Zzziiiiiiip!
This noise was my wake-up call each day. One boy was out and four others were causing commotion. I was the last one up again. It was so warm inside my sleeping bag and so cold outside like a cold breath of death trickling onto my neck. I shivered. I peeped out of my protective shell; the last boy of the five boys I shared a tent with finished throwing on their jackets and boots and got out of the tent.
Zzziiiiiiip!
I was finally alone. I sighed and slowly got out of my warm sleeping bag and grabbed on my damp jacket. Two days after we had left base camp I had gotten a little sick, which has been causing me to go to bed earlier than the others. In my slumber, one of the other boys must have pushed my jacket to the side of the tent when they got in their sleeping bag. I sighed, again, and shrugged it on. Continuing to do my daily routine (which is much easier without anyone else in the tent), I changed out of my pajamas and took my allergy medicine. I grabbed my boots and bug spray and scrambled out of the tent.
Zzziiiiiiip!
“Did you already take your allergy medication, Jeremy?” I turned and saw my dad returning from the toilet (it’s basically a seat with a big hole in the ground under it).
“Uhhh, ya, ya, I did.” Trying to fumble out an answer in my drowsy state.
“How’d you sleep?” He asked nearing the tent.
“Umm, I slept ok, a bit better than last night.”
“Oh, ok. That’s good.” He responded.
Everyone was already bustling around, either preparing breakfast or packing up supplies, so I decided to go to the toilet before I would be called to do any duties. “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said heading down the path he had just come from. When I arrived, I had to, of course, spray down the entire vicinity of the toilet with bug spray to prevent mosquitoes from coming up from inside the black hole below to bite your butt. The staff back at base camp told us that mosquitoes are the Michigan state bird and with the past few days I can see why! I had to wear a head netting everywhere except on the water to keep them off my face and neck.
After I was done, I started back up the path to return to the camp site and sure enough as soon as I got back, I was assigned the task of packing up the rest of my stuff and the tent. Now, the tasks aren’t really as bad as I make them seem, they are more so the highlight of my day other than sleeping. I got to work and as soon as that was done we ate our daily, mediocre-at-best oatmeal. We finished up our breakfast, packed up everything, and made sure to make sure, to the crumb, that the campsite was clean enough that an experienced tracker wouldn’t have been able to know we had been there. We each carried a 60ish pound backpack, containing all our food and equipment we would need for a week of camping, down to the shore side and loaded them into our canoes. Since I was the youngest there, I was assigned one of the food packs, which got lighter each day (it was down to about 55 pounds so I was pretty lucky).
Today was cloudy and there was a brisk wind that swept across the lakes. Today would not be a fun day. We charged into the icy lake and climbed in to the canoes as fast as possible.
“Get in the center, the winds are pretty heavy today,” said Mr. Jordan said to me and I happily obliged. The center doesn’t paddle because the canoe would go in circles with the unequal paddling and being the smallest and weakest, I was often put there. It was nice; I was basically just a passenger enjoying the views of the large, open lakes surrounded by coniferous forests. Yesterday, we even saw a family of Bald Eagles roosting with two little baby chicks. I started wondering how they would fair in the oncoming storm. Hopefully they’d be ok.
Soon we reached the end of our small lake and had to portage onto the big lake. Portaging is always the worse part of the day. We would have to get out, wet our feet, and carry our unbearably heavy supplies and canoes through swarms of mosquitoes for distances of up to a mile. (I will never be able to convey to you the crushing feeling it caused. I was able to sympathize with Atlas while walking down the seemingly never ending trails.)
When we got to the large lake, it began to rain and the wind was really picking up. We got back into the canoes and skirted along the shoe trying to reduce the effect of the oncoming wind. Being in the middle of the canoe was both a blessing and a curse; I did not have to paddle upwind battling against the foot-high waves (thank god), but I also was generating no body heat. I was being splashed quite often and the wind cut right through me; I began to grow quite cold. It began to thunder and because we were in aluminum canoes on an open lake, Mr. Jordan said to pull over to the shore. We hopped out and hurried to sweet, sweet land. I while I was pulling the boat up onto the rocky shore, I fell myself and cut my wrist on a sharp rock. Stinging pain pulsed through my left arm. Mr. Jordan ran over and helped me. He cleaned the wound and wrapped it tightly and since he couldn’t do much more, he said to suck it up. We had a cold lunch and waited out the storm.
When the thunder stopped and the rain lightened, Mr. Jordan told us that we needed to get to the next camp site as soon as possible so we started off. I clutched my wrist and shivered in the middle of the canoe until we arrived at the campsite. We hurried to set up the tents and eat dinner fast during the window of time when the rain had stopped.
Zzziiiiiiip!
I was the first one in the tent and I wrapped myself in my sleeping bag. Thunder crashed in the sky again and the stragglers outside quickly put stuff away, clanging pots and pans in their rush to escape the inevitable oncoming storm. In my cocoon, I just recollected, while the thunder boomed above, what had actually just happened to me and what it could mean until exhaustion clouded my vision and sleep ensued.