Camp is a Four Letter Word

Remember having camp-outs in your backyard when you were a kid? Well, I was too scared to actually stay out in the dark so I had my camping experience during the day.

My friends and I would create a tent from a card table draped with a bed sheet. Sometimes we’d just head to the woods and pile up sticks and leaves for a make believe bonfire while we told ghost stories. They didn’t seem as scary in the light of day.

Several times, I invited my friends for a slumber party. We’d “rough it” with our sleeping bags on the living room floor. When I was 12, my Girl Scout Troop travelled to Camp Anne Bailey for a long weekend. We slept in tents that were elevated on wooden platforms. After a soaking rain we sat around the campfire and ate hamburger, potato and carrots wrapped in foil that had been buried in the fire. For dessert we had s'mores and fried apple pies.

My most vivid memory is of the locusts that descend on West Virginia every seven years. To get to our tent we had to walk on a path under a trellis, which had thousands of locusts hanging from it. Besides being really loud, they were in our sleeping bags as well as every piece of clothing that I owned.

After that experience I wonder why I ever agreed to go on a six-week camping trip around the country after my junior year of college. When I returned from that trip, my attraction to camping was waning. Although, I still went on an occasional camping trip until about 15 years ago. “Camp” had become a four-letter word! In 2001, we rented a motor home to travel around the country. Ahhh, the luxury of a warm bed, heat and an indoor bathroom was just my kind of camping.

Call me spoiled but I finally decided that I wasn’t going to use my camping gear any longer. Today’s gift was to take the camp stove, lantern and propane heater and give it to Goodwill. So, maybe camp isn’t a four-letter word when it is followed by the word motorhome.

In Giving,
Robin