The Camp

My sister and her husband own this little piece of land in Heath, MA. There is a small cabin on it with a bedroom, a kitchen and a large common room. Rustic. It has electricity but no running water. There are lots of these camps there, its called Mohawk Estates. There is a large pond for swimming and fishing and they have my pepere's old row boat there. They bought this place about 20 or so years ago when they were dating.

We used to go up nearly every weekend. Campfires to cook the fish we caught, toast marshmallows, play cards, hike, ride bikes and in the winter we would go sledding. We went up there once when I was 15. I went with my two sisters and a friend of theirs. The snow was so deep we had to leave the car behind and put all our supplies in a sled. We were throwing our sleeping bags in front of us and crawling to them. It took us over 2 hours to walk to the cabin. Normally it would have taken about 10 minutes. The snow was up to my waist and I still hadn't touched the ground. We would sink in, climb out and scramble forward. It was fun, but then it got a little scary. When we finally got to the camp the snow had drifted and we had to dig down to get to the doorknob. After we slid in to the kitchen the reality of our situation became very clear: where and how the heck would we go to the bathroom?! Well, creative use of an empty milk jug and a window that's how. That night we all sat around the indoor fireplace (pretty cool hah?) we scared the hell out of each other.

Morning came and about 11AM we heard someone coming down the driveway. "Mom! Mooooom!" It was my nephew, all of 9 years old. He had come up with my mother but she couldn't make it in the snow and stayed back with the car. She was worried about us and the snowstorm. It had snowed all night and added a good 6 inches to the already accumulated 4 feet.

I don't remember leaving so much as dreading the walk back. We left most of our stuff up there and just hauled our exhausted asses back to civilization. I wish I could remember whose great idea it was to go up a fricken mountain in the dead of winter just so I could slap the shit out of them.

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Giddy Girl. Giddy Girl Weekends are 2 nights and 3 days of women without kids or men. Debauchery. I won't go into to many details as I've been sworn to secrecy, but the last Giddy Girl resulted in us stealing the letter "B" off of a sign on the way up to the camp. B Good! B Careful! Don't B Stupid! Hey, it was funny at the time okay?

With us during this particular Giddy Girl was a woman named Yolanda. Yolanda had never been camping or even out of the city really. Imagine her surprise when we showed her the tree bathroom. She nearly knocked out a ten year old boy when he tried showing her his frog. And then, as she tried to gracefully exit the water, she nearly knocked everyone out with her very wet and very white t-shirt and shorts.

The next Giddy Girl is tentatively planned for the end of September. I could use a couple of days without kids. I know I could definitely use a couple of days with my sisters.

Good times.

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