by Heather Rocker

Created on: February 20, 2010

Feeling toasty warm everywhere except my face which is slightly chilled, trying to decide whether I want to unzip my sleeping bag and look outside or stay warm a moment or two longer and possibly miss it, is the struggle. I usually opt for the compromise at first; sit up in my bag and allow a solitary arm to slink out and stretch toward the window flap covered in cold condensation. It’s loud, very loud compared to the stillness of the lake. The only other sound is the occasional call of the solitary loon – as close to a wolf’s howl as a bird can make. The first time my mother heard it when she began taking us camping more than twenty five years ago - it was love. The first time my husband and son heard it this year on our first camping trip as a family, they nearly bolted! The call is beautiful, eerie, plaintive, striking, and appeals to my Irish sense of soulfulness. I love it all the more now that I hear it and remember how much my mother loved the sound.

The view and the sound were inextricably intertwined – the lake at sunrise like a glass plate covered in a gossamer of cotton ball mist, the gentle lap of pencil thin waves against the sandy shore. I can hear someone starting a fire somewhere on the lake, the wood begins to crackle and I know that the mist will last only a few moments later. I sneak out trying desperately to dampen the sound of the zipper door. I put my sneakered feet on the dirt outside and limbo my way up in Olympic gymnast fashion so as to avoid getting dirt in the tent. I zip it up and stuff my hands in my sweatshirt front pocket while making my way down to the rock that sits three or four feet from shore. There is a small stepping stone that’s perfect when the water is this still. I sit on that rock and imagine I’m in a cloud; I imagine that I am here again at “our site” with Mom. I imagine that this was last year – before her unexpected, too soon death. I imagine that this was our chance, the reason I had kept asking her to hold on to the old camping gear until my kids were “old enough”.

We had begun camping when I was about eight. We knew nothing about camping except that my brother, four years my senior, wanted to go. We got a pup tent and they slept side by side with me over their feet. It rained every day that first year but it was ok. Mom read to us - book after book, we talked, played games, and even drove into town. We came back the next year to better weather.

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