Building Campfires and Memories

D and I were discussing previous essays I'd written and how they were lost in the big computer crash of 2007 (when I (I really mean D) installed some operating system other than Windows on my perfectly good Windows box.  Crash and everything - I mean EVERYTHING - was gone.  Including all the essays I'd written.  But this one was published in my hometown newspaper and I found it there this morning.  Since I wrote it, I feel it's OK to post it here.

Building Campfires and Memories

Catching frostbite wasn’t what I had in mind when I told my brother I’d be thrilled to go camping with him and his family. Instead I had visions of warm days spent lazing about in the sun and pleasant nights spent roasting marshmallows by the campfire. After all we were going to be camping in sunny southern California.

Any ideas of sunbathing were quickly dismissed. The ferocity of the winds whipping through the mountains took us by surprise. Building a campfire was out of the question as it would surely set the forest on fire with uncontrolled showers of sparks. With no fire to stave off the cold and provide entertainment bedtime came early that first night.  I dreamed of a nice warm bed only to wake to the cold hard ground I had managed to roll off of the air mattress sometime during the night.  “Why did I ever say I’d come camping?” I grumbled to myself. 

 Crawling out of the tent I welcomed the now moderate breezes and  sunshine promising a warmer day. We piled into the car and played tourist for several hours exploring nearby Santa Barbara All the irritation caused the cold wet night before disappeared as I saw the beauty all about me. All too soon it was time to ascend the mountains to the campground and a sense of dread overcame me. Would it be windy and cold again?  

As soon as we arrived at the campsite, I quickly changed back into slacks before my legs had a chance to turn blue from the frigid air The wind was still only moderate breeze and my brother thought he could risk building a fire. I sat huddled against the breezes sipping a steaming cup of cocoa and watching my brother and his oldest son build the much needed campfire. My thoughts ricocheted between “I’m not going to last another night out here” and “I’m so glad I came. I wonder if I could live out here.”

“Easy,” my brother quietly cautioned his son. “ I just sharpened the blade.” Mickey gingerly accepted the hatchet from his dad and began splitting the starter pieces for the camp fire as Matt calmly gave him pointers. Suddenly I was no longer in the Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara but had been swept back 30 years and 3000 miles to the Smokey Mountains in North Carolina.  

“Easy,” cautioned my dad as my oldest brother began chopping the kindling for that nights fire.  “Try using two hands on the hatchet”  my dad coached Matt.  With fierce determination. Matt learned the technique and produced several pieces of kindling without losing any fingers to the hatchet’s sharp blade.  A few moments later my dad showed Matt how to pile the kindling just so and with one match light the fire. 

The wind gusted and the fire snapped sending sparks floating in the air and breaking me from my reverie. I was back in the cold mountains of California and Mickey won the struggle with the kindling as he lit the wood shavings that had been piled just so. I realized I was thrilled to be camping with my brother and his family. Knowing my brother honored my dad by passing on lessons from our childhood to his sons filled me with a sense of peace and wellbeing. In these days where families are torn apart not by war but by distance,  it was comforting to learn my family will stay close by passing on childhood memories and lessons from one generation to the next.  

Fuzzy Deer

In a former life, I fancied the notion that I might become a writer.  I dabbled with essays.  Some were good, most were not. But I enjoyed the process of writing.  I don't know why I stopped writing.  Perhaps it was fear of failure? Or my coming to understand that the Internet had suddenly made writers of us all?  DH mentioned this weekend that he had read my writing and he knew that down deep I enjoyed the process.  He didn't say "go write."  His comment made me start thinking about it.

And I as I was sitting on the porch watching the creek and thinking of all the wildlife I've been so blessed to see,  this kernel of an idea came to me.  One might say I was truly inspired by the creek….

I looked up from my book to discover the setting sun’s light spotlighting the whiskey toned coats of two does grazing in the neighboring pasture.  I sat enthralled by their beauty and as they scampered off, I remembered the first time I saw a deer.

Some forty-plus years earlier, my family had been camping in the mountains of western North Carolina.  Our days were spent preceding to be beavers and dam the river or hiking along the myriad trails, stopping every 2 feet so my father could set up his tripod and camera to capture yet another mushroom.  Nights were spent gathered around the campfire with my brothers and I competing to see who could roast the perfect marshmallow.  But that elusive time between dinner and dark was generally spent looking for anything to do.  Until my mother heard about the deer watching 

That evening, we loaded up in the car and drove a few miles along a dirt road until we came upon a clearing on the east side of the road.   A farmer’s hay pasture lay between the road and a copse of trees a few hundred or so yards away.  Before we departed the car, my mother told us to be very quiet or we’d scare the deer.

“What deer?”  I thought to myself as I scrambled out from my designated place in the center of the back seat.  I saw the green pasture and the trees, but no deer.  I became a bit bored and went to explore the wild flowers on the other side of the road and waited for my turn with the binoculars.

My father helped me adjust the glasses to fit my eyes and then helped me find the deer.  Like a kaleidoscope, everything was blurry until one last adjustment brought into focus two fawns skipping along the edge of the trees.  I clasped the binoculars eagerly and panned all along those trees.  DEER.  I was seeing deer!   All too soon, my mother reminded me to share the binoculars with my brothers and the deer disappeared into a fuzzy blur of green.

We returned the next night and I became quite insistent that I needed the binoculars immediately.  I didn’t want to miss the deer.  My mother gave me an odd look and handed me her glasses.  “Look through these.  Are you able to see the deer now?”   I carefully held her glasses up to my eyes and peered through the lenses.  All the fuzziness that I had grown to believe was normal suddenly became clear.  Individual leaves on the trees closest to us appeared.  I spied clumps of flowers in the pasture and finally I looked straight ahead and saw the deer without the aid the binoculars.  

“You need glasses, Maura.”  Mama remarked as she took hers back so she could see the deer.  The rest of that vacation was spent sharing my mother’s glasses in the evenings so I could see the deer.  

And I started third grade wearing some incredibly ugly horn-rimmed glasses.  And now many pairs of glasses and contacts later, I am grateful to those deer.  I can see now because I couldn’t see then.