Out in the Woods

There is a wide variant in temperature when the change goes from winter to spring; this morning was a balmy 26 degrees, by late afternoon the wind was cracking around the corners of the building in a chill equal to 6 below zero.  Walking into it created tiny stabs of pain anywhere the coat didn't cover.  It reminded me of Girl Scout camp in January and all the frickinna outdoor activities scheduled, including going to the bathroom in a frozen outhouse.

We hiked, cleaned trails, cooked outdoors, looked for constellations, and played guitars around the fire which was the only source of heat in the lodge, so you climbed into your sleeping bag with your winter jacket on. Every surface had the potential to freeze to your skin.  We got to walk over to a farm on the frozen mud ruts in the road, found a piece of a dead porcupine, and then got to ride around a corral on an old white horse with yellow eyes.  He had a thick coat developed by the cold country season, and whuffled sweetly as we young girls hoisted ourselves up to the saddle.  It was just too damn cold, but we kept moving.

Meals were Girl Scout recipe weird, like the old standby of Bisquick dough glommed onto a freshly cut green stick, held over a campfire to bake, then pulled off and grape jelly mashed into the hole where the stick had been.  Either burned black on the outside or raw on the inside, that was that and you didn't complain, nothing else was available.  This was usually accompanied by hot chocolate made with water pumped up from the well if the handle wasn't frozen.  In order to free the handle, you melted snow in a pot over the fire and then doused the thing with the boiling water.  Most of the time was spent gathering firewood, and boy we smelt like a four alarmer.  You just needed the wood for so much, and to get warm meant standing by a blaze.

Toast was made by holding bread over the fire, then topping with sliced oranges and confectioner's sugar.  The gung-ho leaders did allow supper to be cooked indoors, as the size of the pot over the campfire would have been unmanageable.  Hamburger was fried into brown crumbles with celery and onions, then mixed with cans of Campbell's Alphabet Soup and poured over cornbread; dessert was Indian Pudding: molasses and cornmeal.  After a day of clambering up and down hills, you ate.  Then the group sang inane camp songs around the fire such as "Eddie Kucha Kacha Karry Toast Mary Toast Mary Allen Paddawacky Brown."  We were so suburban.

One of the most sage pieces of advice came from my best friend Nancy.  Upon arrival, you had to sign up for a job such as sweeping, hauling firewood, dishes, garbage detail.  Nancy got me to sign up for latrine duty for the hard fact that it was the easiest and quickest job around.  Two sides to one outhouse; all that had to be done was to replenish the toilet paper supply and toss a shovelful of lime down the chute.  We'd be done in less than five minutes, and would trot back in while the other girls spent the next half hour hauling wood in the subzero dark.  Cries of not fair would be countered with offers of trading jobs, which none of them wanted which made no sense because anyone using the outhouse was required to leave it with enough toilet paper and sprinkle lime afterwards.  We were only follow up, and had no squeamishness about our reputation.  Besides, in winter the outhouses were spiderless; woodpiles, on the other hand, often housed desperate things with legs or worse, weasels looking for them.

The clarity of the cold heightened your senses, especially of smell.  If walking down a road, you learned to get into a pine woods if possible as it would be warmer, the trees kept the air more still and the needles were perfume.  How to describe the smell of snow, or the way it muffles sound, or how it catches you softly if you fall.  How very clear a night miles away from city lights is, and the path that the Milky Way actually takes through it.  Or to watch the Northern lights that shimmer and crackle.  Or to find the freshly frozen guts of a deer dressed in the field by a hunter, and not so much be horrified as to be fascinated by the recognition that you know this is the gut, this is the liver, this is the intestine, all in iced crystalline forms usually seen in your science book, back in the real world.

Taking a hot bath once you got back home was reintroduction to civilization as well saying hello your friend, a Real Toilet not Made of Wood.  You made your hot chocolate with milk, and ate meals that were not different food groups mixed together to save washing pots.  Out in the woods with other girls you had to use social skills you had little understanding of; at home you could hide in your room and read a book.  Thank God for Nancy, she was the wild one who pulled me out into a life of sorts after we met in Scouts.  My girl.

Even if you cannot hear the coyotes or see the rush of the Milky Way, know that it is only a few steps away from where you live.  No state in this union is totally citified, you only have to get away from the lights by about twenty miles to see anything different.  Then, look up and feel humbled by what is beyond us that has circled the heavens for billions of years.  Most of us are able to be warm if we want, most of us have a place to sleep with blankets to huddle under.  Sleep well, dream of wheels in the sky that turn the planets and stars, of winds that blow in changes that starts the sap to rise in our trees.  Sleep like a log.  Good night.