This weekend my brother and I went camping. We went to Tar Hollow, which was nice, but it was a ways away from home. Not like really the Ends of the Earth far, but sorta the butt end of nowhere far. Or as close to the butt end of nowhere you can get in Ohio. (Which some people would say is redundant.)
From what I could tell, we passed through some sort of trailer spawning ground, or mobile home nursery or something. Trailers were everywhere. It was… rustic. More than a few of the trailers were rather… entropic too. If not the trailer, then the nine cars mouldering in their yard.
Along with the trailers and whatnot, there was an abundance of concrete statuary. All kinds. Of course there were more than a few lawn jockeys and bathtub virgins, but then it went from there. And the sky was the limit. (Because good taste surely wasn’t.) There were whole concrete dioramas set up. Herds of concrete deer, gaggles of concrete geese, little Dutch concrete kids smooching on bridges (over nothing) or gazing wistfully across the bridge (also over nothing).
The best (depending on your point of view) was concrete Jesus, all four feet of him, painted to vibrancy, spewing his blessings out onto the road for whatever travelers pass by. On his right was concrete Mary, also spewing blessings. Between them was a concrete angel, again spewing. Off to the side was concrete Jesus’ concrete dog, Sparky. He wasn’t spewing anything, he was just sitting there. Maybe waiting for concrete Jesus to throw a concrete stick, or to pull concrete Mary out of the concrete wishing well. He could have been there to keep an eye on the herd of concrete cows, but they seemed content to stay in their little group off to the side. (And well behind concrete Jesus, so as not to block his spewing blessings.)
Then we got to the park. It was a pretty nice one, as far as State Parks go. Trees, the had a lot of trees. And roads, they had these too, so you could get places in the park. They also had a fire tower.
It’s always good for a park to have a fire tower. That way you can climb it and look around and say clever things like “gee, we’re really high now” and then come back down. Whenever I climb a fire tower, it always make me think. First the obvious things like “I wonder how many people spit off here,” then on to more philosophical thoughts like “I wonder how many people peed off here”. Then, because it usually takes a little while to get to the top, and you don’t want to climb seven flights of stairs (sometimes more, but this fire tower only had seven flights, which still got you pretty high) just to look at the tops of some trees and then come right back down, it occurs to me to wonder how many people had sex up there. I’d hope it was an even number, but you never can tell. (They don’t have a sign-in sheet for that sort of thing.)
They also had a beach and boat rental and table tennis and air hockey and mini-golf. But it was after The Season, and these were closed. Too bad to, the mini-golf course looked pretty challenging.
We paid our fee and set up camp on this hill, then we went hiking and came back (The hike was fairly uneventful, we didn’t get lost or fall off a cliff or nothing.) had dinner and started a fire. Starting a fire took more trouble than usual. I was not happy. What if I lost my mad fire starting skillz? (Is that how the cool kids say it? “Mad skillz”? I do so want to be one of the cool kids, and I’m pretty sure the cool kids don’t say “aptitude” but they probably should. At least once in a while.)
Usually I take a section of the newspaper and wad it up and pile the wood on top (in a proper teepee fire lay) and light it and sit back while it transforms from a pile of newspaper and wood into a blazing fire. This always works for me. Always. Except this time.
I had the wad of newspaper and the pile of wood and I lit it. And the news paper burned. And then nothing. Gosh darn it I was irked.
So we started over again. Only we didn’t have any more newspaper. (I only brought the one section, because it always works and why bring more if you’re not going to need it? I ask you.) But we did have a whole roll of paper towels. And Steve (that would be my brother) went and got and armload of little sticks. So we set it all up and lit the paper towels and fed the sticks in carefully and… decided it was taking too long, so I fired up my camp stove and held the flame to the wood until it caught. It’s good to have a propane stove sometimes.
Not everything was so rosy though. (You might want to skip this part if you have delicate sensibilities.) They only had vault toilets. This means “outhouse” in park-speak. At least the weather wasn’t all that warm. But why a vault for the toilet? That’s the one thing you wouldn’t need to keep in a vault and not worry about it getting stolen.
That night, we’re in this clearing on top of a hill way out from anywhere, just enjoying the campfire, and I look up. Man! I felt like Dave Bowman when he looked into the monolith. “My God, it’s full of stars!” Now I know it’s the sky and that’s where you keep the stars and it was nighttime, and that’s when you traditionally see them, but come on! There were bunches up there. Usually when I’m camping I’m either under the trees or I’m close enough to something so the stars are less visible because of the light from the city. Not this time. Man! There were a bunch of stars! (I found Orion.)
The whole thing was just an overnighter, but it was still a good time.
-Rue.