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Signs of Life

Nancy Horner

Camping with Whiny-Britches

The month was September and the plan was a camping trip in the wilds of Canada's Algonquin National Park in Ontario. I wasn't too awfully excited, to be honest. We were living in Michigan, at the time, and I thought that being over 1000 miles north of our usual home was about as close as I would ever come to the opportunity to drive to Maine. I wanted to go pick blueberries, just like Sal in "Blueberries For Sal," the favorite story of millions of little girls of the Sixties. And, I hate camping.

"We're going to canoe to our campsite. You'll love it," my husband said.

"I'd rather go to Maine and pick blueberries." The truth was that my idea of "roughing it" has always been sleeping in the drafty little Colorado cabin of my childhood vacations, having to shower with spiders dangling over my head, and shivering beside the heater in the morning. My father thought camping was a miserable waste of vacation time and this little apple didn't fall far from the tree.

"They have moose in Canada. Maybe we'll see a moose." Great, I thought. No showers and I might see a moose. I tried to talk my husband out of the trip, but there was no convincing him that he wasn't booking us on the greatest adventure of all time. September arrived. We packed our tiny Nissan, buckled in our only child, who was five at the time, and headed across the border. About an hour into Canada, the Nissan began to sputter and die. I wanted to turn around, but after driving for twenty miles, one mile at a time — sput, sput, sput, pull over, sput, sput, sput — we found a Nissan shop, where we managed to get the fuel pump replaced in just over an hour. Darn.

The trees were turning in Algonquin and I was pleased to see that the park looked a lot like a flattened version of Rocky Mountain National Park, which I love. Our camping package came with pre-packed meals along with a rented canoe and equipment. As our gear was packed into the canoe, we were given instructions on hoisting our food into the trees at night. "Very important," said the fellow who checked us in. "You may not encounter a bear, but we do have a lot of them and they only cause trouble if they can get to your food. Make sure you hoist the food high enough that they'd have to leap between trees; and make sure the trees are too far apart for them to succeed."

"Bears?" I said to my husband, as we waited for the canoe to be loaded. "You didn't tell me about bears."

"I didn't know," he answered innocently.

We had been canoeing regularly to build up arm strength and thought we were in great condition. What we didn't bank on was the stiff headwind blowing up whitecaps on the lake. As we paddled against the wind, our arms became so sore that I later had to sleep with my hands behind my head to numb the nerve endings.

That first night, we managed to zip three mosquitoes into the tent while loons serenaded us to sleep. I awoke itchy, sore, and far from personable. To their credit, my husband and son completely ignored me. I busied myself with snapping photographs of the beautiful scenery while David cooked breakfast in an inside-out thermal undershirt with his hair sticking out in so many directions he looked like a signpost.

"My arms are killing me," I whined, as we set off in the canoe, boating further back into the series of interconnected lakes. "And we zipped mosquitoes into the tent."

"I know," David said. "That was a mistake."

David was disappointed that we were missing the chance to follow a guide into the woods to howl at the wolves, but I thought listening to humans howl from a distance was more than adequate. Unfortunately, moose season had long since passed. We boated past small islands, tolerant loons and a few other people in canoes. The scenery was spectacular, the water crystal clear and — a shock for Americans — water scooped directly from the lake was drinkable. The second night was uneventful; and we headed back toward the dock on the third day, choosing a campsite within distant view of the lodge.

We settled into our final campsite, prepared our supper and hoisted the food into the trees, took our nightly sponge baths and climbed into our sleeping bags, taking care to make sure any mosquitoes were shooed out before we zipped up the tent. I longed for a nice, deep bathtub. I might as well have stepped outside for a refreshing shower because the third night brought rain.

By that time, though, as tired and uncomfortable as I was, I knew I would happily return for another canoeing trip if the opportunity ever arose. The sights and sounds of Algonquin Provincial Park were well worth the minor miseries.

In the morning, we packed up our equipment and headed back toward the lodge from which we'd embarked. The weather was similar to that of our first day: a stiff wind and a heavily overcast sky. Midway across the lake, with the lodge in sight, the sky opened up and rain began pouring down so heavily that water sloshed inches deep in the bottom of the boat within minutes. As we paddled with all our might, even David began to worry that we were about to become swamped and shouted at me to row harder; the rain and wind drowning out his words, but I was already paddling with all my might. Five-year-old Daniel took the weather in stride, rolling himself into a water-resistant little ball and holding on tight.

As we finally pulled up to the dock, several men came running to help us tie up the canoe and remove our gear. The canoe sat low in the water and we marveled that we'd made it to shore just in the nick of time. On the other side of the dock, we were stunned to see that a few hardy campers were just preparing to take off in the pouring rain. How could anyone leave at a time like this? It was literally raining buckets.

We were so thoroughly soaked that we didn't begin to feel dry until almost six hours later, when we reached Toronto. At our hotel, we unloaded suitcases and soggy clothing and equipment that would need to be hung up to dry; then each of us took our turn enjoying the nice, deep hotel bathtub. Clean and dry, we relaxed on hotel beds as darkness fell. David turned to little Daniel, who was happily checking out Canadian television channels. "Well," he said. "What did you think of our camping adventure?"

"It was pretty fun," Daniel answered. "It would have been more fun, though, without whiny, fussy Mom."

Nancy Horner announces the publication of her short story, "In the Kitchen With Mikey", in the JUST IN TIME Anthology, now available at Wings ePress as download or trade paperback. "In the Kitchen With Mikey" was originally written as an assignment at Writer's Village University and many wonderful students at WVU deserve huge thanks for their critiquing help on the story.