Day 2 – The lord of the flies

The flies showed up today.

It happened around 11:30. 11:15 – no flies; 11:30 – flies everywhere.

I do not know where they came from, or where they were hiding out yesterday. But they are hiding out here, now.

I really wish they wouldn’t.

It crossed my mind that flies are attracted to bad smells, and that they might be attracted to me now. I do not know what I smell like right now, but it has been two days since I showered, and I must be some mix of sunscreen, bug spray, lake water, and smoke.

The flies didn’t seem particularly interested in me, though, or my food for that matter, except as places to land.

I was planning to mostly read today, so I retreated to the bug-free zone of my tent. I suppose I can read here and still see the lake through the screen.

My battery just went dead.

Not my laptop battery, since I have kept it plugged in when I’ve been using it. I have a cigarette lighter adapter (a “power inverter”) that gives me 125 watts of AC power. With that and an extension cord, I am able to run my computer, and at times run a lamp I brought along for the tent.

But then I noticed that my laptop was running off its own battery power, and not the plug, and I realized that my pickup battery had died.

You may be sitting there, laughing at me and calling me stupid for not realizing that would happen, but that would make you a mean person. And, I did realize that this AC adapter would eventually run my battery down, which is why I started up my pickup twice yesterday to recharge. And I haven’t used the AC much since last night, the last time I started the pickup.

The very instant that I confirmed that the engine would not start, a white pickup drove down to my campsite. Thanks, God. I asked the older gentleman inside if he had any jumper cables. He said that he did not, but that his buddy following him might.

His buddy showed up in a camper with a fishing boat in tow, and pulled out a portable battery charger. My vehicle started with no problems, and I let it sit and idle for about 30 minutes to recharge.

The first older gentleman asked me how long I would be staying here. About a week, I sheepishly replied, forgetting for a minute which day it was.

“That’s how long we’ll be staying here—-about a week”, he replied. “It’s just a bunch of old codgers like me.”

This is when I realized I was going to have some company.

I had expected that anyone I ran into here would be part of the retirement brigade. Who else would go camping at a place like this, during the work week, in October?

I had just finished writing about how nasty I probably was, but now I felt unexpectedly self-conscious about it. I hadn’t showered in two days, hadn’t shaved in 3, and was wearing the same shirt and shorts that I had spilled Gatorade and mustard on yesterday.

They had come here to go fishing, and they asked if I was doing much fishing. “Not really”, I replied, which was not entirely truthful, seeing as I was not fishing at all, and did not even own a fishing pole. “Doing some kayaking, though”, I volunteered, to answer the unspoken question of what the heck I was doing here, for a week, if I was not into fishing.

I really didn’t want to get into any detail on why I was here. I get tired of explaining it.

You might be wondering what I would pack for a camping trip like this. I was wondering that myself last week, considering I have never gone camping like this before.

I am only partly “roughing it”, since I have mentioned that I have a little bit of electricity, my laptop, and an electric lamp. Besides that and the obvious things like clothes, my campsite consists of:

There are a couple of things that I forgot to bring. One, although I packed plenty of clothes, I somehow forgot to bring a swimsuit. And, I forgot to bring a knife and spoon for the peanut butter and jelly. Luckily, I realized this mistake before I got out here, and asked the lady who gave me directions if she had any I could use. She had plastic spoons, but no plastic knives, so she gave me a cheap metal butter knife. She didn’t ask for it back, but I will return it when I leave here.

I paddled my kayak today over to a long inlet or fjord or whatever you want to call it, on the other side of the lake. The other side of the lake is pretty much wilderness, with no campgrounds or road access or any type of human activity. This particular fjord had a much smaller fjord on the south side of it, so that it was completely hidden from the main channel of the lake.

Since I had no swimsuit, but still wanted to go swimming, I decided that this would be a safe place to go skinny dipping. I parked my kayak along the rocky, steep shoreline, scanned carefully for any human eyes, and went for it.

While I was swimming, I heard some movement in the trees nearby. I tried to spy what it was, hoping that it was not human. To my relief, out stepped two coyotes.

I have been around coyotes enough to know that they are really no danger to humans. They are probably less likely to attack you than regular dogs. And, they are also not all that imposing. They are much smaller than, say, a German Shepherd or a Labrador. If I had to, I think I could take a coyote, one-on-one.

These coyotes were anything but interested in me, however. I had expected them be spooked by my presence, but they somehow seemed to not even notice me. At one point, they came within 40 feet of me, and even though only my head was visible above the water, I was surprised that they seemed to see me as no more than another stump sticking out of the water.

After a couple of minutes, the pair moved on, and so did I. I was thankful, at least, that they had not been bears. Bears are bad news.

I happened to pick a week with a full moon.

See, out here that actually means something. Out here, you can actually see the sky, and all of the stars. There are no street lights and bright windows and headlights making the night sky some grey nothingness. Out here, it actually gets dark at night.

And the full moon actually sheds some light.

You don’t need a flashlight here, or street lamps, to find your way around. Once your eyes adjust, it is actually fairly bright. The trees cast shadows, just as they do in the daytime.

I’m not saying you can read by the moonlight, but-—hey, look, I actually can read a little by moonlight.

Oh, and it is actually kind of cold at night. I listened to the radio briefly while charging the battery earlier, and the forecast called for a low of 48 degrees tonight, with highs around 80. So, this little fire is a good thing.

Some new campers came up this evening. Probably here for the weekend. It didn’t take them long to get some music blaring. Luckily, they are on the other side of a small hill, so I can’t hear too much of their carousing. For a while, I couldn’t make out what songs they were playing, and thought it might have sounded like Hispanic music—which would have made sense to me, since Hispanics do seem to love music. Now they are playing a song I can easily make out, though, an iconic song that I would recognize anywhere: “Let’s Get It On”.

Good grief.

© 2006 by Kevin McConaghy. All rights reserved.