Escaping into the wilderness for a weekend
It’s been a while since I’ve last written, so I decided to write about my recent experience camping during a weekend in early August. My girlfriend, Catt, and I went camping in southern Ohio — far south enough that we were adjacent to the Kentucky border. I’ve been camping here a few times before, so I knew it would be a good spot for me to take Catt, who had never been camping before in her life.
Before embarking on our road trip, we bought groceries and plenty of liquor, then took the highway southward bound on a leisurely drive into Appalachia. It was Friday afternoon, so we were eager to escape into the wilderness for the weekend.
We got lost a few times trying to find the campgrounds, but we found our way in the end. Eventually, we arrived at our reserved space and scoped out the site.
Atop a hill, the campsite was secluded behind a wall of trees, offering us privacy from other campers. At first, we struggled with propping up the tent but finally pitched it after talking through the steps with each other. After we laid down a tablecloth on the picnic table and erected an easy-up shelter above it, we felt at home in our comfortable spot.
Our first night in the forest was spent drinking whiskey and listening to music around the campfire. When it got too late to play music, we turned off the speaker and listened to the sounds of nature instead.
The voice of the night: thousands of spring peepers roaring above all other sounds. Isn’t it ironic how those tiny tree frogs are capable of drowning out the rest of nocturnal life?
The next morning, I woke up early to cook bacon and eggs. I brought a plate of hot breakfast into the tent to wake up Catt. We ate, then got dressed for kayaking.
We still heard a variety of frogs during the daytime, but the main sounds we heard now were the rattling of newly emerged cicadas and the bold cawing of blue-jays.
We rented two kayaks at the camp office. At a small dock outside, we received life jackets and paddles, then took to the water. We navigated the lake at the front of the campground. A few particularly neat spots we paddled by are worth mentioning here:
- A coastal cave by the shore, which we attempted to climb into, but (hilariously) couldn’t manage.
- A monolithic, concrete fishing dock, which towered above us — glittering in the bright sun with enormous, intricate cobwebs.
- A shallow bottleneck of the lake, where the water narrows and passes under a bridge. Beneath the cold, clear water here, I spotted a bass carelessly floating below the surface — I plunged my hand down, wrapped my fingers around its body, and stroked its slimy scales. Although I allowed it to swim away, I could have easily plucked it right out of the water like a prehistoric hunter-gatherer man.
We returned the kayaks when our rental time was up. Across the shoreline from the boat dock was a shabby little beach, so we decided to swim there to freshen up. Although Catt was somewhat hesitant to get in, the water was cool and revitalizing.
Refreshed from a dip in the lake, we walked back to our campsite and ate Spaghetti-O’s for lunch. I saved our tin cans for rustic whiskey-drinking cups to use that night. I would have to properly wash them beforehand, probably sometime after dinner.
After cleaning up from lunch, we went on a hike. The trail extended up, around another lake at the opposite end of the campground. This other lake is larger and deeper. At the base of the lake lies a massive dam, which appears surreal to me for some reason. We hiked all afternoon, for a total distance of 4 miles.
Afterward, we walked back to our campsite. I built a fire, so we could cook dinner. We prepared campfire pizzas together with pie irons, which were delicious. Catt praised me for the idea (which I took great pride in as an avid outdoorsman).
After doing the dishes, I rinsed out the leftover Spaghetti-O cans. We used those to drink for the remainder of our stay. Once more, we sipped whiskey late into the night. I love the warm, cozy feelings of sitting by a fire (especially with a tin can of whiskey in my hand).
Campfire talk makes for some of the best conversations one could ask for: ghost stories, urban legends, vignettes of past exploits in the outdoors.
I told Catt about some of the old Scouting pranks I used to play with the other boys in my troop. One of these involved sending the Tenderfoots on a far trek to fetch a “left-handed smoke-shifter” — only to find out at the end that such a contraption does not exist. Of course, there was also the option of sending the young guys out on a Snipe Hunt, another classic camp trick, which entailed getting lost in the woods at night on a wild goose chase in search of an elusive little critter called a snipe.
Before bed, I took Catt’s hand and walked with her out into an open field to stare at the night sky. We admired the clear view of the stars.
Many constellations were visible that night. Among the ones I recognized were Orion, the Little Dipper, and the Big Dipper. Flaunting my wilderness survival skills, I showed Catt how to find North without a compass using the star-map: locate the Big Dipper and trace the edge to Polaris, AKA, the North Star. She’s into astrology, so it makes sense that Catt fancied stargazing with me — the kind of stargazing you can only do while out in the forest, away from the light pollution of more populous areas.
The stars make you wonder about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Are we alone? I want to believe…
It can’t be just a coincidence: driving home the next morning, we passed a cheap billboard in the countryside advertising someone’s UFO sighting videos on YouTube. I looked him up… Despite the billboard, he has 8 subscribers (including me now).
Otherwise, the drive home was rather quiet. It was an enjoyable weekend, even though I got a bad rash from contact with poison sumac leaves.
Although there was an electrical outlet at our campsite, neither of us had cell service or internet connection, which was liberating and satisfying. We were off the grid, free to live in the moment, using our phones only as cameras to document the weekend’s adventures.
Staring up at the stars that final night had a profound impact on me. Gazing at the infinite cosmos, one might first be inclined to feel strangely small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. However, this reminder of the arcane complexity of existence also gave me a deep appreciation of the simple pleasures in life — like eating bacon and eggs with my girlfriend on Saturday morning in the woods.
Amidst the chaos of the universe, it’s the little things that keep us grounded throughout it all that brings out the sublime charm of ordinary living. So rather than feeling diminished and futile by the vastness of space, I feel centered in the small bit of the world I’ve carved out for myself.