I was 8 years old and playing house by myself in the atrium on a Saturday afternoon, quietly telling the children that Mother needed to go to the store and buy some kumquats, when Mimi burst through the sliding glass doors with a bounce and a hop. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Guess what?” she said smiling from ear to ear.

I excused the kids and straightened my invisible Lucy Ricardo polka dot apron.

“What?!” I asked getting caught up in her excitement.

“You’re going camping!!!” she said, hands clasped.

I assumed that had something to do with Joan Crawford.

“Like, at a camp?”

“No, no. You and Bill and Bobby and Mike. Just the men. Like real live campers. Out in the wilderness. Isn’t that FUN?! Aren’t you excited?? This is sooo exciting!!!!!”

Did we win the camping lottery? What was all the fuss about?

She shut the sliding glass door and I was left alone in the sunshine in the atrium with the kids still wondering when I was leaving for the store. The wilderness. The wilderness. I wonder where the TV goes?

We drove up to Big Bear Lake in the large Green Buick Impala my step Dad Bill owned. Mike, his son in the front seat with his blonde bobbed hair blowing in the wind from the open window like Lief Garret, and my brother Bobby and I in the back. Not talking.

Bobby and Mike were the same age, 4 years older than I was and I always felt a little behind. It was the late 60's and being hip was everything.

The drive was long but Bill and Mike made it worth the wait. They laughed with each other, giggled, touched, poked and we all played “I Spy” more times than I can remember. My brother Bobby was even smiling occasionally at me, and we did a couple of tapping games. It was summer and the breeze in the back as we approached the great outdoors was filled with greenery and flush plants ready and wide eyed from their collective naps. We turned and twisted up some mountainous roads, veering ever closer to the edge where I assumed we’d tip over and be found later, dead and bloodied by some pot bellied Sherriff on horse back. Luckily, that never happened. We reached the top, safe and sound, if a bit stiff.

Bill parked the car, and we piled out single file and onto a large open space clearing surrounded by the longest, largest, most fragrant trees. They loomed over us like gigantic telephone poles flush with leaves and smelling like they were inches away. It was like landing in a giant bottle of Glade.

But that was it. There was nothing else around. Nothing. Nothing for miles and miles and miles. Not a cabin, not an antenna, not a dog, not a single, solitary thing, except bushes, trees, dirt and ants. I was thrust into another universe. An alternative one. I was still wondering where we were going to plug in the TV.

“Okay boys. Let’s get unpacked and set up the tent.” Bill said in a proud booming voice.

It was the loudest I had ever heard him talk. He was very excited it seemed. In fact, everyone was very excited. Bobby was smiling, Mike was a literal bottle of energy, and I was, to say the least, skeptical.

Tent?

We gathered up our sleeping bags, various nap sacks all alternate shades of green and camouflage, and a large, tightly wrapped forest green piece of fabric with long, silver poles sticking out of each end. I assumed that was the tent. I was at odds already with the fact that we weren’t in a cabin of some kind, but the fact that everything was one color was enough to make me stick my head in the oven.

Bill walked over to the center of the clearing, and pointed downward. Bobby and Mike, holding the bulk of the tent in their tiny hands laid it down and I stumbled behind carrying 45 bags on my back like a drunk mule. I was huffing and puffing already, making obvious sounds that gave everyone the impression that I wasn’t happy. And I wasn’t fitting in.

“Aw Jeez. Stop.” My brother commented in a huff under his breath.

“Stop what?” I asked throwing the bags in a pile.

He rolled his eyes at me, and unfurled the ten along with Mike. Mike smiled up at me. Mike was my savior. There was no judgment from Mike and he and I always got along well. We spent an evening not too long ago sharing secrets when he and Michelle were visiting their us at our house for a weekend. I told him about Mary Poppins, Gypsy Rose Lee, Lucy and The Wizard of Oz. I didn’t reveal my box in the closet, that was a secret no one ever knew. But when I poured out my fantasies to someone in the human race, Mike only smiled his big, wide smile with his two front teeth barely showing and nodded at me, and once in a while whisper:

“Cool.”

I liked Mike. And he liked me. I wish I knew where he was.

After the tent was erected, and I was sufficiently belittled by Bobby (I had never held a hammer in my life), Bill announce we’d have to go out and catch dinner. I hoped that meant someone was throwing it at us; otherwise I was at sea once again. Bill handed us each a fishing pole and a small pale. He hooked us up with a small net, and a belt, around which hung various small hooks (which can be painful when stuck in your hair like barrettes. By the way, don’t ever do that.).

“Let’s go down by the stream boys.” He said still buoyant.

We walked for what seemed like an eternity to another small clearing where there was a stream wading through a smattering of rocks and a few floating logs. It was actually beautiful and very peaceful. A bit too cold for me, but with the windbreaker Mimi had crazy glued to my back, I was fine. The sound of water has always been like music for me, and being out in the open like that cleared my head of the drive up, the walk down, and the moaning and groaning I got from Bobby as I tried to figure out the difference between a 9 inch and a 10 inch nail head. I honesty didn’t’ care, so a lot of that argument was me ignoring him and wondering where I could find something paisley to at least round out the color scheme.

“Need help?” Mike asked walking toward me as Bobby and Bill headed off a ways down.

The water wasn’t deep, but because of the position of the rocks and the small wind that was culminating, it rolled along on a steady course farther down than I could see. On the other side of the bank, which were feet away, more trees, more green, green bushes and that wonderful smell.

“I don’t know what to do I guess.” I said.

I knew I was supposed to know what to do, but there was no such thing as a fishing trip movie that starred Ann-Margaret. I had no frame of reference.

“I’ll show you. Come here.” He answered.

He took the pail (which was filthy) opened up the top and reached his hand inside the dirt that was piled to the brim. As he retracted his 10 year old fingers, and produced 3 or 4 brown, slimy, slithering earth worms. They were still alive, still moving, and I think they had teeth.

I screamed.

Loudly.

“No, no, no! It’s okay! It’s totally okay!” he said laughing a little.

He took my fishing pole, unhooked the line from the tip, and stuck the extra sharp, ultra small hook through the body of this little squirming worm. He then wrapped it around itself twice, and then threw it into the water.

“Now you just wait. When you feel a tug on your line, then you pull it up and we totally have dinner.”

He handed me back my pole and repeated the process for himself. We stood there, the two of us fishing next to each other in the middle of the bank with the water whizzing past us, our small pole in the water waiting for some unsuspecting fish to nibble on the end. It was actually very calm. Mike also informed me that we had to whisper because we couldn’t scare the fish away.

“A lot of talking frightens them away.” He said.

I guess these were the sensitive fish. The fish in group therapy. The mentally ill fish.

Then….a tug. A jump. A pull on my fishing line. I didn’t know what to do, and I suddenly felt Mike reach for me, grab the reel and begin to strategize with the fish. Reeling in, reeling out, tugging, huffing puffing, he and I together, laughing, giggling, trying to pull the fish to shore but trying not to disturb its aura.

Success. The first dead fish pulled to the ground.

At the corner of my eye, I saw Bobby and Bill doing the same. Bobby gave me a thumbs up, and my heart raced. I was so excited I wanted it to happen again. I wanted to pull a million more fish onto the ground so I could see that signal again from my brother. This was turning into the best day of my life.

Between the four of us, we had enough dinner 13 starving families in Africa.

We got back to the camp where the green, green tent and the green, green knapsacks and their green counterparts laid on the ground. The tent standing erect and towering as we re reentered the clearing. Night was beginning and Bill suggested we start a fire and clean the fish.

“Scott? Why don’t you and Bobby go over there and clean the fish?” he asked.

Clean them? They just came out of the water, how clean do they need to be?

Still, Bill as in charge, I assumed he knew what he was doing.

“Where’s the soap and water?” I asked.

Bobby huffed, and told me to follow him over to a small table by a rock Bill had set up earlier. We sat down, and without a word between us, he took out a small knife, jabbed it into the stomach of the fish, sliced it down the middle, and cleared out the blood and guts and mucous with his two thumbs. Then he planted one of them in front me.

“You’re kidding?” I said honestly.

“Clean ‘em. It’s fun. Watch.”

Then he plucked out the eyes and tossed them to me.

I screamed. Again.

Loudly.

“I’m not doing this.” I said defiantly. “I’m not doing this.”

I knew we were fishing but I guess because I was having so much fun with Mike, I had forgotten we were actually going to eat the poor little things. As Bobby dug his fingers with relish and satanic glee into the carcasses of the myriad of fish in the table in front of him, I took a pile in my hands, and walked toward the ever darkening stream. I then stood on the edge, and threw them all back in the water. Most of them were already dead, but a few began to regain some breath.

That night I ate crackers and cheese.

As the evening fell, and it got colder, Bill built a huge fire that stretched up into the night. It was warm and mighty. We stuck marshmallows on the ends of sticks we found lying by the camp, and Bill told a ghost story. His voice rose and fell and dipped and crackled as the fire lit his round face and his parted hair. During the really scary parts we’d collectively “Oooh”, and “Whooaaaaa” at the precise times. I don’t remember the story, but I remember the feeling. I loved horror stories and I loved to be scared. Bill was a terrific Dad. I watched Mike’s face beaming watching his father speak and be so animated. I wondered where Dad was. I wondered what he was doing and who he was talking to and why he didn’t come with us. I thought about him all night.

The next couple of days seemed to get longer and longer. With each evening in the wilderness I became more restless and bored. It was already 3 days without Bewitched, and I was getting a bit aggravated. Not to mention the fact that sleeping on the ground with a small pillow and sharing my sleeping bag with various ground creatures was not my idea of a vacation. I was exhausted.

The last and final day, I marched up to Bill, scuffling my feet for effect.

“Bill,” I said a bit whiney, “I’m bored now.”

“Why don’t you go on a hike? Mike and Bobby went. See if you can catch up.”

I did.

I was lost for almost 4 hours. I also ran into some kind of mutant animal in the woods that slithered on its belly, had huge pointy ears that brushed along the tree tops and spoke 4 different languages.

I hate the woods.

I was tired of not bathing, I was tired of the ground, I hated the nightly fish murdering, and I wanted my TV and my heat. I wanted to go home.

The last night of our stay, I was lying in my sleeping bag. The sounds at night were louder than the city at times. Chirping, wailing, howling, and I think at one time, I heard a Moo. I didn’t recognize them and I didn’t care, I wanted out. I was trying to sleep with Bill, Mike and Bobby all dreaming silently in their rolled up bags of death, and all I could do was stare wide eyed at the top of the green ceiling.

And as I shut my eyes, the voices started again. I hid under the covers. I ducked. I pleaded. I cried. They were coming and I knew there was nothing I could do. So, I got up, put on my coat, and left the tent. The fire was still going, and I sat by the fire, praying for them not to come. Praying for them to keep away. Not so loud. Please God, not so loud.

Just then, Mike poked his head out, and walked toward me.

“What’s up?” he said sitting next to me.

“I’m…..I can’t wait to get home. I wanna go home now.” I said tearing up.

Mike put his arm around me, and held me. I wanted this brother. This was the brother I wanted. This one.

“It’s okay. You did pretty good, I think.”

“I did? But I was scared of everything. I didn’t like anything.”

“But you did it. It’s okay. It was a guy thing, and that’s not really for you.” He said softly.

At the time, I let it wash over me. I just rested my head against his shoulder and let that sentence pass over me. As the sounds of the fire hissed in front of us, and animals hooted and chirped and the night got pitch, pitch black, I heard nothing, I heard no voices. I heard nothing but Mike’s heart beating in a slow methodical pattern, and then, softly and patiently, the sound of my own breath as my eyes closed.

And by the fire, with Mike’s arm around my shoulder, and the wind picking up it’s icy pace and his words repeating in my brain, I slept better that night than I had in my whole, entire life.