Growing Up Outside - A Way-Too-Long Story

My earliest memories of being outside must be in the late 1940s. The first story told to me about an outside event happened in South Mississippi at my grandfather Scott's farm in Walthall County. On the other side of the hill from his home was some wooded land with a small creek meandering through it. My two sisters and I used to go to the woods accompanied by my grandfather carrying his shovel to dam the creek with rocks and gravel to make a small pool for us to play in. Bandee--as we called him--loved to make the pool just below a large beech tree, and we would play for hours in the sultry summer afternoons. The memorable event happened some time before the damming of the creek as our family--both grandparents, father, mother, and sisters--was hiking into the woods to find a place for a picnic. I was perhaps 18 months old and my father was carrying me. My grandfather spotted a high bank across the creek, but to get there, everyone had to cross the creek, either by wading or by walking across on a fallen tree. Since the women had on summer dresses and my sisters had on shorts, they waded across. My grandfather and my father had on trousers, so they decided to walk across on the log. My father started out first with me in his arms. About halfway across the log, it broke in half and my father and I fell several feet into the creek. My father's reaction to an event like this was to laugh loudly. So there he sat fully clothed in the creek laughing his head off, with me in his lap, both of us in the water. My mother and grandmother were horrified and frantic that I was injured until I looked at my laughing father and said, "Do it again, Daddy!"

Sometime in the early 1950s, my father was called to be the head of the largest religious publishing house in the nation. One of the associated tasks of this organization was to facilitate religious training for denominational workers throughout the US. When he arrived, the organization already ran a conference center in North Carolina and wanted another one in the Western US. Land was found and purchased east of Santa Fe, NM, and the first summer of operation were called Pioneer Weeks, because there were very few buildings and everyone who came to the conferences would have to stay in travel trailers and tents. Our family went to New Mexico with two tents, one for my parents and one for my sisters and me. I think I was about seven, which would have made my older sister about 14 and my other sister about 10 or 11. We stayed in our two tents for the entire week, though I can't imagine that the sleeping arrangement with my two sisters and I staying in a small tent together worked. I seem to remember that the first couple of nights I started off sleeping with my sisters, but got thrown out before we could get to sleep, and ended up sleeping in my parent's tent. That's my first camping memory, though I may have slept out in my backyard while we lived in Abilene, TX. I would probably have started off out in the yard and ended up in the house ... too many imagination stimulation noises in the night in West Texas.

When I was small there were no televisions or video games, so I went outside early in the morning and had to be called in each evening when it got dark. Living in Texas and the south, I grew up playing barefooted outside most of the time. I do remember having a war with the sand spurs in Texas. We called them "goatheads," and I had to dig the plants for my punishment. I hated goatheads for more than sticking in my bare feet.

The summer I was nine I started going to a boy's camp east of Asheville each summer for ten years. The sessions were five weeks long and there were two sessions. Some summers I went for five weeks and some summers I stayed all ten weeks. We had to choose skills that we wanted to learn. The choices were Indian lore, riflery, archery, camping skills, horse riding, crafts, team sports, swimming, canoeing, and probably more that I have forgotten. Each cabin of boys, assigned by age, had about 12 campers and a counselor. The cabins of younger boys would also have a "junior counselor" to help with supervision. The cabins were spaced in groups designated as different tribes of Native Americans. When I was young, I was an Apache; in my early teens I was a Choctaw; and as an older teen I was a Navaho. Political correctness was not to be worried about in the 1950s and early 60s.

Beginning with the early years, at least one night each week was spent camping outside of the confines of the campgrounds. We may have only been a half a mile down a trail, but it seemed to a young boy as if we were way out in the wilderness. I had a rectangular cotton-filled sleeping bag. We usually had a poncho to put over us, but no sleeping pads under us. Back then we didn't know better, so we cut small limbs off of fir and spruce trees to make a sleeping pad, or piled up six or more inches of leaves. I remember sleeping cold most nights. Eventually, I bought another poncho and snapped them together for a kind of bivy sack.

One year I went to camp with a jungle hammock, but on one outing when the rains came and stayed for three consecutive days and I was the only dry one in the group, they cut my hammock down in the mud ... not nice ... I don't think I took that hammock to camp the next year.

My first trip on the Appalachian Trail was my third year at camp. We left from Newfound Gap, stayed at Ice Water Springs, hiked down to Charley's Bunion, then backtracked to the Boulevard Trail and hiked to the top of Mt LeConte. I was 11 years old at the time and we carried cans of food, many of which a bear ate ... we had "hidden" them under a rock thinking the bear couldn't get to them, since it took four or five of us to move the rock ... I don't think the bear even broke a sweat getting to them ... tore the cans up and ate a lot of our food. We had other food tied in the tree. She tried to get to that, but I had a bell tied on the food sack and when we heard it ring, we chased her away. I have other stories to tell about that bear, but I'll save that for another telling ...

After college and some exciting times in the Army (68-71, with my last year overseas), I thought a good way to reconnect with my wife would be for us to backpack together. We got a bare minimum of equipment and hiked from Newfound Gap up the AT to Ice Water Springs. We spent the night there and then hiked the Boulevard Trail to Mr. LeConte. As soon as we came on to the shelter there a young black bear was gnawing on someone's pack. I tossed some rocks chased the bear away and hung the badly torn pack inside the bear-cage on the LeConte shelter (they have removed the bear-cages on the shelters and provided a cable system for hanging food, but back then all of the shelters had chain link on the front of them). My wife and I decided to tent camp down closer to the LeConte Lodge (which was legal back then), and pitched our tarp shelter to set up our camp. We didn't see the bear again, but my wife thought she heard him throughout the night. On the morning we hiked out, a wet cloud had covered the top of LeConte and the temp dropped below freezing providing us with a gorgeous ice crystal scene in all of the trees. My wife had a great time and was a real trooper, but decided that maybe I should depend on another friend to backpack with me as often as I wanted to go.

So, I hooked up with an old friend with whom I had grown up in Nashville. Paul and I started backpacking together. We covered most of the main trails in the Smokies and had many adventures in the woods ... unfortunately, we told too many people about the fun we were having and the group started growing ... grew to 10 guys on one hike ... way, way too many grown men on a backpacking trip ... especially when one is 100 lbs overweight and brings along a full bag of those little Snickers candy bars to eat along the trail. We like to say he got five Snickers to the mile before he emptied his stomach and we thought he was having a heart attack ...

Paul was the logistics person with a touch of OCD, so I never had to worry about when, where, or what. All I had to do was show up ... where is Paul now when I need him? While we were actually hiking the trails Paul and I were hardly ever together. Paul loved to hike fast, get to the destination or meeting place and crash. I was the plodder ... stopping often to look at plants or scenic views or think about how heavy my pack was. We did complement each other's personalities ... and both of us were a little weird.

Paul and I hiked in to the woods over near Smokemont on the Cherokee side with a naturalist/biologist ... I wish I could remember all of the things he showed us about plants and bugs and stuff ... we didn't make many miles that day, but we sure learned a lot of stuff. One thing Paul and I still would argue about, though, is the difference between a spruce and a fir. The needles are different and any knowledgeable person should be able to remember the difference, but we never could--or I never was certain, so we debated back and forth about which was which; and to this day, I can't remember the difference. Spruce or fir??

Paul and I backpacked together so much that in my camping talk I still refer to him as an element of time ... before Paul ... when Paul and I ... and since Paul ... I was the risk-taker in the two of us and, as I said, Paul came close to being OCD. He was the planner, preparer, scheduler, etc., and I just had fun ... although he tried to kill me once when he took so long to decide what to wear that the Raven Fork River rose from crotch-deep to chest deep in a 30-minute period and blocked our hike out of the woods. We ended up hiking out through the Cherokee Reservation beyond where I maps covered ... fortunately, catching a ride in the back of a pickup after I threw down my pack and said I wasn't going any further--I had just decided to die right there ... okay, so maybe it wasn't quite that bad ... but it wasn't fun at the end ... well, yeah, it was, since it makes for some great stories ...

Somehow, I acquired a canoe. Paul and I began canoeing rivers and streams in Mississippi. We would put in on the Strong River near D'Lo and canoe down to the confluence of the Strong and the Pearl near Georgetown. A group of us even drove up to northern Arkansas and canoed the Buffalo River from Ponca to Pruitt ... great trip, except for the fact that it drizzled rain most of the trip. One spot in the river was know for swamping every canoe that came through it. Paul and I had canoed many miles together and were pretty good. We stopped, scouted the rapids, made a plan, got low in the canoe and made it without turning over. The people sitting along the banks watching the fun actually booed us because we didn't turn over.

The most memorable story about canoeing with Paul was when we put in way up on the Strong near Puckett in order to get a couple of days of canoeing. We were somewhere north of D'Lo when we came to a big log-jam in the river just under a suspension bridge. Not only was it a huge log-jam that blocked the whole river, but right in the middle of it was a very dead cow ... a VERY dead cow ... know what I mean? We were discussing how to drag our canoe and supplies around the putrid cow log-jam and looked up at the suspension bridge and there was an old guy in a T-shirt and overalls standing in the middle of the bridge watching us. Paul and I had seen James Dickey's Deliverance and we both thought we heard banjos playing ... I volunteered Paul to sacrifice himself for my safety ... but, actually, the guy was very friendly (Mississippi people are different than North Carolinians) and helped us portage around the jam as both Paul and I gaged at the smell ...

Both Paul and I had sons and we moved away and haven't hiked together since ... too bad. He still hikes with some guys and I still hike a lot alone ... He's a counselor and needs people; I'm an introverted school administrator and need to get away.

In 1978, when my son was about 16 months old, I took him on our first "guys" camping trip. We drove down to Rocky Springs on the south Natchez Trace and found a great car-camping campsite. I put Jeff in the middle of the picnic table while I set up the tent. I was earnestly pitching the tent and glanced at Jeff on the table -- only Jeff wasn't on the table! He was lying in the gravel and dirt under neath the table where he had fallen. I don't remember him crying. He didn't seem to be cut or scraped, but to this day, when he does weird things, he still blames me for the head injury when he fell off of the picnic table. Anyway, we spent the night in the tent and ate camp food and bonded some ...

After that, son, wife, and I began canoeing along the Strong River. We planned to pitch a tent on a sand bar and spend the night, but Jeff wanted to stay up in the woods, so we hauled stuff up the bank into the woods and set up camp there. Jeff heard a deer run by during the night and was convinced it was a bear, but, other than that, the trip went as planned. After telling that story to some friends, the convinced us to take them, so the three of us and a five-person-two-canoe family joined us. We camped on the sand bar and I told the "Bird Boy" story around the fire ... still a legend ...

When we moved to Colorado we hooked up with a group of people that loved to camp. We all camped together at the Sand Dunes National Monument (now a national park), Mt. Rushmore, and the Old Mill on the Crystal River. What great memories we made in our family and tales to tell.

Moving back to North Mississippi, the three of us camped at some parks and then Jeff and I began backpacking some. We hiked in to the Sipsey Wilderness a couple of times and developed my love affair with that beautiful river basin. The most important about all of these experiences, however, is that I was able to pass along a love and appreciation of the outside to my son. Jeff now lives in the northwest and he and his beautiful wife are gradually making memories along the trails there. I'm envious of his youth and his strength ...

What else can I say? ... forget the box, think OUTSIDE!