The Frozen North

We arrived at the camp late, after battling traffic for well over an hour. Friday evenings often prove difficult on the highway, especially when our route requires that we cross from one side of town to the other before jumping in with the rest of the commuters on their way home. Once clear of the regular traffic, it was miles and miles of dark, rain-soaked blacktop before we turned off into the woods.

The combination of temperature and precipitation did not bode well for our first task, putting up tents. Actually, our first task was to put up the shelters so that we could build the tents.

It was cold. It was wet. Most of us had remembered to bring ponchos, but they didn't help as much as they might have, due to the wind factor. Our pants were soaked, our gloves were soaked. I was wringing water out of my gloves every five minutes or so. My feet were simply blocks of ice. James was, in his own words, "miserable".

After we got the shelters up, we began our assembly-line process of building the tents. One team raked the leaves off the ground in preparation for the tarp; another team assembled the tents; another team held the rain-fly. As soon as the ground was clear, the tarp team ran in and covered the ground, then the tent team carried the tent and dropped it in place and staked it down, then the fly team covered it. We had eight or nine tents to do, and it took a little over two hours to complete.

Two hours in the rain and sleet and snow. Only when that was all done were we allowed to eat our cold dinner.

--

The campsite is located at an RV park, so there was a central building with restrooms and hot-air dryers that we could use to warm up a bit. We had to cross a dirt road to get to it, and the road was flooded, so several boys got their shoes soaked because they weren't using their flashlights and didn't realize the water was deeper than it looked. They were looking for a splash and got a sploink instead.

A couple of the Webelos kids forgot to close the door to their tent while they were at the restrooms, and the rain got all their gear soaked. They decided not to stay the night, and left.

The rest of us got as warmed up as we could, piled into our tents, and passed out, tired, cranky, wet, and cold.

--

The next morning, there was snow on the ground and the air was brisk. First order of business was to get the cooking fires going. We ran into a bit of a problem at this point because two of the stoves had missing regulators, and the other one was leaking badly. Which meant that it couldn't boil water very quickly. And, like every camping adventure, success depends on the availability of hot water.

The cook searched the trailer and found some new unopened regulators, and we were back in business, and soon had boiling water going for the breakfast oatmeal. Along with this staple, we had hot cocoa and donuts. Dry, chocolate-coated, national-brand donuts. The kind that had been sitting on a shelf for long past their due-date, by the taste of 'em. Oh, well. When you're hungry, you eat. And we ate.

Oddly enough, although I was expecting the Boy Scouts to be doing the cooking, it was the adults who were performing this duty. Perhaps it was due to the fact that there was only one Senior Boy Scout, and the rest were first-years or Webelos. If the Boys had been in charge of the cooking, we might have had more interesting menus, including far more protein and far less cereals. The Troop next to us were having bacon and eggs and sausage, and boy! did it smell good! We just sighed and ate our oatmeal.

--

Our tour of duty that morning started with lots and lots of raking. That was, after all, our Service Project. We were to rake the entire campground, using rakes and blowers. Luckily for us, one of the Webelos' had a father who worked landscaping, and he'd brought his trailer full of big blowers and portable blowers and rakes and shovels. So everyone got their equipment and we went to work.

James thoroughly enjoyed the exercise. He has always enjoyed doing things for people, so long as it isn't a specifically assigned home chore. It helped that his best friend was there as well. They raked and raked and sang and told jokes and played around a little and then raked some more, and by one o'clock in the afternoon, were all done.

{I would mention lunch, but there wasn't much to it, just a pause in the action to grab some chicken-noodle soup and crackers.}

Afterward, the boys helped sort through the trailer to try and figure out how all the tent gear had gotten mixed up (which caused some confusion the night before as we were trying to find the right fly for the right tent), and then it was off to the main building for some swimming.

--

That's right. Swimming. Not outside in the cold, but inside where it was warm. And it was warm. Warm in the building, warm in the water. So the Scouts swam for two and a half hours, under the watchful eyes of the parents and Scout leaders. Who hung out in the hot tub. Except yours truly, who was out there in the middle of the pool playing with the kids. Can't help it, they're more fun.

There was one Scout who was working to get his Swimming merit badge, and it was quite impressive how the Senior Scout worked with him for nearly the entire two hours just to get him that badge. See, this particular Scout is what you would call mentally challenged, and has a difficult time with verbal instructions. So the Senior Scout coached him through the entire process, very patiently and with lots of gentle instruction, guiding him through the different stroke requirements and distances and times until finally, at the very end, he did the floating requirement. And then we all congratulated him, and he spent the rest of the time playing in the pool with the rest of the guys.

It was heartwarming.

Then the Senior Scout went to relax in the hot tub til it was time to go.

--

Dinner that night was unremarkable, merely canned beef stew re-heated. With bread. And hot cocoa (again). OK, mental note. Next time, we're going to put some serious thought behind this mealtime thing. Let the boys dream up some really exotic dishes. Anything. Yeah, the beef stew is hot and filling, but ... canned stew on a campout? How unimaginative!

--

After swimming and dinner, it was time for our evening event, which was a movie hosted free by the RV campground staff. "Little Man", with the Wayan brothers. A questionable choice for a family movie, but it worked OK for the boys. Definitely some humor that was over the heads of the kids (thankfully). Could've used some editing in spots. But the boys enjoyed it, in the way that boys enjoy low-grade physical humor (i.e. Three Stooges).

The best part was the free popcorn and soda.

No, I take that back. The best part was when one of the Dads - the father of the Scout who had gotten his swimming merit badge - bought ice cream for everyone. Six scoops. Eeek! Talk about stomach overload. And we're not talking vanilla or chocolate here. No, the campground has serious gourmet ice cream, with Chocolate Double-Fudge Cookies'n'Cream and Rainbow Sherbet and Purple Passion Tutti-Frutti Surprise. Those boys were absolutely stuffed by the time we were all done.

Which is probably why, when we got back to the tents, they wouldn't shut up for two hours. Yakitty-yakkity-yak, talking about sports and school and bullies and sports and teachers and girls and sports and on and on and on. In that middle-school kind of "I'm not really sure what I'm talking about but I'm going to make it sound like I know everything" kind of way. Highly amusing. And disturbing, all at the same time.

Oh, if I'd only had a tape recorder.

--

Sunday morning, time to get up, get breakfast, tear down tents, pack up and go. Or so I thought.

It took forever to get the boys up. They were moving like slugs. And we tried to have them pack up as much as they could right away, but they were distracted by sleepiness and the freezing cold - which meant they were constantly running over to the bathrooms to stand under the hand dryers to warm up - so it was difficult for them to concentrate on the message: "Pack up!"

The "cook" (and I use the term lightly) made up breakfast. That is, he boiled water so we could have our traditional oatmeal and hot cocoa and donuts. Oo, yum. The boys actually decided at this point that there were donuts, and then there were donuts. And these were neither. After the boys were done, the squirrels came down and had a feast from the leftovers.

It took us another three hours to get all our tents taken down, and even then, we didn't actually pack them up. Since these tents are Troop tents, they are not taken home to be aired out after every campout. They are packed away into the Troop trailer until the next campout. Which means, unfortunately, that they must be completely cleaned and dried before they can be put away. Which was nearly impossible, given that the bottom of the tents were both wet and muddy.

We took out the stakes and rolled the tents over so that the bottoms were facing the sky, and let the wind - oh! that's a cold wind! - start to dry them out. We had to pull off the rain flys and drape them over picnic tables, and pull out the tarps and drape them over posts, and we actually managed to get a couple tents dry before 11.

But we were getting antsy. James and his best friend and his best friend's father and I, that is. We were past ready to leave. We helped as much as we could (actually, more than I would've expected to help, given that we were guests for this weekend). The other Scouts disappeared into the big building to warm up again, waiting for things to dry. We got into the car and drove away, our feet finally getting warm again.

Exhilerating. Exhausting. But fun.