Neal, Dad and I went survival camping in the woods.
Now for all of you who don't know, our family loves to be out in the element and, even though we're 7 miles from civilization, we like to pretend that we're about 100 away from the nearest town in the wilderness.
We've always sat around and talked about what we would do and yadda yadda yadda. So on the 2nd to last Friday and Saturday of May, Dad Neal and I tested our knowledge. It was my idea, which we were originally going to bring the bare essentials, a couple knives, a hatchett, a BlastMatch firestarter and a sleeping bag-- oh, and my trusty dusty survival handbook, THe SAS Wilderness Survival Guide.
My dad insisted we bring a gun, since there are a lot of black bears around, so we brought one of our guns. And a salmon. And hot dogs, and a camcorder. And a grill, and a tent.My dad totally cheated, because after all, its supposed to be SURVIVAL camping, not luxury outdoor living.
I told him we didn't need to bring any food because I was so sure I could catch myself a fish, or shoot me a possum or something. I told him I could find some sort of plant we could eat, like a wild mushroom or something. He didn't trust me, and its a good thing, because we would have starved.
So we headed up our country road about 7 miles, where we found a ravine off to the side of the road with a creek and such. It's a heavily forested area, with large towering trees covered in moss and thick underbrush blanketing the floor. Naturally, the only clearing we found was near the creek, and we began setting up our camp on a sandbank, which was a HUGE mistake. I'll go into that later.
We tried to start a fire, which was a total disaster. It had rained cats and dogs two days before, and even though Western Washington got to a rare 80 degrees, the wood was still soaked. We spent one hour finding somewhat dry firewood, and a second hour trying to start a fire. We have it all on camera, but our roaring fire didn't stay that way for long. We found cedar branches with needles still on them, and they are full of pitch. It was junk fuel to the fire. Junk fuel feeds the fire rapidly and then when the fire is through burning it, it dies down to nothing. It's like the fire's equivalent of high fructose corn syrup. We constantly had to feed the fire and dad told us stories of when he was a kid as we cooked our hot dogs.(we cheated-- I know).
I told them if they wanted to cheat by sleeping in the tent they could, but I decided I would sleep outside. They told me they didn't want to be eaten by wild animals. My dad assured me the handgun's safety was off and if he heard anything, he would shoot. I just rolled my eyes at him.
If my room is any hotter than 45 degrees I can't sleep at night, so I always open up the window and sleep in shorts and a t shirt. I figured this wouldn't be too bad, so I slept with a sweatshirt on and a sleeping bag. Being the idiot I was , I camped on cold wet sand, and the air was notoriously colder than it migh typically be since we were at 1000 feet above sea level, rather than 200. Halfway through the night I woke up and heard noises .(It was really my Dad snoring) Remembering the dream I had about the cougar two months earlier (It's in one of my other posts) I started to get spooked. Then I heard a rock in the creek plunk into the water. I held dead-still, afraid that the "thing", (which could have been an animal, or the current, I'll never know) wouldn't see me as live dinner. I held like that for an hour, and then the misquitoes came. It must have been close to dawn, because that's when they come out. Then I kept scratching at the bites all those sandfleas had given me. NEVER camp on a sandbank, because little bugs called sandfleas bit me ALL over and left little red marks all over my legs, hands and face, and I am currently itching them right now. Dad says the bites won't go away for a while and I have an end-of-the-year field trip coming up at the Waterslides and I'll have to explain what all those little red bumps are all over me are.
I couldn't stand the misery and barreled into the tent and ended up waking Neal and Dad. We woke up the next morning and didn't eat breakfast because we didn't have food, so we tried to catch ourselves some fish.
Upstream from our camping spot are little rapids and "tidal" pools off to the side. We tried fishing down in these pools, but the best time to fish is at the dawn or at dusk when the fish come to the surface for the bugs that are dumb enough to get close to the water. Fishing was a disaster, but we did find a less desirable things to eat. Dad found a frog and we put it in a pan and planned on cooking it. We found some edible mushrooms and then Dad settled down to take a nap.
I was determined to make breakfast, so I gathered some wood and tinder and tried to make a fire. We had exhausted all good wood sources, so it was fairly difficult to get a good fire. We even cheated with some magnesium flakes, but the fire went out once we got to burning the logs. I have yet another reason to hate Washington: you can't light a decent fire in the spring.
So I was pretty ticked that I couldn't get a fire going. Overall, our survival mission was a failure. We'll have to try again this summer.
