Back to Civilization

I just got back from  a one day, two night camping trip in heavy ten acre woodland area owned by a fellow employee in Presque, Wisconsin. I went with two friends, Rich and Chris. Basically, we wanted to go back to basics and rough it in the woods. Mission accomplished. We had no camcorder, unfortunately (not yet!), but plenty of pictures were taken, and I'll probably post them in the next couple days. But, for now, I recap the journey.

Wednesday, day one:
The three of us left at about 7 a.m., and after a boring 7 hour drive, parked the car in a clearing next to a boathouse and unloaded enough gear to scout out the area. We followed a makeshift path for half a mile and headed up a hill where we found a cabin and a road on the other side. Too close to reality, we backtracked atop the hills until we found a nice, secluded clearing uphill from the makeshift path into the woods, but with a creek to our backs. We dropped what he had there, made our way back to the car, and took the rest of the gear back to the plateau I marked with an orange baseball cap on a branch. But before we got back to our site, rain started to fall. It never poured, but with a nice drizzle, it was a rush to pitch our tent and throw our things inside so as not to predestine our trip to disaster. We laid around in the tent for about an hour, until the rain had mostly stopped, and emerged to build our first campfire. With everything wet, we decided to "cheat" and just squirt some lighter fluid on birch bark and twigs in a fire pit to get the fire going. Tired and upset that rain had come so quickly, we called it an early night, and went to bed at about 8 p.m. with no exploration. Aside from birds and little critters that I still can't discern from chipmunks or squirrels, there was no sign of wildlife. As we tried to sleep on the lumpy, cold ground, coyotes called, we felt cool, and sleep overtook us.

Thursday, day two:
We rose at 6 a.m. to an alarm, and within a half hour, we were stirring in the cold, humid air and restarting yesterday's fire. Rich and Chris went to find more birch bark which was fantastic for quick burning, but nowhere near our site, and I stayed behind to tend to our smoldering fire. Just before they came back, I had the fire going steadily with the help of random handfuls of leaves, bramble, and soft woods scattered around a long since dead stump. We burned the fire for an hour or two, ate the various cereals and soups we packed, and decided to take a rowboat near the boathouse out on the lake and travel to an island with a cabin on it, the cabin belonging to the owner of the woods. We launched off a dock and paddled to the island. Not a big deal really, but it was the most fun we had, so a feeling of triumph definitely came over us. We walked around the island and walked out on a dock over shallow water. Rich and Chris took off their shoes, socks, and pants and walked in the ice cold water, and I took my shirt off to take in some sunlight from the cloudless sky. Chris went on to wash his hair and face in the water, and I just took off everything but my underwear and walked in the water. I told Chris, "If I go in, you go in." He agreed, and before long we were both swimming in the coldest water we had ever swum in. After you get out of cold water like that, everything feels hotter, and it's really an awakening, wonderful experience that can be done in the shower, but had to be done there at that island. After drying off, Chris and I proceeded commando to our boat, but as we left, we pillaged some firewood from the cabin; dry as a bone and desperately needed. We paddled back to the boathouse and trekked to our site with the wood. At that point, it might have been 1 p.m. or so.

From there, we went exploring past the creek behind our site, as deep into the woods as we felt comfortable. It was mostly just joking around and tomfoolery, and I almost managed to knock myself out with a then still-standing dead tree (the pictures will come soon!). The roars we heard, indistinguishable from bear, boat, or car, kept us on our feet. We just walked through the woodland, busting up dead trees and snapping photos of our surroundings. After a couple hours, we turned back and tried to find camp. Nothing serious, but we got a little lost. An immediate trip north to find the lake from earlier, and we followed the path to our site. With the sun up for a few more hours, we got our tent ready for whenever we would sleep. I juiced up my crank radio and we listened to oldies pop songs while we started up the fire again and cooked our soup cans along the edges of the flames. We just hung out, ate, bartered food, and listened to the radio, watching the fire burn brighter as the sun fell lower. Eventually, night had almost completely overtaken the forest when we heard wolves calling. I turned the radio off, and we sat silent around our fire, listening to the silence between howling. We quickly decided to call it a night, and before we had completely retreated into our tent, Rich gave a couple .22 shots into a nearby dirt mound to scatter wildlife away from us and assert our dominance. With both shots, creatures sloshing through fallen leaves could be heard. We laid in our tent, talking ourselves into a feeling of safety and security as we watched the light of our fire burn out through our nylon tent. I neglected to mention that I had brought a .357 magnum, just in case, and Chris brought his 12-gauge shotgun. The .22 wasn't going to stop any big game, but it was more for the loud sound it gave without deafening all of us in the process. Guns loaded, our chitchat turned into long talks about life that lasted well into the next day, when we finally fell asleep around 1 a.m.

Friday, day three:
We woke up at 6 a.m. again via the same alarm, and I immediately told Chris to set it for 7. So, we woke up at 7 and after an hour of moaning about the previous night and how cold we were, we finally exited the tent to relieve our bladders. We decided the night before that we would leave as early as we were ready the next day, so, right away, we slowly packed up our gear. Once packed, we again made two trips, but this time, away from our campsite. One last look to our hallowed grounds, we covered our fire pit and left it for good. It is still inconclusive as to whether or not we will return. Time will tell.

Generally, anti-climactic, but it was a fun trip. I don't want to make this too unbearable a read, so I will let the future photos fill in the blanks I have left in terms of description. I actually couldn't wait to get back, and write about this and get online. But I do like the idea of roughing it. Living in the woods in a more permanent residence may be in my future, I'd like to think. A wooden cabin? Something like this, perhaps?