Weekend Camping

The weekend campers arrived right on schedule late Friday afternoon, big pickup trucks with brightly colored plastic kayaks strapped to the roof. backing boxy white trailers into campsites, and then setting up their awnings and lights, chairs and tables. They are all getting ready to enjoy the next two nights way out here on a peninsula of a big freshwater lake created by the US Army Corps of Engineers, who were thoughtful enough to put a tiny campground next to the water, complete with a boat launch and a swimming beach.  Down at the lakeside sites with no hookups, cars crammed with camping equipment have staked their tents to enjoy the view, unloaded their kayaks, and unpacked their campstoves and chairs for the weekend.

Saturday morning is filled with the smell of freshly cooked bacon and the voices of kids excited to hang out with new friends and explore as far as their parents will let them wander. Out my kitchen window as I was making french toast for breakfast, I saw a little boy on the loop road trying to get balanced on his shiny new bike just long enough to get himself going. He did manage it after several false starts, one foot or the other slipping off the pedal and touching the ground until that moment when the foot stayed on the pedal and he swerved to get balanced, and then off he went down the road. I smiled at how proud of himself he must be, figuring it out by himself this time, no parent hovering just behind to catch him if he started to lean too far to one side.

I’m writing this as I sit outside, admiring the lush green forest of trees and plants in front of me. Red Maple and Black Cherry mingle with oaks and pines, with Virginia creeper,  alternate-leaved dogwood, Small’s ragwort, and almost-blooming rhododendrons filling in the spaces between the trees. Ever so often, a breeze comes through, gently shaking the insanely green leaves and dropping bits of last night’s leftover rain onto the awning I’m sitting under. I can see bits of blue sky and white clouds between the trees. The forecast is for overcast weather later so I’m enjoying the blue while I can.

The birds high up in the trees over my head are serenading me: Northern Cardinal, Red-eyed Vireo, Yellow-throated Warbler, and the ever-present Carolina Wren. A broad-headed skink, less than six inches long, creeps along the black plastic timber that marks the edge of my site before making a leap onto the rough-barked oak tree at the corner. I watch him climb straight up that bark, a tiny mountain climber of the lizard variety. And then he leaps more than a foot to the next oak, confident in where he’s going, although it remains a mystery to me as he climbs up and around and finally high out of sight.

Below me, down the hill, boaters fly by on the lake, rushing from the boat ramp to who knows where on this sunny day. I might get my kayak in the water today, or I might wait till tomorrow afternoon, when the weekenders have left to return to their houses and jobs and lives in town. It will be quiet then, both in the campground and on the water. We’ll go from a lively campground bursting with weekenders to a handful of weekday campers scattered across four dozen sites.

You have to want to get to this place because it’s a good 30-45 minutes from the surrounding towns, up a series of winding roads that get smaller and smaller the closer you get. Once you’re made it all the way here, you don’t just drive into town for dinner. Nope, you come here to get away from all that and hang out with your family and friends.

It’s different up here, more relaxed. I forget to lock my door when I leave to take a walk around the campground loops and I don’t worry about it. No one comes up here to steal stuff. I say hello to people as I walk around, waving at others too far from the road to engage in conversation. We mostly talk about the heat and the humidity, two staples of Southern conversation.

We’re all up here escaping — at least for a few days — from the shenanigans of pop stars and politicians, the economic ups and downs, the divisions and view points that seem to be tearing us apart in America. Up here, I don’t read the bumper stickers on those pickup trucks and they can’t see the Coexist one on my trailer’s back bumper, so we’re all good. We talk about the weather forecast (a thunderstorm later, really?!), boating on the lake, and what’s smells so damn good on that grill the next campsite over. I’ve learned that avoiding politics and religion means much more pleasant conversations with fellow campers. And I’ve learned that we share a lot in common: the enjoyment of watching kids racing each other down the road, craning our necks to see that old-school prop plane flying low overhead, discussing the merits of different trailers and cook stoves, and just how to stack wood for a foolproof campfire. Up here, we’re not red or blue, well-off or just getting by. We’re just campers, enjoying ourselves, perched on a hillside above a beautiful lake, one Saturday in May.

We all come from the same root, but the leaves are all different.

John Fire Lame Deer