Into The Woods

Written by: Bethe Almares from The Grass Stain Guru

Now, for those of you who follow me on Twitter or are readers of my blog, this story will come as no surprise. After all, let’s just say I am well acquainted with my dork-side. When Jody asked me to share a funny outdoors story, I thought of quite a few, but this one just stuck out in my memory. This is so classically ME that I decided to share. I am VERY sad I do not have any surviving pictures, but wouldn’t be surprised if there were some out there…somewhere.

Like many of us, I hung out with a pack of friends in high school. We roamed in a large co-ed group, all hairspray and rocker tees — naturally thinking we were all far cooler than we were, or ever would be. But they were nice kids — fun-spirited and mostly kind. But I digress.

So, the boys in the group announced that they were going on a fishing weekend, and that we girls were not invited. I KNOW – the nerve of those boys! Naturally, we were as outraged as only teenage girls can be. The more they talked about how cool it was going to be, the more we ladies fumed.

So, in our best, “We’ll show them!” fashion, we girls decided to go on a defensive camping trip. At that time, were we passionate about camping? Not really. After all, there were no curling irons involved in camping, but again, I digress.

So, we girls packed up more food than you would need for a week (including an alarming number of pudding cups), a tent from someone’s garage, and a giant boom box and struck out on our female bonding in nature weekend. We were so excited when we arrived, that we just decided to go take a walk through the woods and revel in the abandon of our freedom, our boy-free status, and the beauty of the woods.

Upon returning to our camping spot, we decided to pitch the tent. Now, let it be said that I was not on tent duty. I was in charge of the boom box and pudding cups, a duty which I performed with flying colors. As the sun started to set, we went about the business of setting up our shelter for the night. It was then that we realized that while indeed we did have a tent, we did not have any poles or stakes. Not one. NADA.

So, after a few minutes of clucking about what to do and some mild-mannered finger pointing, we put on our genius caps and came up with a solution. 45 minutes, and a whole lot of laughter later, the saddest excuse for a tent ever seen was “standing” proudly in a Virginia State Park. Situated between a few trees — which sadly for sleeping purposes, had some exposed roots — we had rigged the tent up with jumper cables and towing rope found in the trunk of the car, along with a few sticks picked up in the woods. Frankly, they don’t even have a name for the shape it was – something between octagon and hot mess is what I would call it.

As campers drove or walked by our site on their way to their perfectly pitched tents or RVs, they would stop to gawk and take pictures. I am telling you – it was open season on shameless gawking and mocking. But I suppose I can’t blame them – it was quite a sight to see. I truly believe that there were more pictures of that “tent” taken that weekend than of any wildlife in the park.

Looking back now, it just makes me smile. Of course, we didn’t dare tell the boys what we had done, not wanting to ruin our reputations as independent, outdoorsy women. So you see, you don’t have to have the best equipment or a lot of skills to enjoy the outdoors. That said, if you are anything like me, a good sense of humor certainly helps.

Bethe Almeras is an educator, writer, and blogger and certified 100% kid at heart. She writes The Grass Stain Guru, a daily blog about restoring childhood, and saving ourselves in the process. Bethe is still a marginally successful tent-pitcher at best, with a deep fondness for pudding cups.

Tagged as: camping, Fishing, Outdoors, The Grass Stain Guru, women in the outdoors