A Camp to Call Home

Now as anyone that has been reading this, which I take as no one since I have yet to see a response from anyone on any of the posts. That is OK, this is on the web and is going to live forever, well as long as the net is around and some alien race doesn't descend from the heavens and enslave us all because they can. I have been trying to think of something to put on here. I have given a lot of information about our camping style and what we pack into our tiny seventeen foot canoes, and for those that don't know we but ten pounds of shit into a five pound bag. Well tonight I have decided to talk about some of the camps we have made over the years. Most of the time on the trip we stay at one of the designated camping sites that the DNR maintains throughout the year. Many a nights we have camped at the Rice site, the Busti site, the Muldoons, of course, Little American. Last summer the General and I stayed at Harrison and Little Minnow for the first times in our lives. However, there have been times when the site we wanted to stay at was taken or we were on the river and decided just to pull in a make camp. In some ways they are my favorite places to camp. Something happens when we take and average spot along the river, one that is suitable to build a site at and make it into a home. We do the tarp rain fly so we have a place to cook and/or chit chat if it happens to rain on us. We make a pit for the fire, well usually, except for that time the General burned the field. If you haven't read that, go back now and read it. We will then clear spots for tents and just make camp. We go from the ordinary to a place we can call home for a night. For the last two years we have camped at Little American for two nights, and both time when we got there some other people had laid claim to the regular good spot for the evenings which meant we had to make our own. No stranger to this process we looked around the area and found a place that was decent for our needs. Of course we had to cut a few trees, well brush actually, to make room for the tents, nevertheless, we created something unique and beautiful. The first time was when we created the site and did a majority of the clearing of brush. There was one particular spot in the area that had this long hump that was once a log, but now was covered with moss and fungus, breaking it back down into dirt, where we made the cooking area. It wasn't centered under the rain fly, but right on the edge, but still protected from the rain. Digger, well this is when she got her name because she we designated as the pit digger for the fire. Rev got most of the wood that time and plenty was available. We cleared out the brush around the fire pit for our chairs. I don't have any pictures of that site right now, but I'm going to work on that. If any Runners read this post a pic of the site so the people that don't read this can have a look at what it looks like. When we returned last year it was overgrown a little, but not too bad. It looked as if no one else had used the site since we built it and to be honest, we did such a stellar job at cleaning up the place when we left that if the fire pit hadn't been there you would have never known a group of twelve people camped and partied there like rock stars for two evenings. We had remembered the lay out from last year and everyone pitched their tents where they had the previous year, it was a grand thing to see. It was on the one and only trip that Ducky's friend Angela came on the trip, coincidentally it was Ducky's first trip also. It was also the first trip in which I crashed the canoe and put a nice dent in it, thank you very much Adam and Stebe. Anyway we were going all the way to highway six that year, this was the first time we had done that. We were looking for the Hudson Camp Site, but never found it. It was getting close dark, by that I mean we had about an hour of sun left, so we knew that we had to stop soon a make camp, however, there was no where to do it. The river had gotten really curvy so we could see very far down the river to look for a spot, so we kept saying around this bend, around this bend we will find a place to camp. Yet each time we rounded the bend it was either too brushy, too low and swampy, too many trees, or the bank was too high. So on and on we went look for something that wold make for a suitable place to camp, but nothing presented itself. Finally we had to stop. We came upon a nice break in the trees with plenty of room for tents and a camp fire, nevertheless we did have a problem, we had a four foot vertical hill to get up to get to the site. We were down to about a half hour of good light before the setting sun got too low and the tree's shade darkened things up real good. I don't know how many people have done it, but setting up a camp in the dark sucks because things get lost easy and there is always something under you tent that fucks with your good nights sleep. Then there is the whole tripping thing and trying to get wood in the dark is one of the shittiest jobs out there, almost as bad as dishes. Needless to say we were pressed for time, had to get the gear from the canoes and do it all the while trying to negotiate this miserable fucking hill. Now anyone that knows anything knows that to get our canoes up on top of the hill we needed to unload them. There was now way we were going to get them out of the water with all the shit in them unless we had a crane with a web basket that could lift them out while supporting the weight. In order to do this, someone had to climb up the hill to get stuff handed to them, that was the Rev and Adam, and someone had to get out of their canoe and stand in the river to unload the gear, handing it to the person on the top of the hill, that was Ducky and Angela. There was no way on God's good Earth I was going to get into the chilly fucking water again. I had already be wet once that day when we crashed, so I was happy to stay nice and dry. Once I helped hand the gear from my canoe to the shore Brother John, one of the early Runners, got out and then I did. We pulled the canoe up on shore and I set about getting a spot ready for the fire so the people in the water had a place to warm up when they got out. By the time they got the last canoe out of the water I had a roaring fire going and chairs set up for all the soggy Runners. I had line strung up in the trees for them to hang their wet clothes on, plus my tent was pitched for them to change in so they could warm up as quick as possible. Within an hour of making the decision, we had a beautiful site for camping; the fire was roaring, the grub was in the process of being prepped, almost all the tents were pitched and some of us were sipping on some suds talking about what a bitch that fucking hill was. We had a good time at that site and had it not been for that shitty hill, it would be a nice place to camp at again. The real kicker came the next day when we got back on the river and found that just around the next bend was an even better place to camp with absolutely no hill to climb up. We got a good laugh but still held no regrets over the place we picked, that is except for Angela...she lost her toe ring in the water while helping with the gear. Once again the river laid claim to something. Well I'm going to get going. Catch ya all on the flip side. Until then I will remain...Crazy Joe.