Teepee

by
Rick Brown

I’m pretty sure it all happened when the “older guys” down the street … brothers Dennis and Ronnie … brought over an official army surplus hammock when I was just a boy. They strung it up between a laundry pole and an apple tree in our backyard. It was a “jungle’ version with mosquito netting all around and a roof overhead. My 2 brothers and I would sit in it for hours mesmerized.
    
And thus began my love affair with hammocks, tents … most all fabric shelter enclosures. (We’ve since had an ugly divorce … with the exception of the backyard hammock.) Soon enough my parents bought a canvas Sears Umbrella Tent and we began our travel adventures and backyard sleepovers.
    
But THAT particular tent deserves a story of its own. It’s on the list.
    
A week after graduating from high school in June 1970, I left home … not for the ivy-covered walls of academia, but for a church camp called Frederick where I was to work the summer as a camp counselor. I was going to make a whole $200 … enough at the time to buy ONE semester’s worth of college textbooks.
    
That’s right folks … at the tender age of 18 … with zero life experience outside of my nuclear family … I was hired to help shape America’s youth … at least the Lutheran variety. But the entire camp staff … all 5 of us … were wet behind the ears. John … the oldest amongst us … was the camp director. And Le grand fromage was a mere 21 years of age. We made up for our lack of experience with a wilderness swagger that was both mildly obnoxious and charmingly youthful. This was Camp Frederick’s debut summer and we were determined to make our mark in the Land of Luther.
    
Having spent my childhood in the 1950’s, I watched enough westerns to have a small fantasy about living in a teepee. I mean, to me, the Indians had a way cooler (keener?) lifestyle than the wagon train people. Sitting around a fire INSIDE a tent passing a peace pipe certainly seemed more appealing than eating beans in a covered wagon. Don’t even bring up the “townsfolk”. They bored the living shit out of me. Okay, maybe I wasn’t a normal 50’s boy. “Anything to be different huh Ricky?” my dad would always say to me.
    
Consequently, what was immensely exciting for me at the dawn of summer 1970 was the fact that I would be counseling … LIVING … in a TEEPEE!! A teepee that slept 8-10 campers no less! Yet I had no glimmer of a notion exactly how much wisdom I was going to attain … most painfully … from the experience.
    
Camp Frederick was not, at the time, remotely like your average summer camp. It was primitive in comparison. WAY primitive. There was a small lodge where a cook from the local elementary school prepared weekday dinners. But breakfast and lunch were to be cooked at your campsite! At 18 years of age I barely knew how to make toast. And since the boys’ teepees (the girls resided in cabins close to the lodge but had no electricity) were a good 15-20 minute walk to the restrooms … well … you get the picture. (Does a summer camper shit in the woods? You bet he does!)
    
After a couple unsatisfactory locales for my dream teepee site, I settled on the “Outpost Camp” section of the camp. It was a beautiful spot near one of the 2 creeks that merged into one at the far end of the camp. That was where our swimming hole, complete with “Tarzan rope” was.
    
I told you it was primitive.

Having just been liberated from oppressive public school dress codes, I began growing my hair long and quit shaving. I knew as much about men’s beard and hair grooming as I did making breakfast and lunch on an open campfire for 6-8 fourteen year old boys. We made such delicacies as fried Spam sandwiches with Cheese Whiz and Lipton Soup … on a fire.
    
“Hey Rick! How do we know when the soup’s done?”
    
“It boils over twice and has bark floating in it!”
    
I was skinny and getting skinnier … although my abundance of head hair gave me an exciting Wild Man of Borneo Chia Pet appearance that I’m sure must have been frightening stumbling out of the woods in the dark. And one time … before I learned the value of tying long hair back into a ponytail … a game of Capture the Flag had to be suspended while the other counselors helped me get my long locks unsnarled from a pine tree.
    
Never … EVER … dive under a small evergreen in the middle of Capture the Flag. I don’t care what length your hair is.
    
There were several other valuable personal epiphanies.

1. Your flashlight is your very, VERY best friend.
2.  A tent … even a teepee … can be too close to the pretty stream.
3. Fire in the teepee is nice at night. But you always … ALWAYS smell like a lumberyard the day after it burnt to the ground.
4.  Laundered clothing stays fresh for about 12 hours in a teepee. (see previous epiphany)
5. With a new group of boys … EVERY week was “starting over” with EVERYTHING.
6. Hang your food for morning from a tree.

  
That final lesson came hard. Straw separated the teepee inhabitants from the ground. Mice find straw just as warm as we do. Hungry mice.
    
Then there was the time I was awakened in the middle of the night by what sounded like smacking lips. There … sitting upright on my chest … was a SKUNK! And the little critter was having a fabulous feast on the morning’s pancake mix. Even at the tender age of 18 years, I had the wherewithal to realize if I yelled out … woke the sleeping fourteen-year-old boys … I would spend the rest of the summer pouring tomato juice over me to kill the skunk smell. So I lay there squinting … holding my breath as best I could … trying not to move … until the cute little skunk satisfied his hunger and ambled off.
    
To this day, this was one of my better attempts at either meditation or yoga.
    
The most amazing teepee night began normal enough. The boys and I built a small fire in the ring located in the center of our teepee. The teepee’s flaps above were wide open, as usual, to let the wafting smoke escape into the starry sky. We talked and I tried to be a solid good influence … drawing on my 4 more years of existence  …  and maturity of course. A couple guys asked if they could put another log on the fire. I told them just one more. We all drifted off peacefully to slumber land.

My peace was shatter first by the sound of pouring rain.

Then I heard the crying.

 “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!! RICK! OH! GOD!! RIIIIIICK!! WAH! WAH!”
    
Loud sniffling ensued.
    
“RIIIIIIIICK!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!”
    
Then I heard one boy solemnly shout to the group, “Do you think we KILLED HIM??!!!”
    
This was met with even more wailing and gnashing of teeth.
    
“WAAAAAAH!! WAH! WAH! WAH!!”
    
I suddenly realized I was inhaling smoke. The teepee was totally filled with dense smoke and I knew the boys had closed the vent at the top of the teepee when the rain began.  So I stumbled out of the tent to a chorus of “RICK! YOU’RE ALIVE!!! HE IS ALIIIIIIIVE!!!!” “RICK IS ALIVE! WE DIDN”T KILL HIM!!!”
    
I was equally pissed off and touched deeply. I helped the boys open the smoke flap back up And we sat in our teepee smelling like the day after a lumber yard fire … rain hitting our faces … happy … relieved … and comfortably miserable.
    
Only because they all cried was there no shame. And I was slightly concerned that I might have died … unless one of these kids thought of coming in for me. But distress can bring people together. It’s one of camping’s finest lessons. And we did feel that community … that shared life experience… getting soaking wet … happy to have an adventure to tell. Happy to be alive … in a teepee.
   
And in my silence … as I heard the boys excited fourteen year old chatter … already making it a story of their own … I must have seemed stoically wise for my short life … smiling to myself and thinking, “This is going to be a hell of a better tale to tell than almost getting skunked.” Making it my story as well.