by Deb Presley

Year after year, we have bonding experiences that make their way into family folklore. These bonding moments are the stories shared at the dinner table—and will be for years to come. Whether from camp experiences as a kid myself, or camping as an adult with my very own family, our back-to-nature experiences create some lasting memories. Invariably, far too many of our camp stories are woven from tragic or dangerous threads.

By nature, lasting, poignant moments become more memorable when combined with a smidgeon of distress. Most of the time, we fail to recount the expected: the majestic, mountain scenery or of watching a moose meander across a meadow. It’s usually more along the lines of, “Do you remember when we were camping out West, when Uncle Ted sat on the fish lure?” Oh yeah, now there is “some good memory-making stuff.”

Of course, pain and humiliation are both involved, since it involved a fish lure and his derrière. Uncle Ted gets to relive this moment in history: the fish lure barb being buried deep in his buttocks. And, of course, when things like this happen, the nearest hospital is hundreds of miles away. And so was the case with Uncle Ted. The problem became how best to extract the lure; so, one by one the adults “took a peek,” as Uncle Ted lay embarrassed in the “privacy” of his tent. Each went in confident of a solution, and each came out doubled over in laughter, the biggest and loudest coming from Aunt Sue. I never did learn how they managed to extract the lure from YOU KNOW WHERE, but it sure made Uncle Ted holler.

Poison Ivy. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about: that camouflaged, leafy plant that seems to leave its lasting imprint on generation after generation. From grandparents to toddlers, it seems we ALL remember “getting into poison ivy” at one time or another. On the occasion when my cousins and I got ourselves into a good batch of poison ivy, we wore our pale pink Calamine lotion like proud Indian princesses.

My oldest daughter has already repeated the missteps of the generations before her. She and her friends, deciding to play tag in the woods, while taking a break from boating on the lake, ended up with their own case of PI. The only difference is that this generation of Poison Ivy survivors dons Calamine Clear . . . . Now, is that really an improvement? Anyway, she and her friends already talk about the time they went to the lake and got poison ivy “all over.”

Another nearly tragic tale that comes to mind involves a trip where we planned to camp in an authentic Indian teepee for the weekend. Some of my girlfriends and I had just graduated from high school. We decided that this sounded like a good outdoor adventure. Of course, we were way to cool to camp with our families, so what we wanted was a little more independent, back-to-nature experience. Our families agreed, but part of the deal was that we had to take my friends’ little brothers with us. No doubt, this was to keep us out of trouble, which I might add as a parent now, was a very good idea. We packed up my friend’s family station wagon—you know the kind, with the realistic-looking, wood-grain side panels? This, combined with the little-brother package, insured that we would not be going out scouting for boys in the town near our campsite. We arrived at our teepee. It was near a small stream, and it looked like it was taken right out of a scene from Gun Smoke. We changed all that, though, by strewing our colorfully woven lounging lawn chairs, rafts for sunning in the nearby lake, and our big Boom Box. The chattering birds took flight, and the bubbling brook was silenced by tunes by Duran Duran, Boy George, and DeBarge (Ooh . . . and I like it.).

So there we were, baking in our baby oil, with our little Indian brothers out looking for 167 of the finest sticks to build the nighttime campfire. Suddenly, the wind picked up, dark storm clouds were approaching—and quickly. We frantically searched for the boys, who, just moments ago, we were doing our best to get rid of. Fortunately, they weren’t far, and we all ran for the safety of the car. Gripping each other, we peeked out the windows to see our teepee giving way to the wind, and our stream becoming a river, overtaking the entire campsite.The wind was so strong it nearly peeled those beautiful side panels right off the family wagon, but that sturdy station wagon got us out of harm’s way and to the hotel by the lake where we sought refuge. Did I mention it was a five-star hotel? It was. In we walked looking like survivors of nature’s fury—muddy and beaten, but not broken—and with a whopping $48.59 we had pooled together to pay for the room. This was way before teenagers carried plastic. Fortunately, with the reports of tornadoes in the area, the hotel manager took pity on this motley crew, accepted our $48.59, and put us up in the finest hotel suite any of us had ever seen. From near tragedy to triumph, we now had cable TV, warm beds, and even a hot tub to soak away the cares of the day.

Aside from battling the elements of Nature, youth camps seem to be THE PLACE to earn the all-important emotional stripes that must be earned before adulthood. These are not emotional scars, mind you, but rather stripes on the heart that are earned through difficult moments. Without these, we’d be walking marshmallow zombies, not nearly tough enough to raise children, or for that matter, later to face old age. My mother-in-law, Barbara, remembers a camp race day that involved a timed race across the monkey bars. Even though she was only about eight years old at the time, she remembers it like it happened yesterday. Racing against her were these twin sisters named Brenda and Betty Thomas.

The final race came down to just Betty and her. As their arms flailed and flew across the monkey bars, Betty slipped, fell, and broke her arm. Betty got hurt bad; Brenda got incredibly mad; and little Barbara was extremely sad. It really hurt her feelings that the twins got mad at her, and she really felt bad about the incident. Why has she remembered this for all these years? The incident striped her heart with compassion even during the most spirited moments of her life.

I personally bare the emotional stripes of being the last girl at church camp to be asked to the “formal dinner.” Yes, sad, but it’s true. I had a mug only a mother could love. I had a gap between my two front teeth that you could drive a school bus though, maybe even two. I would not have had the slightest notion to put my hair up, and if it wasn’t a t-shirt, shorts, and green-and-gold tube socks (our school colors), well, it didn’t need to be worn. To top it off, I was sporting a walking cast on my right ankle that I had worn through and through, and it was now a nice, muddy mess that didn’t improve one bit when I “accidentally” fell in the lake . . . and it probably didn’t smell all that good, either.

At the time, I remember being crushed as each of my friends was asked to the dinner. My heart raced each time a boy walked toward me, then passed. Then, it happened. I remember right where we standing. I remember the tree we were standing next to, the sun simmering on the lake, his light brown, wavy bangs framing his freckled face. I remember how surprisingly happy I was to be asked, my realization that boys might not really have cooties, and my awareness that I might not want to remain a veritable Tom-Boy very much longer. I too was obviously changed by this incident, but I knew that this stuttering, shy boy had seen something inside of me that tugged at his heart strings. Or, maybe, he just didn’t want to eat by himself. Either way, it’s another, almost dreadful, but dreamy, summer camp memory that will live on in memory.

From camping experiences involving tornadoes, torrential rains that carried our tent away, sudden summer cold snaps where we nearly froze, wicked sunburns, snakes, heartbreaks, raccoons, skunks, and much more, our nearly tragic tales continue to be spun and retold. As Spring Break rolls around, and summer brings on the heat, try to venture out and spin some magical, camping memories of your own.