The Camping Story that was Never Told

The afternoon was rounding to dusk and all three trucks were packed to the brim. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky on this warm summer evening. The holiday weekend was here and there was excitement in the air.

The excitement would hang around all weekend and change moods from a happy excitement to anxious excitement at any given moment. The anxiety set in early on the dirt winding road up the mountain; a dusty filled trail that could barely fit two vehicles side-by-side. As they waited for oncoming trucks and trailers to pass they had to come right to the edge of the cliff that fell hundreds of feet below the tires under them. Looking off of the edge was a mere impossibility for the driver. The passenger was relieved that the sun had said goodbye for the evening so that the driver wasn’t reminded of the haunting edge. For a year earlier she was reminded of the same drive that was made during a sunny day that left the driver white-knuckled and sweaty with horror. As the road winded and grew increasingly narrow the sky dimmed darker and darker as a ripe plum. The only light that shown above was a million stars that kept the promise of a safe journey.

Finally, at the arrival of their destination the campers set up in record time and laid their debilitated bottoms on worn out chairs next to the campfire. Surrounding them were sounds of the wild and every now and then something unfamiliar would cry out. A cry that would make them all stop for only a few seconds but then would carry on with their past time tales. Nothing alarming enough to make them think something was lurking in the shadows watching their every move. Burnt remnants of a dozen marshmallows were left stuck to long wooden sticks next to the thick woods and the campers said goodnight to each other and dozed off into sugar comas leaving behind the anxiety that lingered earlier in the evening.

As the campers lay snug in their sleeping bags the woods came alive to beat the drum of the night with acts much too gruesome to recount. By morning the wild had retreated to their hiding spots and the campers woke to the smell of bacon and eggs and coffee. The camp leader had woken up earlier than the rest to surprise the group with breakfast. No one had heard him awake and no one knew how long he had really been out of the tent for.

The day passed by like any other camping day with hikes and four-wheeler rides and the roasting of recycled pig flesh on the same wooden sticks that the marshmallows had once burned. The evening was here again and the stars looked down solemnly on the humble campsite as the campers once again retreated to the fire. This time the wild had infiltrated their spirits and the campers let the night have its way. Scary stories, some true, some exaggerated were told and the campers danced around the fire like moths dancing around a candle flame.

 

Now what exactly happened from this point on is not entirely known. Some say it was evil spirits, some might say they had too much wine and some would say that the pictures were fabricated by the campers themselves just to cause a stir amongst future campers that would come to the same campsite. If only the trees could speak, oh what ghastly tales they would tell!

{I wanted to post about our camping trip this weekend but didn’t want to just recount exactly what happened. I may have been inspired by all of the horror stories I have started reading while gearing up for Halloween but I thought it would be nice to give this story a bit of a dark twist in honor of Fall and Halloween. And since these pictures of us next to the fire turned out pretty cool I thought it was even more fitting. We did something similar last year when we went camping at the same spot}