything worthwhile.
Stepping into the laundry room, I threw a load of dark colored clothes in the washer and hit the start button; making a mental note to throw them in the dryer before leaving for work. Then I trudged back up the steps to take a shower, before going to the office.

There is nothing that can forecast your day as much as the first cup of coffee in the morning. No horoscope or fortuneteller can be as accurate as that first sip. If it’s satisfying and smooth, you can approach the morning chores with great expectations. A bitter taste will start the day with a foul mood, if it’s too hot and burns your tongue, it will make you mistrust everyone you come in contact with for the day. This morning the first cup was like an elixir for the gods. It held the promise of a fantastic day! I put the register drawer in and unlocked the front door as the first customers walked passed the window. They were members of our seasonal “coffee club” who gathered each morning under the gazebo in front of the office. Laura had baked a fresh coffee cake to share with anyone who joined them. Yep, satisfying and smooth……a good day in the making!

Laura’s husband Peter was a maintenance manager for an office complex. He was telling us about on office full of furniture that was destined for the dumpster. Among the doomed, there were some conference tables he thought we might be interested in for our adult lounge. Wow, good coffee, delicious cake and a dumpster dive without having to actually crawl into the dumpster! This day was getter better and better. I decided to treat myself to another cup of coffee.

The rest of the morning was pretty uneventful, and in the campground business, that’s a good thing. We were prepared with our days events and every customer seemed to be pleased with their experience. It just doesn’t get better than this I thought to myself. I envisioned myself atop a lily pad floating on a still pond. I love my job! These people make it a pleasure to come to work in the morning. Life is good!

What I forgot to mention earlier, while I was expounding on the virtues of a good
cup of coffee, was that like everything else, there is a limited shelf life. The caffeine will eventually wear off, and sooner or later you have to ingest something other than coffee and cake to survive. I believe it to be a slow process that starts with the introduction of anything other than that great cup of coffee that makes the day’s compass needle start to shift. At first it’s not discernable, but by lunchtime you realize that your lily pad is now detached from its root, and has floated out of the pond and down a raging stream getting bashed on the rocks as it is tossed and shoved toward the river.

The first impact was the report from an employee that one of the weekend tent campers, from what we call the primitive section, has cut down a tree behind their campsite. My pulse soared to new heights. I had to reassure myself that I had, in fact, taken my blood pressure pill before I went to bed last night. Lucky for the camper, I couldn’t leave the store at that time and called Clayton, my husband, on the cell phone to go up to site 89 quickly before they could cut any more. Not so lucky for anyone else who might need to cross my path for the next couple of hours until my pressure leveled out. Moments later, I saw Clayton’s green F250 pull in past the office and turn into the campsite road. The need of vengeance was tugging at my soul and, I knew Clate was too level headed and diplomatic to exact any. He is after all, of English & Irish decent. Italians are much more genetically capable of revenge. I tried to find solace in knowing at least the people would be told to pack up and leave the premises; at most he’d get a few token dollars for the damage. No amount of money could replace the tree that had taken years to grow and survive in the clay soil and rocks. It wasn’t even possible to plant a smaller one and have it survive. The best thing would be to cut it down to ground level and cover it with dirt and leaves so that it appeared there was never a tree there at all. To leave any trace would plant the idea to play Paul Bunyan to the next group of campers to pitch their tent in that area.

News however, does spread fast in a campground, and we could rest assured that no other camper would make that same mistake this weekend. I glanced at the clock and realized that it was already 3pm. If we could just hold out another 7 or 8 hours, we could go home.

At 3:45pm, my lily pad was dashed against another rock. I walked into the back room to wash my hands. As I turned on the faucet, I heard a sucking sound and not so much as a drop of water fell. Rushing down the hall with the urgency of Paul Revere, I conveyed the message that the well was off. Again I saw the F250 pull out of the office headed towards the well house. The reset button was hit and within minutes all was well. One would think no one was the wiser, until you walked into the restrooms and had to flush all twelve toilets. My morning elixir of the gods was all but a distant memory.

If there were any other mishaps that afternoon, the staff knew enough not to bring them to my attention. They have learned the hard way that I possess a rather short fuse and once lit, there was no time to put enough distance between them and me not to be affected by the concussion of the resulting explosion.
Cashing out the register and running credit card reports are the last deed of the day. I did that while Clate did a quick run through cleaning of the restrooms and showers.

Engaged women everywhere should be sure that no matter what the premarital agreement encompasses, a clause is needed that exempts them from cleaning public toilets. This has proven to be the wisest thing I have ever done. When we first talked marriage, I stated I would not work at the campground. Even before the business became ours, it was obvious that this would not be practical. However, compromising with that agreement, gave greater leverage to sticking to the toilet agreement. After 30 years of marriage, I am still quite proud of that negotiation!
We stumbled home at 11:30 pm, another day closer to the end of the camping season, and the upswing of the wolf watching season. Gone are the days when the campground and store closed the end of October and the building became our storage unit for anything that was in the way at the house.

You don’t realize how much useless stuff you shift from place to place rather than dispose of it permanently, until you have to use the space in which you “temporarily” stored the stuff you weren’t using. The month of March was devoted to clearing out and shifting everything from the office, back to the house. Scientist have not yet discovered how to do the genetic altering that would be required to change the habits of generations of shifting and stashing useless stuff. We are a species of “hunters and gatherers”. It has nothing to do with food and survival, but rather the unending search for and collection of junk, and spaces in which to put it. I suspect this was the true reason we mortgaged ourselves to the teeth, spent our grandchildren’s inheritance, and built the addition to the main building which now houses our office, gift shop, lounge, kitchen and stockroom, as well as additional shower rooms. At first we looked around and had no idea what we’d do with all the additional space. But, alas, “stuff” is like water, it will seek its own level and seems to spread very rapidly to cover any open space around it.
When I walked down the hall, I could smell the familiar smell of sour laundry. The mental note to put the clothes in the dryer apparently went unread. I turned the washer on to rewash the same clothes once again.

By midnight I was sliding under the sheets again. This time I took the two melatonin capsules at the same time as the ambient cr. I woke feeling refreshed like I slept the night through. It still seemed too dark so I glanced at the clock. It was only 1:30 in the morning. I closed my eyes hoping I’d fall back asleep before another jingle entered my head…. Too late, the 60’s CD that was playing in the car two days ago began to play in my head and soon “Who wrote the book of love” got stuck on replay. Amazing how songs hit the charts with very few words repeated over and over!

I breathed a grateful sigh of relief when daylight streamed through the window. O.K., so maybe the window and screen are a little too dirty and dusty to allow light to stream. Let’s call it more of a glow. It’s hard to worry about clean windows when you are only in the house to sleep. Back in the office I became dizzy with anticipation of the coffee forecast. Or maybe it was the lack of sleep and too much melatonin. At any rate, the first sip was like a full body massage. Mmm smooth and satisfying! A good day.

Walking Camp Solo

I stepped out of the pool of light emanating from my porch lamp and plunged head on into complete darkness. “You’ve come a long way baby” I muttered to myself and grinned. Not even moonlight to guide me, I thought, as I glanced up at the sky.

I remembered a time not so long ago when I wouldn’t venture out to the mailbox after dark. Yet, here I was walking without a flashlight.

I was doing quite well in fact – until I heard the sound of a twig snap behind me. My heart began to pound as if a switch had been thrown and the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. I glanced behind me only to see a black void instead of the road I had just walked on. My senses were propelled into overdrive - listening – trying to tell if the noise were a bear, or a human. What was I thinking, walking in the woods on a moonless night without a flashlight?! Straining to hear was no use. The wind blowing the leaves and snapping small branches from the trees as they swayed to and fro, forced visions of elephants stampeding toward me; or worse yet, murderous gangs looking for their next target.

I quickened my pace, adding a mental note – next time, nudge my husband and make him get up – who cares how hard he worked today or how tired he is. This is clearly a guy’s job!

As I neared the corner of the field, my pulse started to slow and my breathing returned to normal. Whatever it was that was following me did not pick up on the scent of fear. I was still alive, getting angrier with every step that this outing was even necessary in the first place.

The glow up in the distance was my intended target and I knew it was wise of my husband to store the shells separate from the guns, because at this hour, I’d have been loaded for bear and not responsible for my actions. Taking slow deliberate breaths I tried to regain control of my emotions. My family swears that I have multiple personality disorder and at that moment I couldn’t deny the possibility. The personality I was feeling emerge at this moment was the one they named Yolanda. The first instruction given to new employees is to not do anything that might awaken Yolanda, who lies dormant in the far corners of my subconscious. Going along with the free pass for behavior given with the MPD diagnosis, I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply hoping that Francine, another of the cast of characters that have been assigned to my persona would appear. Francine has been described as the business woman who takes a more diplomatic and less dangerous approach to problem solving, unlike Yolanda.

The music and voices got louder as I approached, and I could see movement through the trees. A startled scream escaped from one of the women sitting to my left as my shadow cut into the circle of light from their campfire.

“It’s long after eleven” I said. “You should know better than this.” As I watched another camper jump up to turn off the radio, I scanned the group of inebriated campers sitting around the fire, trying to maintain an air of authority. My frown became a wince as my eyes settled on the seasonal camper who was the center of entertainment. Roger weighed about 350 lbs, and was bumping and gyrating to the music, wearing nothing but a Speedo. My speech became more rapid as I reminded them of the quiet hours, and sent them all back to their individual campsites. I wanted to hurry home, back to bed before the image burned itself into my brain forever. I immediately realized it was wishful thinking – even a cheetah couldn’t move that fast! When I reached the house, I flipped off the porch light and tiptoed back upstairs.

My body shuddered as I slipped under the covers. Recalling the suety flesh highlighted by the flickering light from the campfire was a vision I’d hoped to soon forget. Pulling the covers over my head must have awakened my sleeping husband. “Is it cold outside?” he asked, sounding exhausted. I shivered as I recounted my recent experience, and told him the next time was his turn. I could see him smile as he rolled over, draped an arm over me, and whispered “welcome to the campground industry”.