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This is an abridged version of a story about backpacking with troubled boys at Cameron Boy's Camp, a year around wilderness therapy program for troubled boys in North Carolina. Unfortunately I had to blur out their faces, to bad they're all smiles (for once)
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The dead leaves rustled under the chilly February sky as I hiked at the rear of the group watching my six campers hiking briskly along. Only their legs and the tops of their heads showing around their bulky packs stuffed with winter insulation for the cold nights. As the boys happily cracked jokes together and sang goofy camp songs I silently gave thanks for this moment nearly two years in the making.
“Chief we’re finally backpacking” one of the boys called back proudly. I smiled inside. The boys knew that at this therapeutic wilderness camp a backpacking trip was considered the crowning achievement for a well functioning group. They knew they were doing well and were proud of themselves. If only the boys knew how much this short trip would mean too me. They didn’t know yet but I would be leaving soon and this trip was my “last hurrah” and good-bye gift all in one.
I was finishing up two years at Cameron Boy’s Camp a therapeutic wilderness camp/school for boys with a variety of troubles best defined as “emotionally disturbed” although that didn’t begin to describe what I was dealing with. Running the group felt like being the only sane person in the “Lord of the Flies” story. I had the “Frontiersmen” group the youngest at camp from 8 to 11 years old. The boys were difficult enough as it was but some bad group dynamics and fast camper turnover had kept our group in a state of almost constant chaos for my first year. While the other groups went off on various adventures, canoeing and backpacking we were too crazy and disorganized to take any serious trips. With help from some other awesoe camp staff we’d finally come together in the last year and got the point where planning a backpacking trip (which required full help from the boys) was feasible. Since I was about to move on to another job it was now or never. I wanted one last trip together to help bring the boys together more before I left.
It was a challenge to pack light for boys in cold weather with old and traditional style gear. Things like down bags just weren’t an option. We did our best and kept the packs reasonably light. The boys knew how important teamwork was to go backpacking so they policed themselves. If they sensed and argument brewing they would resolve it together quickly rather than risk a big problem that might cause the trip to be cancelled.Now that we were finally in the woods and on the trail the boys were ecstatic. The cracked dumb jokes, they sand goofy songs and they encourage each other along. The day flew by as we explored, checked out a rope swing and made hiking sticks. That evening the boys helped set up a tarp and cooked an awesome dinner over the fire.
The next morning the guys shrugged off the 22 degree temperature and woke up in good spirits. We took a winding course through the woods and learned how to filter water and how to use iodine tablets. A previous counselor had once told about a trip where his group functioned so well he felt like it was just a fun summer camp. I’d never thought that would happen here but here I was having a great time with my boys with no real problems to deal with.
That night around the fire I asked the boys what they thought of the trip. They all said they felt like they’d accomplished something big. They’d felt like the little runts of camp who couldn’t do the same things as the older groups did. They proudly pointed out that in two days they hadn’t had any real problems even though we’d done what would have been considered a hard trip for little guys. When it was my turn to speak I pretty much praised the boys up one side and down the other. They'd helped us plan and pack for a trip none of us had done, they'd trusted us while we figured things out on the fly, they'd encouraged one another when they got tired, and they'd shown initiative in helping meet the needs of the group. I could not have asked for more out of them. The trip was exactly what I’d wanted it to be. It had boosted the boys’ confidence in what they could accomplish together and it had helped them work together in ways they would not have done normally.The next day we hiked back to camp and the boys strutted in proudly wearing their packs. About a week later it was all over, it was time for me to move on and I had a new job waiting for me. The boys who just months before had been cussing me out and fighting me over anything were now bawling their eyes out as we said our goodbyes. In many ways the trip was the final happy ending for me. After two years of hard work I could leave feeling like I’d contributed to the camp and knowing that my boys were doing better. It wasn’t my longest, lightest or most scenic trip but that little hike was definitely my most significant. I felt more satisfaction after that two night little trip than any of the "bigger and better" things I'd done. As I told a friend as I was leaving “We went backpacking; my life is now totally complete, I can die in peace and go to Frontiersmen heaven.”
The campfire had almost burned out and I could barely make out the 2 counselors and 8 little boys gathered around for “pow-wow” the evening meeting before bedtime. We had been camping for several days by a lake with a group of emotionally disturbed boys ages 8-11. The purpose of the “pow-wow” was to evaluate the day and help the boys go to bed relaxed and feeling good about the day by focusing on what we’d learned and accomplished.
The boys were relaxed and tired and everything was (finally) peaceful and calm. I could almost feel my snug sleeping bag.Suddenly I heard a crash on the dry leaves across the circle and things began to happen fast.
Chris, the counselor across from me jumped up with a startled yell and looked around.
I heard another and another loud crash as something BIG ran through the blackness
toward the fire, it sounded like it was practically on top of us.I jumped up ready for action.
Instinctively my hand found my big quick opening pocket knife clipped to my pocket.
My hand made a smooth arch as I swung the knife out and cocked it over my head. As I poised for a fight the two little guys on either side of me screamed and both wrapped their arms around my waist nearly pulling me over.
As the boys moved into a panicked huddle and I tried to pull out of the tangle the noise suddenly stopped. Scott (our third counselor) found his headlamp and flicked it on.
Nothing
No rabid dog
No psycho deer
No bear
No Sasquatch
No animal was visibleWe looked down and saw a huge frog hopping around in the leaves. Every time his fat body plopped down it sounded like an overweight grizzly’s footstep! Everyone nervously laughed as I pocketed the knife and gave the little boys still wrapped around me a reassuring pat on the back.
So much for getting the boys relaxed and calmed down before bed, I doubt they slept that night.
When the Leki breaks
No one recalled hearing the pole snap. However, in the maelstrom, everyone had developed a sixth sense for when a guyline had broken again. On top of the wind noise, muted by your sleeping bag hood, you could just detect the tight thrumming of the guys, and the angry snapping of the tarp. The tarps became a sort of wind powered musical instrument. All that rapid vibration and constant tension was playing hell with the guys though. They were cutting through where they were hitched to the boulders, despite our best attempts to pad them. When one of the guys went, that barely detectable tarp song vanished entirely into the background wind noise. When the tarp went quiet, a few headlamp beams would shoot straight up. Occasionally, several guys would fail at once. Instead of illuminating a sheet of blue fabric, 18 inches above the headlamp’s owner, the beams would stab up into swirling mist.
This was all a bit of an experiment. Southern hemisphere summer, 2005. I was fairly new to NOLS (the National Outdoor Leadership School), and NOLS was still fairly new to New Zealand. My co-instructor was neither new to NOLS or new to tarps.
But he was, however, new to New Zealand. He thought tarps were great for teaching the students better campcraft, and providing a more intimate outdoor experience. They'd also lighten up our packs. He had used tarps in Patagonia and Alaska, both known for their meteorological and insect challenges. I thought it was madness, but his experience and persuasive logic swayed me. It turns out he was right.
It was a downdraught that did it. Not the biggest gust of the night, but this one dropped straight down from above. We were hiding in an earthquake fault scarp, a rift contouring around the hillside like a moat. It had protected us from the worst of the wind for hours, but the boulder berm could do nothing to stop this leaden parcel of air falling straight from the sky. I imagine the gust had eddied horizontally over the nearby ridgeline, before spotting our tarps.The downdraught flattened the tarp against our sleeping bags. From above, it could bear down on every inch of the tarp's surface area. It felt like I'd been sat on by a giant bean bag full of shot pellets. The gust soon abated, and headlamps flashed on as we scrambled to save the tarp. To my amazement, it was intact. Loose and flapping, but in one piece. In the noisy night, harassed by more gusts, we re tensioned the trucker's hitches before scampering back into our sleeping bags.
In the morning we saw why the tarp had inexplicably slackened during the downdraught. The bottom section of the leki pole, holding up one end of the tarp, had snapped in half. The pole was of course now shorter, but none of us noticed until the morning light illuminated the pole's lower section sitting on the rocks.
Has any NOLS NZ course gone out again with just tarps? No. Would I try it again? Hmmm, possibly not. Was it a success? Absolutely! I had started out a non-believer. Yet those tortured tarps, over the next couple of weeks, proved my colleague right. The students developed great campcraft. They also got the full 360 degree, 24/7 outdoor experience; bugs, drafts, drips and all. In fact, they came to like their battle scared scraps of nylon so much, when offered nice new 4 season tents for the next section of their semester, they turned them down in favour of their trusty tarps.
Last year, my friends and I went on our first backpacking trip with our church college group to the San Gorgonio Mountains in Southern California. The group consisted of seven people, four without any experience and would learn on the trip, Kevin and I being two out of those four. Extremely excited about our upcoming trip and my naturally obsessive personality, I vigorously typed into my google search function and read anything I could find with the words backpacking on it, including backpackinglight.com and other lightweight sites. The pros of lightweight sounded outstanding to me since I am not a big guy and could not consider carrying 50 pounds on my back nor could I pay for it! As shelters were planned to share, Kevin and I chose each other to be tent buddies but I had better ideas. “We should tarp!” I proposed to Kevin who knew as little about backpacking as I did. With budgets being limited, I figure a 8×10 standard blue poly tarp from REI for around $7 would do the trick and would be lighter than any tent I could find to rent or buy. We were ecstatic about the great idea of tarping and to show off our Spartans’ spirits to the rest of the group.
After the first day of hiking, camp was to be set up and Kevin and I were excited to unveil our inexpensive, lightweight, and cooler-than-any other-person’s shelter tarp. To be optimistic, we “struggled” to set it up. We clumsily tied our already tangled rope around the trees and draped the “now not so good looking shelter” over the line and staked out the corners. We looked at each other and I gave Kevin a weak smile and said “Don’t worry, this tarp can do anything!” That smile seemed to give him enough confidence because he responded with a confident “Yeah, tonight will be great.”
After dinner was done, talking seemed to come to an end, brushed teeth, food hung (hopefully properly), everyone started to retrieve to the comforts of their own shelters to prepare for bed. “Wait, it’s only 8:45! I can’t sleep that early! If I sleep that early I will wake up in the middle of the night!” Said Kevin. He reluctantly went into our tarp with me while we got into our sleeping bags and I told him to go to sleep and goodnight. Previously, I had scared him about ticks and told him that if he were to find them on him that he would have to burn it off. This information really freaked him out because he figures he is a really hairy guy and the idea of having a singe hole in the middle of his chest or worst somewhere else…was not something he wanted. So before he went into bed he successfully sprayed 100% deet all over his clothes….which slept right next to me! 10:00 p.m. arrives and I wake up because Kevin can’t sleep and just keeps tossing and turning and was humming to himself, why? I can’t figure that out to this day. I tell him to go to sleep and drift back to sleep when I hear Kevin struggling to get out of his bag and the rustling of the tarp as he bumps his head on the top. “He whispers I gotta pee.” It was midnight when I checked my watch. Silence comes again and I go to sleep when at 12:30 he gets up again and wakes me up and quickly comes back and says “Its too hot!” I look at his direction and see a slimmer silhouette and asks “are you naked?!?!” No response comes from him and I am too tired to care as I turn my back to him. A loud buzzing comes into our tarp and a very familiar sound of mosquitoes seemed to want to join us for the night and I hear a loud “Crap!” next to me. In the process of “being too hot” he realized his thick layer of deet came off when his clothes did so he proceeded to spray his naked body with deet. When I had some consciousness of protesting, he had already managed to scurry into his sleeping bag, and I apprehensively checked my watch, 1:30 a.m. Up to that I had little sleep and was determined to get some rest before another tiring day of hiking that seemed to be coming too soon. I fell back to sleep and all was well when Kevin decided to talk, not only to other people in our group, but in other tents across the camp! My frustrated yelling quieted them down quickly. Another failed attempt at peaceful REM. It was 2:00 a.m. I fell back asleep for the final time until I felt a poke at my back, I quickly woke up and said “What?!?” “Oh nothing” Kevin responded, “Just wondering if you were awake.” It was 3 a.m. After that I decided my sleeping was over and just stayed awake with Kevin until the sun rose. So Hyperlight Mountain Gear, I would love your Echo I Shelter System not just to ditch Kevin, but to ditch my blue poly tarp that I can’t bear to look at anymore because it reminds me of that sleepless night and it still smells like DEET.
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