The Woods

                Three young men set out on a journey.  They were best friends who had just graduated high school and were going on a week-long camping trip in the Shenandoah mountains together before they had to part ways.  They did this to make memories, but the memories they made were not what they were expecting. 

The first morning was cool, but not cold.  The first rays of the sun had not yet spilled over the mountains, but it seemed as though they were about to burst from the horizon at any moment.  Andrew unzipped his tent, shook out his boots, put them on, and climbed out.  He was wearing forest green nylon zip-off pants and a flannel shirt.  His hair was brown and cut relatively short so it wouldn’t require any maintenance, but looked decent at the same time.  He wanted to go to business school, run his own company, and make a lot of money.  He was the one who orchestrated this adventure.  Neither Andrew or Carl had ever been backpacking, but they were going to give it a shot.

He walked over to the little clearing they had made where William had already started a fire.  William was the experienced one.  He was an Eagle Scout, and could tie any knot or tell you about any plant you passed while walking in the forest.  He wanted to become an engineer, to find better ways of doing things and help all of society along the way.  He was wearing khaki cargo pants and a black hooded sweatshirt with an under-armor shirt underneath.  He was cooking the eggs they brought on a small camp stove. 

Andrew looked over to the tent he had just left, and shook his head.  Carl was still sleeping.  “You’d think he’d be more of a morning person if he were going to join the army, wouldn’t you,” Andrew said.

William cracked another egg into the frying pan, “Maybe he’s just trying to sleep while he still can.”

Andrew shrugged, “Either way, I’m going to get him up before he misses breakfast.” 

“Be careful, soldiers sometimes react violently when unexpectedly woken.”

Andrew cracked a smile then walked over to the tent.  “I guess I’d better take down the tent since we’re going to be leaving soon!”  He then started taking off the rain fly, the first step in taking down the tent without totally collapsing it.  Carl didn’t respond, so Andrew called over to William, “You sure you didn’t leave anything in the tent?”

                  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

                  “Ok, I’ll take it down, then.”  Just as Andrew was about to release one of the support poles, a voice erupted from the tent…

                  “What?!?... NO!”  There was a moment of intense scuffling inside the tent, then Carl dove out of the front door, still grappling with his military surplus army t-shirt as he put it on.  He hadn’t even bothered to tie his boots, and his belt had missed a couple loops on its way around his waist.  “What were you thinking?” Carl said.

                  Andrew pretended not to hear, “Good morning!  I’m glad you woke up in time, otherwise I might have accidentally dropped the tent on you!”  Carl just scowled.  Andrew walked back over to the fire, “Breakfast is almost ready.”  Carl stood there for a minute, still trying to wake up.  He tied his boots, grabbed his hat from the tent, and walked away to get his pack. 

                  They ate breakfast telling jokes, just enjoying themselves in the woods.  The birds had started to come out, and the light of the sun filtered green through the trees.  They cleaned up breakfast, packed up their gear, and headed out for their next site.  They had decided that the first day should be an easy one, so that they could get used to the lifestyle of camping. 

That day went relatively smoothly; the sun stayed out, but it didn’t scorch them, either.  William encouraged them a couple times to put some lip balm on because that is the worst place to get sunburned.  Neither took his advice.  Still, they found a nice log to sit on for lunch, and arrived at their campsite before three in the afternoon.  Andrew was tired.  He hadn’t been backpacking like this before, and it was harder work than he thought.

The campsite was little more than a strange distended growth of the trail, but it couldn’t have looked more welcome to the guys.  All of them dropped packs, William went to find some firewood, Carl started to look for the dinner packets they had brought, and Andrew decided to catch up on some rest. 

“Hey, its time for dinner.”

Andrew blinked, “Huh?”

Carl was stooped over him, “Its time to eat dinner, you better get your mess kit.”

Andrew got up, and then steadied himself against the tree he was sleeping against.  He stood up to quickly.  Now that he had blood in his brain again, he got his mess kit and went to join William and Carl for dinner.  They ate mashed potatoes and gravy, both from powder, but neither tasted like it.  They also had six apples between them. 

Carl said, “Wow, those packets made enough for an army!”

“Yeah, it was a lot more than I expected,” William said

“Will we be able to eat it all?”

William shrugged, “We’ll find out.”

“What would we do if we had leftovers?” Andrew said.

“Well, normally I’d say we would have to carry it out, but since we have a fire, I guess we could try to burn it.” William said. 

                  “Just so you know, I will do everything within my power” Carl slapped his belly, ”to ensure that we won’t have that problem.”  Everyone laughed.  An hour later, nobody was laughing when they still had one third of their food left over and were ladling it into the fire.  Andrew decided to set up the tent while the other two cleaned up from dinner.  He could hear them talking, arguing slightly, and poking fun at the same time.  They were good friends, they had known each other since middle school, and now they had to go their separate ways.  It was sad, but at the same time it was necessary.  They decided not to put the rain fly on the tent that night because it was a beautiful night.

                  All of them woke up when they found themselves covered in water.  A storm had blown up in the night, and all of them were drenched.  William jumped out and had his boots on before the other two had even figured out what was going on.  Soon all three of them were out in the rain, trying to waterproof the tent, wrap up their gear, and find their rain-suits so they could put them on.  By the time they were finished it was almost light out and they were soaked, but they had managed to rescue most of their gear. 

                  Morning arrived, but the three adventurers weren’t ready to get up.  The morning seemed extremely soggy, but they got the stove going to heat up some water.  They got up late and had much further to walk that day, so they only heated water for oatmeal, sustaining themselves on granola bars and trail mix.  The trails were muddy, and they conversation was nonexistent as they hiked through the soggy woods. 

                  That night they set up camp in silence.  Andrew wished that the day would just end so he could sleep again.

                  Andrew asked, “Hey, does anyone know what’s supposed to be for dinner?”

                  “Same thing we had last night, I’m pretty sure,” William said

                  “Uh, I don’t think that there is any more. “ Carl said

                  Everyone stopped, “What?”

                  “I don’t think there is any more,” Carl said, “we cooked it all last night.”

                  Andrew started to shake, “Are you telling me that we burned tonight’s supper last night?  We stuffed ourselves like pigs because we were eating tonight’s supper?”

                  “I didn’t know that we were having the same thing twice!”

                  William started looking through the packs anyway, “I knew we made too much, I should’ve noticed it when I started cooking.”  Andrew sat down in the mud. 

                  Carl kicked the nearest tree, “I can’t believe we tried to eat all that.  I feel so stupid.”

                  “Its not your fault,” Andrew said, “Its nobody’s fault.  There was just a breakdown of communication, and there’s nothing we can do about it now.  We just have to move on.”  Andrew chuckled to himself.  “Literally.”

                  William pulled a couple bags out of one of the packs, “Well, we haven’t even opened the beef jerky yet, and we have plenty of trail mix, so we’ll just have to have snacks for supper.”

                  “Its better than nothing,” Carl said.  William didn’t bother to build a fire that night; everyone just ate their “Jerky mix” as Andrew named it. 

William decided to turn in early.  “Hey, be sure to hang up anything that the animals might be interested in; we don’t want them getting into the food as we sleep.”

“Where?” They asked.

“It doesn’t matter, just somewhere high enough that nothing can get into it.”

“Ok, we’ll see what we can do,” Andrew replied. 

Despite their best efforts, Andrew and Carl were entirely unable to either find a suitable place, or even get the rope up high enough to hang anything of substance from it, so they decided to give up and say a prayer that nothing would find it.  Both of them crawled into bed and before they could say a word to anyone human or divine, they fell asleep.

In the morning, William was the first one up, and he immediately started working on a fire.  The woods had dried out, and it was much brighter than the day before.  It really helped to lift his spirits, until he saw that the food bags were still on the ground next to the cold fire ring.  As he moved them out of the way, empty wrappers tumbled out of the jagged hole that had recently appeared in the bottom of the bag.  He sat down and put his head in his hands.  As he mustered the courage to look around, he saw that there were empty wrappers all around the campsite blowing like leaves that had just fallen from a plastic tree.  He decided there was nothing he could do about it now, so he quickly pulled any food that had remained intact, then started bagging up all of the trash. 

Andrew was the next one up, and when he saw what William was doing, he just stood there for a full minute.  Finally, William asked, “You gonna help?” 

Andrew came to and said, “Yeah, I’ll help.”

Carl had a similar reaction, though the trash had been mostly collected by the time he got up.  After they had sorted through what was intact, they discovered they had two dehydrated dinners, five granola bars, one bag of trail mix, and a full container of Gatorade drink mix.

“We’re going to starve out here.” Andrew said. 

“No, we’re not” William said.

“How?  I could eat all of this stuff in a day if I really wanted to, and we still have four days left!”

“We can ration it,” William said, “and maybe find something else in the woods.  All of us could probably get enough of a meal from just one of those dehydrated dishes.”

“Ok, that’s two days,” Andrew said, “if we can scratch enough for the other four meals that the dehydrated stuff carries us through.”

Carl, who had been leaning against a tree, only partially participating in the conversation, suddenly stood up.  “Ok, William, how long is the trek we were planning?”

“About 40 miles.”

“And its just one big loop, right?”

“Yes…”

“Do you know how far we’ve come?”

William stared off into the distance, “Well, we got three miles on day one, and probably only four yesterday because of the rain, so about seven.”

Carl turned to Andrew, “Can you hike seven miles in one day?”

“Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, you aren’t saying we should turn back, are you?”  Andrew said.

Carl nodded, “I am saying that.”

William thought for a moment, “Yeah, I think we can do it, especially considering our newfound motivation.”  He smiled.

Andrew started to walk away, “I don’t believe this.”

“Is anyone opposed to going back?”  No one answered.  Carl shouldered his pack.  “Good, lets roll.”

Andrew didn’t notice the light sprinkle of rain that fell, or the sun that dried his clothes afterwards.  They stopped for a very brief lunch, only eating a granola bar and some trail mix.  They hiked all day, but hardly said a word.  Finally, Andrew asked, “Do you know about how much further it is?”

William replied, “We’re almost there.”  Carl started whistling.

“How can you be whistling right now?”  Andrew said.

“I don’t know,” Carl said, “I guess it is so I can try to relax.  I was really scared back there, I didn’t know what was going to happen without any food.”

“Well,” William said, “I’m really glad we turned back.  I’ve never been in this sort of a situation and it was pretty scary.”

Andrew said, “Still, I wish we could have finished the weekend.  I was really looking forward to hanging out with you guys before we go to our separate colleges.  I guess I sort of feel like we’ve known each other since forever, but we don’t really know each other.  We hang out, have fun, but we don’t really understand each other, and I guess I sorta wanted to do that this weekend.”

“Well, what’s stopping us from trying again?” William said, “Sure, it didn’t work this time, but why can’t we just try again for a different weekend?”

Just then, they rounded a corner and the parking lot came into view.  The golden reflections of the sun off of the car hoods never seemed so bright before.  The smell of warm asphalt greeted their nostrils, and they drank it in like chocolate milk.  Andrew had the keys, so he popped the trunk, and dropped his pack into the car.  Carl and William followed suit.  Then the all piled into the car; Andrew drove, William in the front, and Carl in the back.  Carl called home to let them know that they were coming back early. William turned to Carl, “So, how was your first backpacking experience?”

“It was hard, but I’d do it again.”

“In a heartbeat,” Andrew said. 

Copyright 2008 by Tim Brown