as i sit here on my deck on a beautiful, late August, Sunday morning in rural southwest Michigan reading an article about surviving a bear attack at Signal Mountain in Yellowstone in May 2024,

i am reminded that

one of my very favorite things as a kid was to visit my great grandmother and to sit in her rocking and folding lawn chair, all by myself on the tiny porch — of her modest, peach-colored stucco bungalow at 2229 West Oakdale Avenue in Chicago — because we didn’t have a porch, only a stoop at CHA’s Julia C. Lathrop Homes where i lived as a child (privacy, peace and quiet were rare there) and comb through her Reader’s Digest magazine collection for stories of wilderness experiences and encounters with wildlife — especially the ones with predators: sometimes, not everyone survived in those excerpted stories /

but the intense desire to experience the outdoors that those stories inspired in me was almost entirely extinguished when i went, *with zero experience* on a three day/two night camping-canoe trip along the Fox River for our 8th grade class graduation trip; me and another 13 year-old female classmate were paired together in a canoe in a group of 5-6 canoes / i went [un]prepared with a borrowed, indoor Barbie slumber party sleeping bag from one friend and my best friend Jill’s dad’s old army reservist mess kit — everything stuffed into a single, tripled black garbage bag to keep my “gear” dry in case we tipped and went into the water/ Jill couldn’t go herself because that winter she was suddenly stricken with Raynaud’s Syndrome and was quite sick from another, yet-undiagnosed autoimmune disease /

my classmates and i slept outside on the ground without a tent and woke covered dew and very cold both mornings (while the adults occupied two very dry and warm pup tents) // we peed (and presumably, some of us also pooped) into holes dug in the ground within earshot of our 13 & 14 year old [boy] classmates and male teachers // the only other girl on the trip got her period the first night and had to use a sock as a menstrual pad because none of the male teachers thought to come prepared in event for that routine bodily function — and apparently, none of our mothers suggested this to us or to them — or planned for it either //

around the campfire the first night, which was a Friday, our teachers told us in a very serious manner that the camp in the film Friday the 13th — “Camp Crystal Lake” — was actually based on a true story at nearby youth camp— we had, in fact, passed a road sign for “Crystal Lake” en route; while, i had not yet seen the film — but the others filled me in in great detail — and it no longer felt good or safe to be on the trip with them — even after the teachers’ retractions and promises that they were “just joking”.

i didn’t even know what “portaging” was until we were actually in the act of portaging.

the three trip leaders were our teachers/coaches at our small inner city Lutheran school — they and the other students paddled ahead of our canoe — more experienced and/or stronger than us, they left us further and further behind, and sometimes we lost sight of them entirely on the river; Lashaon (my classmate and canoe partner) and i discussed giving up and paddling to one the private piers of the riverfront houses that lined our water route — “like what if we just knock on their door and ask if we can use their phone to call our moms to come and get us?”

but we paddled on,

then,

on our second day on the water, we unknowingly approached a dam — the dam — we saw our group with their canoes beached on the river bank; we were mid river and unable to hear their shouts of instruction and struggled to navigate and paddle to reach them on shore against the current; the 8th grade teacher and fourth grade teacher had to jump back into a canoe and race to physically block and push us to shore with their canoe as we continued down river past the group’s landing ///

they actually seemed quite put-out about us being chronically behind them and then having to rescue us — and then, having to carry our 16′ aluminum canoe around the dam for we two, 110 lb girls;

i didn’t even know what “portaging” was until we were actually in the act of portaging.

when we all finally arrived at the public picnic area near the dam, there were lots of people out enjoying the beautiful late May day — finally, civilization and restrooms!!

we survived. i survived.

while we waited to rendezvous with for transport back to the city, i walked up to read the bronze plaque mounted on the base of the concrete dam structure — the power of the roaring and churning water visible to me for the first time —

on the plaque were the names of the people who had drowned and died in the river at that very dam – so far!

wait — what? what? what?!!

even at 13, i absolutely understood how close Lashaon and i had come to being pulled into the dam, drowning and dying right there — and certainly our teachers/chaperones did too /////

then, to add insult to this weekend of trauma, upon our return, i had to miss two days of my last week of 8th grade while recovering from sun POISONING — no hats, no sunscreen, and on the water in the full Sun for at least 16 hours total — my mother relayed to everyone that i looked like Karl Malden /

and in less than a week’s time, i was to graduate wearing a lovely, buttery yellow dress that my mother designed and was made by a local seamstress from Qiana fabric and point d’Esprit lace — also, i had been elected valedictorian, so i was to give a “speech” at graduation at a podium in the church where people generally feel compelled to look at and pay attention to your face //////

Many times over too many years, my spouse insisted that i would literally love camping, the mountains, road-tripping and the national parks, but i wouldn’t attempt camping or enter the “wilderness” again until 2001 — until my son was a Tiger Cub in Cub Scouts, and we attended a weekend of family group camping with his “Pack” at Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin. i fell instantly in love with the outdoors — the forest; the smell of pine; a ravine adjacent to the campsite; hiking a trail alongside striking, quartzite, ice-age mega boulders; the pristine lake; and the campfires — then and there — and forever.

still, i like to imagine that if I had the opportunity, access and exposure to camping and and more wild places as a child, or if i hadn’t had such an blindly immersive and negative experience in 8th grade, that i may have been a wildlife or plant biologist, a park ranger or conservationist or even an outdoors adventurer — or at least, a fan of the outdoors far, far sooner — i spent a lot of summers, a lot of years, far too many, in a city that i never truly loved ///////

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i don’t have nor have i ever seen one photo of that personally disastrous canoe trip, but there are few of me in the only dress ever custom made for me.

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the three class trip leaders’ entries in my 8th grade autograph book:

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