by Elizabeth Reeves

Created on: July 14, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Camping is not all fun and games, not when three older-aged kids are packed into a small car and driving for thousands of miles under the great ambition to go camping. Yet, there we were, me, my best friend, and her boyfriend, my baby brother. Bickering was the inevitable as we drove the long, tired miles, packed to the brim in a Toyota Prius, all the way from Arizona to Alberta. I was packed neatly in the backseat, between two boxes of our food and cookware, as easily forgotten as a tent-stake to the oblivious lovebirds in the front.

The first breath of real, cool, air, after the stifling, dry, heat of home, made the cramped conditions worth it. We set up our giant, eight-person tent in a soft drizzle. We could have parked the car in there, had we wanted to... all that space for three people. Then it was back to the car to spy on the grizzly bears and elk, as they made twilight forages through the forest. My companions viewed this world through the camera lense- enraptured and driven to capture each expression, each slant of light into the split-pupiled eye of the moose, wading through the slime of a pond... the rough, beautiful, whiskered face of the beaver, preparing to dive into the water after his aspen log. I, instead, stood in the background, silent and still, just drinking it in.

The mother grizzly bear flipped over a boulder that weighed more than the Prius. I watched as she hunkered back, staring at us, while her cubs fed on the insects below. She was not afraid of us, or worried about her cubs. She was too used to people to care. She shrugged her grizzly hump, made a whuffling sound, and she and the cubs returned to their wooded home-land.

That night I couldn't sleep- nothing new to me. The moon was shining through the thin fabric of the tent and I traced the outlines in the air, feeling the cool damp beneath my sleeping bag, and the hard tree-roots below the tent floor. The noisy campers next door shattered the stillness. My heart welled up in bitterness against them... against all these noisy human-folk who could not tear away from themselves enough to realize the significance of the rawness around them.

Dawn came and we started our packing, we had many more miles to go, still, and our visit here was over. I made my way to the camp restrooms, little more than glorified porta-potties. When I emerged and stepped into the clearing I came face to face, literally within arms-reach, of a glorious red fox.

His coat was rusty-orange, shedding out to full brilliance below. His eyes were gold and wide, and he stared fearlessly at me, first prepared to run, but then he sat, and gazed at me, his expression so open.

"I know," I told him. He twitched his ears towards me and tilted his head. I paused a moment to speak with him. After a moment he stood again and I inclined my head towards him. "Thank you for talking to me," I told him.

Jauntily he lifted his brush-tail into the air and disappeared into the ferns, while I went back on my way.

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