Camping trip #5- Snow, heartache, and an ode to friendship

Looking back at these camping trips, they weren’t just fun and adventure. They marked significant moments in my development from a boy to a man. But not all those moments were joyful, and two in particular, I will discuss below. I don’t know why I felt compelled to write about these experiences now, but I’m glad I did, for it helps me catalog my memories and work out some of the tangles that make me who I am today.

After high school, there was a pause in the camping trips. I went off to college and devoted much of my time to studying. I wasn’t the best student in high school. I was not failing, but I certainly didn’t live up to my potential. I was bored much of the time, and as I was going to be a famous drummer, it didn’t seem to matter that much. I had no genuine passion for learning what they were teaching me, and I needed passion for drive. But that all changed when I gained control of my education.

As I’ve discussed, the drumming thing didn’t work out, but I found other interests- primarily psychology and history. I could have chosen either as my major, but I went with psychology (with an Asian history minor) as I thought it would be more useful in a career sense. I dove in full-on and got excellent grades. To allow for all the studying, I worked long hours in the summer to make enough money to live off the rest of the year. My friends were also working. Needless to say, there just wasn’t time for camping trips.

During these years, I also fell in love (which took up much of my time too). I don’t desire to go into too much detail, but I’m a Scorpio, and when I fall, I fall hard. At the end of my junior year, I proposed to her on the beach under a full moon, and she said yes. I was on cloud nine, and it seemed my life would work out exactly as planned. A year later, it was over.

My fiance went to San Francisco with her best friend the summer after graduation. When she returned, she was acting strange. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she no longer loved me. I was crushed. There is nothing worse than when that conclusion is one-sided. I had no idea when or why it went off the rails, and she wouldn’t tell me. I tried everything to win her back, but after a month of emotional torture, we decided to call off the engagement. She gave the ring back, and that was it. Two months later, I heard from a mutual friend that she was living in North Carolina and married to an Air Force officer. They met online. I put two and two together and realized she did not travel to San Fransisco. She had snuck to North Carolina to meet this guy, and it would seem she had found her soulmate. As a side note, their marriage didn’t make it much more than a year.

By the end, I wasn’t in a good place. All my life plans went out the window, and I became lost. Luckily, my friends came to my aid. Two in particular pulled me from my pit of despair and brought me to a place of happy memories- our old camping spot. They brought some cigars and a bottle of scotch, and we worked through my hurt in the campfire’s orange light. We laughed as we reminisced about our adventures, and I cried as I spewed out my pain. The three of us were the only veterans of all the camping trips, and they were my closest friends. One I had known my entire life and the other since fifth grade. The addition of alcohol means I don’t remember much from that night, but I do know it was exactly what I needed. The one hiccup we had occurred the next day. My friend’s girlfriend was supposed to pick us up at the bottom of the mountain but never showed up, so we had to hide our packs and walk several miles back to my house in the summer heat. Funny enough, my friend and this girl broke up soon after, also due to cheating, and I was able to return the favor of being a shoulder to cry on.

The last camping trip was also a bit of a heartache, but for much different reasons. It would mark the end of an era. My break-up created quite a bump in my life, so that winter, I decided I needed a change and would soon move to China to teach English. My friend from above (not the one with the girlfriend, but the other one) had joined the army and had just returned from basic. He would be going off to Afghanistan. Some significant changes were coming to our lives, and we mutually agreed we needed a hurrah (which proved to be the last) to send us off into this new adventure. A winter camping trip at the old spot seemed perfect.

As the date drew closer, it became clear that we wouldn’t just face the cold but snow, too. Rescheduling was not an option. We all had jobs, and two of us would soon be leaving the country, so pinpointing a date we were all free was difficult. We had never shied away from adversity with these trips- we had faced the heat, the rain, the wind, mysterious night-time visitors, and explosions! What was the cold and snow?

We bundled up, grabbed a case of beer and some Yukon Jack (for those hoary nights), and hopped into my friend’s 4×4. We drove up the dirt access road to the powerlines (as far as we could go) and headed up the mountain under a gray sky, already dropping flurries. Strangely enough, it was a day much like it is now in Boston (as the first major snow in two years approaches).

None of us had camped in the winter before, but we knew our first order of business was to store wood and lots of it. The temperature would be in the teens, and the weather forecasters predicted six inches of snow. We felled some free-standing timber and spent the afternoon bucking up a pile of logs while quenching our thirst with cheap beer. It was hard work, but with friends, it didn’t seem like work. In all our camping trips, we cut down a lot of trees and spent a good portion of our time preparing for the night, but this time, it was more dire. We then set up our tent. It wasn’t designed for the winter, but with the coming snow, it would hopefully keep us dry and add a bit of insulation.

Winters get dark early in Massachusetts, and it was pitch black by supper time. We ate Dinty Moore beef stew out of empty beer cans. In hindsight, the mix of alcohol and snow was probably not the best idea, but we felt we needed it to keep warm and drank more than we should. Again, I don’t remember much in the haze of inebriation, but at some point, I lost my gloves to the fire while trying to keep it going during the onslaught of snow. And it did snow- heavily. You can see some of the transition in the two pictures above (the only ones surviving from that night).

At some point, I crawled into our tent- the first to retire. Even by the roaring fire, it was damn cold and wet to boot. Without gloves, I was suffering. I also probably partook too much and too quickly in our liquid refreshments- you know, with my broken heart and all. I chose the spot at the edge of the tent by the flapped window so I wouldn’t be in the way of the others when they stamped off their boots and joined me, and did my best to survive. It was a cold and miserable night, and I am pretty sure the only thing that kept me alive was that we brought up a box of hand warmers. I huddled around this gem of chemical heat and shivered into a restless sleep.

By morning, the snow had blown in under the window flap and covered me in a drift. Unfortunately, it also found a home in my boots. I scooped out what I could and was first out of the tent, stepping into a winter wonderland. It was one of my most beautiful moments as the snow sparkled in the orange light of the sunrise. I got the fire back to life, and the others stumbled out of the tent one by one. We ate breakfast and eagerly tried to warm up before our slippery descent down the mountain in six inches of snow to an SUV that hopefully wouldn’t get stuck.

There was a rustle and a zip. We turned to see the last of us to wake, the friend who was soon going to Afghanistan. He stuck his head out of the tent and spewed the most florescent yellow vomit I have ever seen into the freshly fallen snow (thanks to the Yukon Jack). I had drunk too much because of my broken heart and was feeling it, but it wasn’t as much as the one worrying about going off to war (he made it back ok, but I don’t think he ever really left the battlefield).

We laughed and poked fun that morning, but a bit of melancholy was also in the air. I think we all realized this was it. After this point, everything would change- and it did. We packed up, said goodbye to the ghosts of our past, and made our way down the mountain, cold and miserable but alive after another camping trip adventure.

About a week later, I started my journey to China, which I’ve already discussed at length in this blog (you can find the first part of that adventure here). When I returned, I had changed. We had all changed. In time, we drifted apart as we gained families and responsibilities. I am deeply saddened to say that I’ve fallen out of touch with all of them. My wife has become my new partner in crime, and we continue to have adventures as we travel around the world. I’m sure the others would say the same.

I don’t regret, but as I’ve ventured down this memory lane, I realize I do miss. I’m glad I captured a bit of the spirit of those wild times with great friends in these words, and I hope you enjoyed my tales. The mountain was there when I needed it most. Luckily, being made of lasting stone, it will always be there if I need it again. Maybe, one day, when we are old and grey, my friends and I will shuffle up into those familiar woods and have one last thrill before our last big adventure into the unknown. Who knows? But will it be in the dead of winter? Hell, no- never again.

Cheers!