Adventure #5: Part 1 Camping in Chippewa

When we were kids my brothers and I used to attempt to camp out in the backyard during the summer.  I say “attempt” because more often than not we either got scared by the lumber yard noises, the dark spooky-at-night trees that lined the boundary line between the neighborhood and the lumber yard, or something as stupid as ghosts coming to get us. 
Or we got cold.  And dreamed about our warm beds just inside the house…

We did manage to stay a few nights all the way through morning, though.  Either way, we would set up the tent with our sleeping bags at sundown.  It became tradition to buy cans of sour cream and onion Pringles and bags of Doritos with our allowances and enjoye the rare, special occasion that we were allowed to have soda and chips at bedtime.  We packed board games and cards and set them in their proper corner of the tent for later.  We brought out the flashlights and we were ready to have our camping adventure.  I’ll never forget the smell of the tent canvas, the feel of the hard ground and the shadows from the flashlights.  Nothing says childhood more than camping.  Any child who didn’t grow up camping has my complete and utter sympathy.  I don’t care if camping is your thing or not, if you never experienced sleeping outside at least once as a kid you were deprived.

Now, we didn’t just camp in my backyard.  If you’ve read some of my other posts you’ll know that I grew up camping with my family.  We had an annual tradition of camping with a few other families we were close with from church. 

I'm the curly haired one sitting next to my best friend, Tiff (barrettes in her hair)

When I was really little we camped with all the families every year at Watkins Glen State Park.  This magical place filled with gorges and waterfalls is only a few miles away from one of my childhood friends in whom I am still friends with, and a few years ago when I was there for a visit we went and trekked the trails.   For those of you who have never been to New York and first think of New York City when the state is mentioned to you, you may not know how beautiful and wild New York is. 

I hadn’t seen this place since I was a child and the ghosts of the memories haunted me when I saw the swimming hole we used to catch minnows in.  It’s funny how that is.

As I got older we camped with our church friends at a few different places.  My favorite place, that I can’t remember the name of, was where I caught my first rainbow trout.  I think I was nine or ten years old.  It was a whopping 11 inches.  Or at least I think… There was some debate between me and my brother.  I was certain Dad measured it at 11, but my brother insisted it was 10.  Either way, it was a baby trout and I loved it to death.  Well, literally.  We put it in a bucket to eat later, but when a raging storm came that night we had to pack up and head home… leaving my dead trout behind. 

There was a contra dancing team that came to the campground that night too, and we square danced with everyone in one of the pavilions.  I remember it being one of the most enjoyable nights of my childhood.  I don’t care what you think of square dancing, it is bleeping awesome.  And if I ever get married, or pretend to get married and throw a party, we’re doin’ square dancin’. 

This is a stock photo. I do not know these people. But they look like they're having as much fun as I did.

We not only camped with church families, but we also went on a lot of trips as a family.  We camped near Niagra Falls when I was super little, but I only remember bits and pieces of it.  I remember we had to borrow a My Little Pony sleeping bag for me from a friend and we slept in a rented camper.  I remember we found bits of Bible scripture in the campfire: someone before us burned a Bible.  I remember only a little of Darien Lake, the big amusement park in upstate that we went to on this camping trip.  This is me and my two older brothers at Darien. 

And I barely remember the falls…  I never saw Niagra Falls again.  The only thing I remember is seeing the spot they filmed Superman saving that stupid kid falling off the rail. 

The real Superman: Christopher Reeves. 

The most memorable camping trip I ever had was up on the Canadian border.  We camped in Wellesley Island State Park in The Thousand Islands.  If you’re not familiar with The Thousand Islands, it’s an area on the border of Ontario and New York where over eighteen hundred islands fill the St. Lawrence River and part of the northeast of Lake Ontario.   It’s a spectacular place filled with ancient history where the evidence of human life goes back seven thousand years. 

Part of its magic is the historical sites.  We visited one of the castles in the islands, Boldt Castle on Heart Island.  This mansion was made from the passion of a man (George C. Boldt) who loved his wife so much he decided to build a castle for her. Quite tragically she died before it was done being built. http://www.boldtcastle.com/visitorinfo/ 

I remember walking through it and not understanding why it was so special.  Like I said it wasn’t completed so it was very white and empty inside.  The only thing I found amusing about it was pointing out all the hidden hearts in the stone and stairwells.  He filled the mansion with hearts.  He either loved his wife into obsession, or was trying to make up for a very large mistake… Either way, it’s a really cool story.  And I wish I had appreciated walking through it a little more. 

So you’re probably wondering, “Thousand Islands?  Like the dressing?”  Yeah. Like the dressing.  The dressing is named after the place indeed. You can thank Sophie LaLonde for Thousand Island salad dressing.  http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/05/491992134/thousand-islands-two-tales-who-really-invented-that-dressing

This trip was memorable for a lot of reasons.  Not only because of the nature walks and Boldt Castle and the history and the fishing, but to start off my adventure I cracked my tailbone for the first time (I say first because I later got into horses...). I cracked it within ten minutes of getting to the campsite.  It had been raining and the rocks by the water were extremely slippery.  My mother warned us. 

And I tried to be careful, but I stepped on one giant, soft slab of a boulder and… down I came.  The pain I felt scared the crap out of me.  It knocked the wind clean out of me.  I’ll never forget how much it hurt and I’ll never forget how much pain I was in the entire camping trip.  I remember playing ping pong with my little brother in the campground game barn and bending over to pick up the ping pong ball on the floor and wanting to scream in agony. 

So. Besides that.

Fishing was great.  I never caught anything big.  But I caught at least a hundred pan fish, no exaggeration.  Every time I dropped a line I was pulling something in.  And they were decent sized.  Ten inch perch, not bad.  Um...Eight inch... Seven? Still. 

My dad caught a decent sized largemouth that we thought was the coolest thing on the whole planet.  It was a good time.

My pants are rockin'

Something we thought was very exotic about the place was the black squirrel.  We had never seen black squirrels and they were everywhere.  And they got real close to you, naturally, begging for food…  There is a picture in existence somewhere of me sitting in my way rad child lawn chair with a black squirrel almost right at my feet.  I don’t know where that picture is so here’s one of me in that  same chair sitting like a thug next to my little brother.  You’re welcome.

That's my Thousand Island souvenir T-shirt that I practically wore every single day of my childhood career. 

The last time we camped as a family I think I was twelve.  A few years later we moved and never camped again. 

I camped a few times in my adult life.  My brother and I camped for a night in Pennsylvania to see a Dave Matthews concert.  I went camping with my friend Barb and her family a few years ago.  That was the first time I had gone fishing since I lived in Pennsylvania.  And it was the first time I had caught a fish since I lived in New York.  And they happened to be a couple of ten to twelve inch trout. 

Can you tell I'm excited?

We were in Lanesboro, Minnesota. It’s a gorgeous part of the state if you ever get to go, and they have a fabulous little town with cute shops and things to do.  They even have a telephone booth.  Just like the one Superman changes in.

I also went camping with my dear friend Emily a few years ago.  It was just her and I, tenting it pretty rustic.  We had water from a pump at our site, but that was about the only luxury.  We cooked all of our meals over our campfire and even though it was a ton of work, the food was amazing. 

We used leftover bacon to make BLT’s for breakfast and it was literally the best breakfast I’ve ever had. 

You may notice this is NOT BLTs, but our dinner the night before...but it captures how we feasted

We also walked some beautiful trails.  Got lost.  But found our way back before it got dark. 

                                                                     I love camping.

Age 33

Age 8

Now in my old blog "Hating Minnesota", Chippewa National Forest was actually on my list of Twelve Places but I never got the chance to camp there.  And thanks to a couple of real fine people I not only got the chance to camp there, but I also got the chance to be filled up with a childhood nostalgia that was pure goodness for my soul.  I got to fish in ways I’ve never fished before, caught fish I’ve never caught before, laugh with friends and sleep in the woods. 

Stay tuned for part two!  My first time fishing at night in a boat….

Fall Downtown

I always smell it coming.  The earth changes in autumn.  It’s not just the smell of the decaying leaves, but the dirt smells like it’s dying too.  The cool winds bring the smell of a melancholy farewell to summer.  It is a season for deep souls to wake up.  It wakes mine up, every year.  

Some people head north to see the fall colors.  But I think my favorite fall colors to see are in the city. I love the gathering leaves on the sidewalks. I love to see the ivy on the old stone buildings turning ruby red.

I love the fall jackets and the city folk who wear them.  I like the colored trees in the parks and in front of the Minnesota Art Institute.

My favorite though, are the fallen leaves on the sidewalks and streets. I love when the early setting sun hits them just right and I love to watch them come to life in a cool wind. 

I love tucking my blowing hair behind my ear as the fallen downtown leaves float around me.
 

Every season has its nostalgia but there’s something about autumn that feels transporting.  Sure snow can remind me of my childhood, and so can watermelon in the summer.  But fall does something very different and more profound.  Every time I rake the leaves for the kiddos I nanny for and smell that magical smell of dead leaves, I feel transported. When I stand out in the autumn air all memories of my life start to feel like strange good dreams, pieces of something that does not exist anymore but somehow stay with me.  

 Fall entombs comfort and gradually releases it bit by bit as the trees die around me, as the air gets colder, as the days lose their length.  I can still smell and taste my mom’s chicken soup and those soft dinner rolls on a school night.  I’d be playing with my best friend Tiffany out in the yard until it got dark, and I could smell it cooking from outside.  Dying leaves, chicken soup, dying earth.  Comfort.  I remember going to a pumpkin patch with Tiffany and her church when we were about eight or nine.  We sang church songs all the way there and all the way back.  The sky was so blue and the pumpkins so orange and I will never forget how in love with the colors I was, how comforting the contrast was, how aesthetically pleasing autumn culture was to my soul.  And then there’s the mystical part of fall, the deep dark melancholy that when it sweeps over me on a cold, overcast windy evening I can feel spirits in the air.  I can see the goodness of my childhood and also feel the bitter grief of losing it.  The trees are black in the darkening gray sky and the grass has lost its luster, all the while the red and yellow leaves on the ground show bright. 

I grew up in the suburbs, a quaint little neighborhood known as Lamont Circle.  The maples in our front yard were for climbing.  Their leaves for building.  We not only built piles to jump in but we also designed leaf mazes, a tradition that began with my older brothers.  We would play cops and robbers through the maze and to this day I can still feel the adrenaline rush of being chased by a “cop”.  We’d play until it got dark and our mothers would call out the windows to beckon us home for dinner. 

When I was still little enough for pretending I used my brothers’ hockey sticks as horses.  My best friend and I would each get one, mount it and ride away to faraway lands that are still very real in my mind.  When I smell the dying leaves and the dying earth, I remember a backyard full of magic and haunting spirits of make-believe. 

I now walk the streets of Minneapolis with the dry leaves beneath my feet signaling my senses and wakening the deepest parts of my person.  I fall into the smells, into the comfort and I fall into my memories and come alive as everything around me is dying beautifully and so colorfully and so aesthetically pleasing.  Home.  Fall is home.