Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Telling a Story



Neither my girlfriend nor I have ever been backpacking. To be precise, and to be fair, I have never been camping at all. The closest that I have come was in the Summer of my junior year of high school. Some friends and I stayed but a single night at a campsite a mere three minute walk to the beach, about two hours south of where I live. There was a bathroom just a moments walk in the opposite direction.

My parents, forced out of the neighborhood of my youth by skyrocketing cost of living, cashed out and moved to Oregon last fall. No longer are they a simple ten minute drive away, and sadly I cannot see them as frequently as I would like to. As it happens, my girlfriend has family in Vancouver, Washington, so we arranged a trip to see my family and hers. 

We traveled by way of Crater Lake. If you have never been, allow me to recommend it with the greatest enthusiasm I can muster. It is one of the most breathtaking natural features you will ever see, a sight which defies all words, a sight which leaves one feeling so very, very small.



Saddled with her brother's backpacking gear, my girlfriend and I arrived at Crater Lake at 5:15 in the evening with the hopes to find a back-country campsite for the night. Our troubles began when the ranger at the entrance informed us that we needed to obtain a permit from the Ranger Station by 5pm. Stricken with fear, we dashed down the road to the station and found that it was not yet closed. We were greeted by a cheerful park ranger who happily issued us a permit. Small crisis averted, we drove back down the road to the nearby market to pick up a couple of essentials and a freeze-dried meal for our dinner.



With our car parked at the lot closest to the trailhead we had selected and, backpack loaded with far more gear than two people could possibly need for a single night in the woods, we made our way downhill and away from the sounds of cars and other humans. 

Hiking at any elevation above a few hundred feet is tiring for a city boy. Barely ten minutes and already exhausted, we passed a helpful couple who told us that some campsites were only another ten minutes ahead. We soon arrived at what looks to have been a campsite at one point in a small clearing surrounded by scorched, dead trees. We shed our kit and took to setting up our tent. 

It is a good idea to put a tent together at least once before you need to really use it. If not only to make sure that you understand how to put it together, but also to make sure that you aren't missing any pieces. Don't be like us. Don't skip this step. Missing no fewer than four stakes and at least one tent pole made putting our shelter together much more difficult than it should have been, but for one night, it would do.



Mosquitoes in suburban California are so small you can hardly see them. Not so in the forest. We were in our campsite for less than one minute before they descended upon us like an air raid, but without the courtesy of a siren to warn us. Bug spray does not smell good. It also does not taste good, so keep that in mind when applying it to every inch of exposed skin on your entire body.

Getting a fire going, now there's something I had done before. Lesson learned here was that when the air is damp, it is much harder to get even small kindling to catch fire. Start slowly, and add larger pieces very carefully.  It was about this time that my girlfriend discovered that a swarm of mosquitoes had settled on my back, which she brushed off, but the damage was done. Turns out these buggers can bite through clothing; I had no less than twenty bites on my back the next day.



After dinner (a freeze-dried vegetarian chana masala, quite good actually), we set to finding a tree to hang our remaining food in for the night. Much of Crater lake had been ripped through by forest fires last year - indeed we could see huge swaths of dead forest as we drove out of the park the next afternoon. We happened to be camped in one such area, and as a result most of the trees nearby were dead, causing their branches to hang downwards rather than outwards. Dark was approaching quickly and we finally managed to throw a rock tied to our rope over the one good tree branch in the entire area and get our bags into the tree.



Night, even in July, was cold. The sky was immaculately clear, lit by an extremely bright full moon. Somewhere out there in that frigid darkness came a yelp of a small animal, followed by a (much closer) set of three distinctive thumps. We shall never know what type of animal was our visitor that night, but when the sun rose, we were once again alone in our little valley. We breakfasted on the remaining food from our hanging bags (still there, I might add) and broke camp.

In spite of all the small things we went through in our endeavor to gain a better understanding of camping, we both agreed that the adventure was more than worth it. Life, it seems to me in the relatively few years I have been around, is all about gaining those small bits of knowledge to better appreciate the world and its small pleasures. These bits are not without cost, but sometimes you need to venture more than just money in order to grasp them.



Happy Tea Drinking.

1 comment: