T
he next day we saw Maggy off and then lazed around on the beach. In the afternoon Daddy and John got the car ready and practiced setting up the tent on the small patch of lawn in front of the stable, while Mother, Suzy, Rob, and I stood around criticizing. John got mad, and Rob thought he really meant it and went and flung his arms around him to comfort him, which slowed things down. But the tent was really quite easy to manage. It hangs from tubular aluminum poles that fit together, so that there isn't any pole in the middle of the tent at all. The back of the tent lifts up and hitches over the end of the station wagon with the tail gate down. Mother, Daddy, Rob, and John were to sleep in the tent, and Suzy and I in the back of the station wagon, and we'd all be under one roof.
The next morning we got up at five o'clock and put the last things in the car. It was a soft morning, with the light a kind of fuzzy, golden-pink, the sort of hazy early morning that always
brightens up and clears into a beautiful day. We hugged and kissed Grandfather good-bye and got into the car. Suzy and I wore Bermuda's and knee socks and sweaters, and John and Rob and Daddy wore jeans. Daddy doesn't like women in pants and Mother never wears them, but she looked comfortable and all ready for the trip in a plaid skirt and white blouse and red cardigan.
In the very back of the station wagon Daddy had made a kind of bed out of the sleeping bags and air-mattresses, and so forth, with a couple of extra blankets spread over the top. Rob immediately curled up there with Elephant's Child in his arms. Suzy crawled in by him, so she could lie on her stomach and look out the back window. John and I sat in the middle seat with the stove, the pots and pans, the big water thermos jug, and the ice box. There
was
room for us, but not an inch extra. Mother and Daddy sat in front with the food box and Mother's big straw bag of odds and ends, and a wooden box of books. Mother said she knew she wasn't apt to read them if she brought them, but she was even less apt to read them if she left them behind, so she was going to bring them.
Daddy stood by the car checking everything off on his list: tools, hatchet, saw, fire extinguisher, laundry rope, big-batteried lantern, everything he'd decided that we couldn't possibly do without. Then he, too, said good-bye to Grandfather, got in and started the car, and suddenly my stomach felt very empty, as though we hadn't had any breakfast at all.
For once we were glad when the ferry trip to the mainland was over, because now that we were really all packed up and in the car we wanted to get going. When we reached the mainland we headed for a parkway and started playing the alphabet game.
You know, you divide up by who's sitting on which side of the car, and you have to find the letters of the alphabet, in order, one by one, on signs. John and Daddy and Suzy were way ahead until they came to Q, and then Mother and Rob and I caught up with them and won. Then we played Animal Rummy, and Rob saw a white horse and won that. And of course we sang. We always do a lot of singing.
Daddy and Mother and John were going to take turns with the driving, although there were quite a lot of states John wouldn't be able to drive in after dark because he wasn't eighteen. However, we didn't plan to do much driving after dark, so it didn't matter.
Daddy had picked a route that avoided all the big towns and just went through their outskirts. Rob thought this over seriously, then asked, “Daddy, if those were the out skirts we just went through, where are the out pants?”
We had a snack of fruit and cookies in the middle of the morning, and ate our lunch in the car, too, just sandwiches, so it was easy. Whenever we stopped at a gas station we would all get out and use the wash rooms and Mother would give us some lemonade from the big jug. In the afternoon we stopped and had milkshakes, and all through the trip we found that this was much the best and easiest way to do itâhave snack and lunch while we were driving, and then stop in the afternoon when we were restless to get something to drink. We had to play it by ear all along, because we'd never been on a camping trip before, and we really didn't know anything about it.
John and Suzy and I'd been to Scout Camp, but Daddy, of course, had been much too busy to think about anything like
camping trips, or even picnics. Why eat a meal outdoors, I'd heard him say, where you have ants and mosquitoes and smoky fires, when you can be so much more comfortable at home? As for views, what could rival the view from our own windows?
Aunt Elena and Uncle Douglas had thought Daddy was nuts not to take the tent and go up Hawk Mountain for a week-end for a dry run. “Really, Wallace,” Aunt Elena said, looking up from designing her wedding dress, “you can't just go off on a camping trip cold when you've never had anything to do with tents before.”
Uncle Douglas grinned and said, “Wally thinks he can just snap out â
hatchet
' or â
tent peg
' the way he does â
suture
' or â
scalpel
' at the hospital, and somebody'll be hovering over him to slap them in his hand. You'd really better take a week-end up Hawk, Wally.”
Daddy threw back his head and laughed. “In the first place, you're confusing me with young Dr. Malone. In the second place if we spent even one night up on Hawk I'd come back and put all the camping equipment in the attic and never touch any of it again.”
So that first day when we set off none of us had ever slept in a tent, since the scout camps we'd been to had shacks. All our equipment was new and shiny and we couldn't wait to use it. Uncle Douglas had sent Mother some wonderful cooking equipment from Abercrombie and Fitch in New York. First of all there was a folding two burner stove with canned gas. Then the pots and pans. They all fitted in a canvas bag. There was a big aluminum pot and in the bottom of this went a frying pan. On top of the frying pan went six tin plates. Then there was a medium sized pot, then a smaller pot, then a big coffee pot top,
and in this a stack of tin cups. Then came the coffee pot top, and for a grand lid over everything a big frying pan. The handles of the frying pans came off and slipped down in the canvas bag. The way it was put together reminded me of a wooden doll Aunt Elena had given me once years ago for Christmas. You opened the wooden doll, and inside was another wooden doll, and inside another and another and another, all neatly fitted together like our cooking equipment. Mother was as pleased and delighted with the nest of pots and pans as I'd been with the doll.
The first night of the trip Daddy planned to stop near Washington. Since we'd been to Washington the year before, and seen as many sights as you can pack into a few days, we were going to skip the city. Daddy had the car radio on, and every once in a while there would be a weather report; showers by nightfall were forecast. Daddy would look at Mother and Mother would look at Daddy, but the sun kept on shining until we got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and even then it didn't look very bad.
But after we left the Pennsylvania Turnpike and were heading for Gettysburg it started to sprinkle and then it began to pour. It rained so hard that the windshield wipers had a hard time keeping up. The sky was black and gloomy all around. There didn't seem to be a break in the clouds anywhere. It was after four o'clock, and Daddy'd said we'd plan to stop by five or five thirty each afternoon at the very latest.
He turned to Mother. “Do you think we should go to a motel?”
We all sat very still and waited. Mother looked at the rain streaming down the windshield and the wipers bustling back and forth. She picked up the AAA booklet of campsites, and then she looked at the map of Pennsylvania that had campsites on it. “Our
very first night?” she asked Daddy. “It seems like an awful admission of defeat.”
“Mighty wet for putting up tents and building fires,” Daddy said.
“We could use Douglas's stove,” Mother suggested.
“But not to sleep in,” Daddy said.
Mother looked back at us kids. “How do you feel about it?”
John said, “I'd rather not go to a motel,” and I nodded.
“Oh, please!” Suzy clasped her hands in her intensity. “
Please!
”
Rob looked very solemn and as though he were about to burst into tears, but he didn't say anything.
Mother looked at the campsite book and at the map again. “This is the only campsite anywhere around. Caledonia State Park. If we don't stay there we'll have to drive another hour or so, and that would make it pretty late.”
“Let's try it. Please!” Suzy begged.
I concentrated hard. I guess we all did. But to me it seemed that if this first night of the camping trip, which was the first step of our new life, turned out all right, then the rest of it would be all right, too. But if the first night of the camping trip was a mess, then everything, the trip, New York, all of it, would be a mess, too. I know that's silly and superstitious and I certainly didn't mention it out loud, but it's the way I felt.
“Okay,” Daddy said. “We'll go on to Caledonia State Park and if the weather's still impossible we'll give upâand gracefully, kidsâand go to a motel.”
“But it'll unbalance our budget,” John said, and I could have hugged him for it. “There're a heck of a lot of us for a motel.”
“The budget is geared for an emergency or two,” Daddy told
him. “But I agree with you. We're on a camping trip and we want to sleep in our tent. But we don't want to start on the wrong foot the very first night.”
Mother folded the map. “We'll just wait and see. That's one thing we have to remember about this trip. For once in our lives we're not on a schedule of any kind. We don't have to plan anything ahead. We'll just take it all as it comes.” She looked around at me, and I must have been looking tense, because she said, “and whether it's a sleeping bag or a motel bed we'll have fun, Vicky.”
âNot a motel. Please, not a motel.
It seemed to me that the rain was beginning to slacken.âGo away, rain. Stop. Please make it stop. Please.
I'm sure it wasn't due to my concentration, but when Daddy pointed out the entrance to Caledonia State Park the rain began to let up, and when we reached the Park office it had slowed down to a trickle, so Daddy paid a dollar, got a permit, and drove off towards the transient campsites. And just as we drove into the grove of pines where the campsites were the sun burst through the clouds, great shafts of light shot down through the trees, and the floor of pine needles turned golden.
It was an omen!
Daddy stopped by a picnic table near a brook, where somebody had made a fireplace out of several flat stones, and we all jumped out and stretched our legs, which felt cramped and a little wobbly from the long day's driving. Then we all set about our jobs. John and Daddy were to put up the tent and take care of the fire. I was to help Mother unpack the food and start dinner. Suzy and Rob were to blow up the air-mattresses, which they did by taking turns with a little black rubber foot pump, and
then I was to help them slide the air-mattresses into the sleeping bags and get things organized in the tent. It was really lucky, as well as being an omen, that the rain had stopped, because the ground at the campsite was hard and shale-ey, not a bit like the soft patch of lawn in front of Grandfather's stable, and John and Daddy had an awful time hammering in the aluminum pitons that hold up the tent. They never did get them in all the way; they were afraid that if they kept on hammering the aluminum would bend or break. “But they'll hold up the tent until morningâI
think
,” Daddy said.
This was one of the few American campsites where we were allowed to go off into the forest and collect our own wood. Mother told me to go along with the others because she didn't really need me to help with dinner, so we crossed the little wooden bridge over the brook and Daddy and John took the hatchet while Suzy and Rob and I collected kindling. Rob was so excited and happy that he couldn't just walk, he had to jump and skip. When Rob's happy he seems to shine, almost as though you could actually see light pulsing from him. The rays of his light seem to spread out and touch you so that you can't help glowing with pleasure yourself.
Rob and Suzy went running on ahead while I stood there in the woods suddenly feeling happier than I had in a long time. The leaves of the trees and bushes were all quivering with silver drops of rain, the sunlight sifted down softly, the birds were singing, and I felt all full of life and hope. Maybe nothing would ever be as comforting and secure as it used to be when I was a child in Thornhill, but it was going to be exciting.
When we got back with the firewood Mother needed water
to cook with, as well as water to heat for dishwashing. (As chief dishwasher I was the one most apt to miss the electric one at home. For camping we had only a good-sized white plastic pan.) Rob and I found the water, which was a spigot coming out of a cement base. We splashed water into our pots and I was so happy that I didn't even get cross when Rob slopped water all over me. After we'd brought Mother all the water she needed we scouted around and found the lavatories, which were sort of glorified privies, and were already quite dark inside. We'd need our flashlights when it came time to get ready for bed.