By: Jennifer Richardson Holt
At my daughter’s behest, I suppose I owe you all a story. I wrote a few weeks ago about an experiment that my family was going to undertake. And, as conclusions drawn from experiments often are, the results were a fascinating mixture of somewhat unremarkable and rather surprising. We attempted our first, as a family of three, authentic camping trip, and the outcome was a very interesting one indeed. My daughter insists that I tell you about it so, sit back and relax and prepare for a wild adventure, or at the very least an interesting excursion.
We began the day of our trip excitedly. We started off early in the morning so we could make a full day of things. We had my husband’s very large truck full to the brim including his backseat minus the tiny cubby hole that my daughter wedged into, and his truck bed filled to the tippy top of the camper shell he has on the back. He was pulling a large trailer with our ATV, a generator, firewood and quite frankly heaven knows what else he had loaded on that thing. I am usually the one that overpacks when we go on a trip, which in remaining true to tradition I did so for myself and my daughter for this trip. However, this time I think my husband brought enough supplies (other than bedding but we’ll get to that later) to keep a group of twenty well stocked for a good month. And yes, I know, better to have something and not need it than need it and not have it. I hear you saying that as you read, and I totally agree but I need you to understand the hours and hours of hard manual labor that my husband put into preparing for this camping trip that he was so terribly excited about. It was an enormous amount of work. That’s part of why we got there so early, he knew simply setting up camp would take the better part of the day.
Let me set the scene for you. We are in the woods in an off-roading park that used to be some sort of military installation. All over it are bunkers (imagine a gigantic concrete trapezoidal room with earth and trees over it). Apparently, munitions were stored in these bunkers as the sixty- or seventy-year-old instructions for munition storage are still visible on the walls. Since there was a chance of rain during the night we set up our tent inside this bunker and brought in it all our bags with clothes and whatnot. It seemed a good plan to avoid any unwanted moisture on our belongings.
Now, here is where something a tad inexplicable happens. I had read reviews about these bunkers in attempts to know what to expect. I had seen that they were just big concrete rooms and when I went inside it, other than it being larger than I had anticipated, it was exactly as I expected. But then the feeling hit. There was a deep unmistakable something in the pit of my stomach. The closest sensation that seems even remotely accurate would be to call it dread. I knew I didn’t have anything exactly to cause such a response, but it was there and it was serious and penetrated into the core of my being. It got to the point that I started to wonder if some sort of questionable activities had gone on inside that bunker. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I have heard people describe an uneasy feeling in places that were “haunted” and that seems an accurate feeling about this bunker. No, I don’t think it was “haunted”. But the way I felt in it was undeniable. I slept in it that first night (we were scheduled to stay for two nights) and I froze to death despite the fact that the interior stays a constant 65 degrees Fahrenheit year round. I could have used 10 more giant blankets though, if I’m honest, even then I may not have ever gotten warm. It could have been as much a psychological chill as physical.
We did enjoy ourselves riding on these wooded trails. We climbed big very questionable hills to find beautiful views of the beginning of the Appalachian foothills. We dodged mudholes of unknown depths since while we are not anti-mud, we are in fact very anti getting stuck in giant holes with no one to pull us out. Not to mention the temperatures were dropping and being wet, be it muddy or not, in cold weather isn’t particularly thrilling. There were a few moments when we did test the laws of physics and gravity in our vehicle. That one moment when I felt us teetering utterly at the mercy of gravity and the incline that presented a challenge to stay calm to avoid inspiring my daughter to have a small stroke. I myself was surprised at how well I hid the abject, momentary terror. Yet I will give my husband all the credit for his adept maneuvering to save us from the peril that he later admitted was more real than he cared for. It was a fun experience overall.
But what we learned was my daughter likes camping. She likes being in a tent. She likes being in a new and different environment and living and sleeping in said environment. This is not news. She was all set when we woke up after the first night to stay again the second night. She loves the principle of camping in the context of tents and air mattresses and something utterly out of the ordinary. It could be in the comfort of our own backyard, and she would be just as pleased. I, on the other hand, after being agonizingly cold, my air mattress deflating until my hip sat cooly on the concrete floor, and the disconcerting trepidation that woke me every five to ten minutes, I was not keen on a second night. While I was fully prepared to fall on my sword if my husband and daughter were all for night two, my daughter then let us know that while she was utterly for another camping night, she had no desire to ride the ATV trails anymore which was the sole thing to do there other than sit at the campsite which seemed to be more up her street. She was all for a second night then let that little nugget slip.
We came home a day early. We learned our child loves to camp but that only requires a tent and the camping ambience, and she is satisfied. This is not surprising. We suspected as much. I clearly have some kind of qualm with bunkers? I can’t explain that one. I have camped before, in tents, in nature, and been perfectly fine. This was a feeling like I cannot describe. I did not see that coming. Our grand experiment was shorter than expected but taught us a great deal. My child likes the idea of sleeping somewhere unconventional. I unexpectedly have qualms with old military bunkers. My husband could have stayed an indefinite number of days enjoying himself beyond all sense of normality. Lessons were learned and we all lived to tell the tale.
Prose and Possibilities 