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When I first moved to Nebraska I felt dislocated and out of sorts, smothered by the vast landscape, ironically, and yearning for my home – although I really wasn’t sure where that home was really supposed to be. I wrote this piece back then as I mused about place, and today I’m posting it here as part of Mylestone’s Flashback Friday series [I love Jo’s blog, by the way – she’s a stellar writer, so hop on over there and check it out].
This piece is about summers spent camping in a trailer in Connecticut – just about the best childhood experience two girls could have.
Going to bed was the best part of the day. Better than hunting for elusive lady slippers bobbing next to stinky skunk cabbage, the woods cool and buggy, the forest floor spongy with pine needles beneath my sneakers.
Better than bellowing, “Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon…” into the crooked twig of a microphone as we hunted for glinting mica in the brook’s sandy bottom.
Better than crunching raw spaghetti straight from the box, anticipating the sweet Ragu and buttered Italian bread, stream rising from the Dixie plates my mom plunked onto the picnic table.
Even better than sitting by the popping campfire as dusk settled, my marshmallow flaming like a kerosene lantern on the end of the sharpened oak branch. Going to bed was better than all that.
My sister Jeanine and I snuggled into sleeping bags laid over our bunk mattresses. A filmy shower curtain hung from a rod separated our section of the camper from my parents’ sleeping quarters, where the dinette converted into a double bed. Jeanine’s sleeping bag was much newer than mine, a slick, chocolately nylon that swished when she moved, patterned with green and gold mallards and cattails on the soft cotton interior. I envied it from the moment my mom spied it at Caldor’s on sale; it even smelled new compared to my ugly, musty, old thing. I slept in my dad’s Army cast-off, an olive green, military-issued bag, branded “Property of U.S. Army” on the exterior, its insides plaid wool, rough on my bare legs.
We both knew I had the better bunk of the two, though – the one perched over our campsite like a castle turret. The tiny rectangular window in the upper corner slid open, and from it I could glimpse the hunched backs of my parents and their friends, their aluminum chairs scraping the pea gravel as they inched closer to the flames. Sometimes they made popcorn. The buttery smell of Jiffy Pop bursting from the tinfoil pan and mingling with the sweet, woody scent of the campfire made my mouth water as I lay in my bunk. I would listen for the clink of the metal Coleman cooler, the rustle of hands in ice cubes and the sharp pop of the Busch tab as their voices rose and fell, a murmur punctuated by sudden laughter, then a murmur again.
“Now what are they doing?” Jeanine would whisper from an arm’s length away. And I’d narrate the night, play by play, until we got sleepy, feathery images of mica and moss folding into my words, the whippoorwill calling from the birch tree.
