Camping on Memorial Day Weekend

When I was a kid, every year after supper today, we’d load up the car and dog and head down to camp for the long weekend. The lake would be so cold it made your hands or feet ache and there was no heat or electricity or running water. We cooked on a woodstove and hung out in the livingroom cottage where there was a fireplace. We slept in sleeping bags in our cottage at the end of the beach. I remember the delicious cold and mothball scent of stored quilts. The alluring scent of living water, hemlocks and woods, the fragrances in the fields of wild strawberries and daisies. Those particular bird songs, towhee, wood thrush that always evoke childhood, a scolding chipmunk. Lugged water up from the lake. Hiked the woods and fields bird watching and celebrating each jack in the pulpit, each wake robin red trillium, the hepatica and white carpet of trilliums, wild red columbines. Greeting each, visiting each from memory to exclaim over their reappearance.
A month later after the last day of school, we packed up dog and cats and goldfish and moved down for almost three months. My bedroom was the farthest north on the beach. Often after storms the beach in front was eaten away and I could fall asleep with the lullabye of waves almost close enough to touch.

Tags: birds, childhood, childhood memories, cycles, ecology, environment, outdoors, Plants, Spring, summer, trees, wilderness