With the recent three-day Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of camping season has begun. I embrace the chance to sit under the stars, soak up the beauty of the night sky, and experience the sights and sounds that surround me.
Camping can be quite entertaining, but that entertainment doesn’t always come from around the campfire. It sometimes comes from people-watching opportunities. With no walls of a home separating us from one another, people often still act as if no one can see them despite being in plain site. Their antics can be comical or a little crazy at times, but either way, they make for good stories.
I had one such experience at Moonshine Park last summer.
It was a hot weekend, one of the hottest we had. Temperatures were over 100 degrees, even though we had expected to escape the valley to cooler weather. Spending much time laying under the canopy of a tree trying to beat the heat, a series of odd events made for a good show.
The first was the arrival of a man with one arm in a sling and his very pregnant companion. She seemed about to burst and he looked to have seen better days. After watching him struggle to put up their tent, he began to pump up their air mattress. He had a handheld pump, and with only one arm, it was difficult for him to maneuver and hold it steady. She was of little help.
With each pump it hardly seemed the man was making progress. After we had enough of watching his battle, we offered our leaf blower which doubles as an air pump and souped-up fire blower. He was grateful, and his mattress was ready in minutes. However, the mattress apparently had a hole, and each morning he would come to our site and ask to use the blower again. We had opened our non-existent door to our neighbors.
Then there was a group of boys, maybe around 10 years old. They kept appearing at vacant sites to start fires in the pits. They would gather whatever they could find on the ground to build them, have their fun, and walk away. But they would leave the fires burning, which as you can imagine in 100 degree heat is not the best idea, so a few times we went over to stifle the fires. We wondered where their parents were.
Periodically there was a shirtless man with a machete. He was not the camp host we had encountered when buying firewood. He appeared to just be a camper. We watched him several times whacking at blackberries and brush along the banks that lined the campsites. He made sounds which added drama to the activity, and his efforts piqued our curiosity. We didn’t expect to see a man channeling Danny Trejo in Moonshine Park.
Through all the commotion of firestarters and bushwackers, there was a relentless barking dog. Every few minutes, the dog, who was tied to a table across the campground, would bark insistently. All the while, the owners sat, talking around their fire as if they couldn’t hear it, or didn’t care to. I wondered why someone would allow such behavior in a place with no walls.
Among all the chaos there was a wedding in an open field below the sites. We watched as the young couple said “I do.” The groom was wearing cammo.
Come morning, as campers would pack and head back to where they came from, we would watch as a mad dash to collect left-behind firewood began. If a neighboring camper wasn’t quick enough, like clockwork, the camp host would appear in his golf cart and swoop up the wood to resell to the next camper. Both smart and sneaky, I thought.
The park may have had an interesting cast of characters the weekend we were there, but it won’t stop us from going back. I imagine in the next couple months we will find ourselves at the river’s edge; sitting on smooth, warm rocks in the middle of the current, lounging on float tubes, hiding in the shade of a tree, and staring at the night sky. Camping, after all, is made for exactly that. And even though you never know what company you will find yourself surrounded by, that, to me, is the fun in the gamble of camping.
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