My son and daughter often ask, as children will, for stories of their parent’s childhoods. I always tell about two things that come to my memory when I think of my first twelve years in the valley of Shenandoah in Virginia, a million years ago.
My family camped. A lot. Six of us in a huge canvas tent that weighed 350 pounds when wet. And a 1960’s turquoise stationwagonful of people and stuff. Great sport.
One time we were the first campers at a new camp ground, I think near the Skyline drive. Mom would get up early and cook a great breakfast of bacon and eggs and other great stuff and we would gobble it up and then we boys would run it off on the hillsides all day. One morning, I tell my kids, a deer walked right up to Mom and nearly ate from her hand. It was like meeting E.T. there in the woods, the little doe was so foreign to me. Very spiritual.
The other story I like to tell is about Saturday mornings and waking up and pulling on those comfortable jeans and tennis shoes and running down to Mr. Weems barn and catching one of several ponies he kept there. Of riding Queenie, or Blackie, or King, all day long. Going on expeditions to deepest Africa (over the creek and up the hill) or sailing the Pacific Ocean to China (up the long meadow to the thicket) on a trading mission. Way cool to 10 year old kids. The older kids used to camp over night in the Thicket but I was too young and we moved away before I ever got the chance.
Life was good back then and I often lament that the planet is so different now that my kids won’t be able to do those things. That Virginia is a mythical place that is now despoiled with pollution and cars and Wal-Mart’s and ........just bad stuff.
*Deep sigh*
I went backpacking this past weekend for the first time. I went with my wife and three very wonderful and genuine people, Tess and Marie and Debbie, to the mountains of Virginia, Mount Rogers and the Appalachian Trail. I told them my family legends on the way up, so as to give them the benefit of knowing what old Virginia was like before it was ruined by modern life, and what it was they would be missing. They were grateful I am sure.
We walked 5 or 6 miles and were running short on water and looking for a camp for the night , when we came around a bend to see a thicket of trees just like the one the older boys used to camp in . A little spring was just down the hill, so we stopped for the day.
As we set up camp, a group of small ponies grazed up the hill and, by golly, there was one that looked just like King! And one like Queenie! And they had a yearling with them and...... * A tear in your author’s eye here * ....dern it was nice to see them again, 30 years later!
As we set about making dinner, Miss Pam set out a delicious meal. We were enjoying coffee in the fading light of dusk when a little doe glided up near the thicket we were in and wandered over. She saw us and we saw her and, again, it was a spiritual experience. Our lives glanced off one another for a few frozen moments, then she broke her gaze and picked her way slowly back into the woods.
Over the next few days, Tess and I and the three women spotted several deer and many ponies and delighted each time, like we were little boys and girls, wondering at the wonders around us. Wandering the hills of Virginia again, as free and happy as the birds and deer, as free as the ponies and ............as free as ten year old kids in mythical old Virginia. In 1996.
And it set me to thinking about the memories my kids are forming and the quality of those memories and the stories they will be telling their kids when they ask, as children will.
I think I’ll take the kids camping this weekend.
Dave Seward
Labor Day weekend, August 1996
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