If You Go Into the Woods Today…
Existential decisions by a first time camper.
We all know this: do not muck with bears.
There is a healthy population of black and brown bears in Northern Saskatchewan and they are at the top of your priority list when camping.
While cute as heck, they are built to succeed at running, climbing, swimming, and let’s not forget murdering humans by tearing flesh apart with their impressive claws. Bottom line, avoid a bear encounter. Especially when you’re vulnerably asleep in a tent. And… especially when you’ve never camped before.
Dreaming of Camp Life
From very young I yearned to go camping and fishing. I love being a part of nature and for me, growing up on a farm made for an amazing childhood. Access to the outdoors was immediate. No traffic, no streetlights. Just open glorious accessible space to play any time! I highly recommend raising your children in the countryside.
However, in this case, it also meant that my parents were farmers. And I can imagine when you spend that much time outside, working your ass off to make ends meet, the last thing in the world you want to do is bring your three kids to another remote location to “play pioneer”. Packing up, then setting up in a space that makes cooking, cleaning and looking after the family even more arduous. No-sir, camping was not my family’s idea of a fun vacation.
Nature Boy
Very lucky for me, in my University years I crossed paths with this awesome dude. Have you ever met someone and realized the more you got to know them, the more they kind of blew you away? Not only was he funny, kind and smart, he loved animals and nature and he too had spent his childhood immersed in the Prairie’s bounty. Except his rural experience involved horses, hunting, camping, and fishing.
We hit it off from the moment we said hello. Our first outdoor activity together was fishing off the banks of campus in the Red River. Martin patiently and enthusiastically introduced me to shore fishing and I loved it even more than I thought I could. We caught and released many a Catfish and Silver Bass on barbless hooks. Such fun! In fact, we even had our small wedding on campus, just off the shores of the Red.
Finally — I’m a Camper!
Shortly after we were married, we planned my very first REAL camping trip with three of Martin’s adult cousins, who were all siblings. It was about a four and a half hour drive from where we were living at the time up to Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. Then another couple hours’ drive further north, into the wild untouched territory, to a remote lake where my husband and his cousins had fished in their youth.
Setting up camp was a crash course and in fast motion. The rain drops softly tapping on the car were accelerating so we each hurriedly scouted level ground in the gathering dark to set up our tents while the earth was still mostly dry.
As Martin and I were tucking our sleeping bags and duffel bags into our tent, Martin gave me the first rule of remote camping, “Remember, we put all sweet stuff high up in a tree or in the car away from us. This is true bear country and we do not want to draw them to where we’ve set up. Even anything that may smell sweet to a bear, like toiletries, he could construe as food.”
I nodded. Right, of course, that’s logical! We set up a fire as the drizzle continued and made a simple dinner before we all hunkered down in our own tents to keep dry and get some sleep.
Tomorrow was fishing time, I couldn’t wait! Wasn’t this an authentic, rough, and rugged way of living? Eeep! I fell asleep dreaming of leaping trout!
Duh-duh-duhhh… Oops!
Next morning, we rose with the sun. We dressed in our tents and Martin was ready before me. As he stepped out of the tent, he exclaimed, “Oh my god…”
My duffel bag was sitting open as I was pulling out my clothes for the day. On his way out of the tent, he could see my deodorant and toothpaste and the fix for my next hit — of chocolate. (I’ve always had an obsession for chocolate so I’d brilliantly tucked away a couple of bars for the trip.)
Martin shook his head… “You had that in the tent all night?” OK I’m not proud of this. Even with a university degree, in my naïvety, I had not classified these items as bear attractors. I re-evaluated the contents in my bag and we stuffed the bear bait into a safer spot.
Not long after, we made another fun discovery. In our haste to set up in the rain, we had failed to notice we had parked our tent not far from an animal trail. These are sort of a forest highway where animals have all found a common path to navigate their way. A path of least resistance through the trees and brush and being used by many animals, bears included, it sort of gets carved into the earth.
Perhaps not the best location to set up camp when another discovery was made about 30 feet away: bear scat.
Martin explained, “Notice this animal poo here filled with berries down this narrow path? It means something large lumbered through right here: a black bear passed through our camping area, right in front of our tent.” From the disturbance in the grass and earth, it was evident that it had stopped to check us out. I hadn’t heard a thing. I had slept so hard that night in the fresh air. Eeeeep!
Blueberry Thrills
But wait — it gets better!
Saskatchewan is known for its wild, low bush blueberries. Another reason for the location of Wild Highway #1 was its proximity to a lush area covered in low-bush blueberries.
Yes, you’ve put it together, bears love berries. And chocolate. And we literally put ourselves near its path. Good thing it was a time of year when there was plenty of food available naturally. It makes bears’ interest in campers more about curiosity than contemplating them as a snack.
But let’s call this full immersion camping.
In the end, it rained off and on all weekend. Not one person caught one fish for dinner. And you can imagine what I thought about camping after that.
I loved it!
We made bannock, cooking it over the fire on a stick, then filled it with the low bush blueberries with a bit of honey.
We paddled out on a boat and slipped through the water while we dipped our lines in, absorbing the fluffy clouds, birdsong, gentle breezes.
We laughed at our luck until our sides hurt, bonding and making memories forever.
Thank you for the writing prompt about camping, Ellie Jacobson of Flint and Steel.