On one particular trip when I was about twelve, we made camp next to a little lake (more like a swamp, really) I was happy (not as bummed) because I thought at least we could swim. While everybody was helping settle camp, I took Slinky sis down to the water. Of course, it was extremely murky, so I wanted her to test the water (I wasn’t stupid enough to go first). She goes in for a minute and comes back out saying the water was fine (and since nothing took a bite out of her, I figured all was well). So I walk in and the water was great. I immediately got bolder and started to venture further out. However, I didn’t get too far from shore before I started to sink down into the muck at the bottom of the lake. By the time I realized what was happening, I had sunk down all the way up to my thighs. Luckily, it was loose muck, so I was able to free myself and get back to shore. When I walked out of the water, my sis said I still had mud all over me. I looked down and tried to brush the clumps of mud that were all over my legs away and they didn’t budge. Now, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the hell that “mud” was – leeches. They were all up and down my legs, just sucking the life right out of me. I thought it was the end, for sure, because there were so many that they could most definitely suck me dry before I could make the 150 foot walk to camp (because I knew all there was to know about leeches – not really or I wouldn’t have trodden into murky water). So I did what any melodramatic, drama queen, brat-of-a-kid would do – screamed bloody murder and collapsed to the ground.
When my parents came running, they instantly thought we were being attacked by mountain lions so my stepdad came with his gun drawn. When they saw it was just me with no less than fifty leeches attached, they chided me for scaring them (they should’ve been used to that by now). They were also mad because they said my earth-shattering screams probably scared away any bears that may have been in the area. That was all this entire trip, any trip, we ever took to the wilderness was all about – seeing an ever-elusive brown, black or grizzly bear.
Well, it wasn’t but a day after my leechfest that my parents got their freakin’ wish. We looked like the Beverly Hillbilly’s (meets Gilligan’s Island) as we all piled into our rinky-dink rowboat to check out the mystical land on the other side of the pond-swamp-lake. It was a cloudy, foggy day and the “other side” looked like it had never seen humans before. It was eerily overgrown, with just a strip of shoreline, and was so thick with trees that even Grizzly Adams would be afraid to forge ahead.
When we hit land over there, my parents told us kids to stay close to the boat in case we had to make a hasty retreat. Of course, everybody else listened (wusses), but what I heard was, “Go as far away from the boat as you possibly can because with one less person, it’ll be quicker to get away from any wild, starving animals that want to eat us.” I’m a wanderer at heart, a drifter, a dreamer; so I was at least a football field down the shoreline looking for driftwood, when I heard my mom whisper-screaming for me. I couldn’t understand what she was saying as she was waving her arms frantically, so I laughed because she looked hilarious. Then, I went back to hunting for driftwood in odd shapes. I had already found one that looked like a slice of pizza, a doughnut, and a jelly bean (hey, I was starving myself by this point since I refused to eat the rabbit stew the night before or the fish for breakfast). She yelled a bit louder the next time and by now I was getting annoyed that she was interrupting my daydreaming (I was pretending to be Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island and had tied my shirt so that it showed my flattening-by-the-minute-from-starvation belly).
When I looked back this time, everybody was in the boat and my stepdad was speedily pushing it back out to sea-swamp. My Gilligan fantasy was halted since my fear kicked in (finally) that I was being abandoned and would thus be raised by wolves (might not have been a bad thing). I started running as fast as I could. They were not getting rid of me this easily, Goddammit! As I was running closer, I started to yell-cry (I was good at that – still am) that they couldn’t leave without me and what kind of parents would do that, when they hushed me (they were good at that). Then they pointed to the trees. There stood the biggest grizzly bear I had ever seen (the only one I had ever seen – outside of a zoo). WTF? All these years they flapped about wanting to see a bear in the wild, now there was one (a huge one) in the flesh, and they were booking to get away? Make up your minds already, people!
Of course, by now, the shrimpy boat was almost halfway out in the muddy water, so if I didn’t want to be this bear’s appetizer, I was going to have to brave the leeches once again (not like really I braved them the first time). I looked at the bear about fifty feet away gazing at me, then looked at my family floating away beckoning me, then figured the leeches weren’t so bad.
When I got to the boat, and all was calm, we sat drifting, watching the bear watch us. I don’t know why we figured we were safe at that point, because the water was pretty shallow, and I think bears can swim, so if he had really wanted us, he could have had us all. After a few more minutes of intense staring, the bear turned and retreated back to his habitat. Can you believe everybody was upset that he left? They wanted to sit and watch the bear all flippin’ day I guess. What a bunch of fickle fools…
Back at camp, we burned the leeches off of our legs, and I think granny turned them into soup. Reason being, the best name the adults could come up with for dinner that night was “mystery soup.” Now, I was no fool, so I knew that meant they weren’t telling us what was in there for reason. Nevertheless, I caved and ate some, therefore proving my mom’s theory that “she will eat when she’s hungry enough” to be true. That’s not saying it was good (it was horrid), but it was something and something is always better than nothing…
