Summer Camp

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sing along if you know the melodies  
   
I’m driving through Mojave Desert, visiting one of my sisters before the long summer season sets in with a vengeance.  She's one of the counselors at a summer camp for girls, and has invited me to come up for the weekend.  The drive is long but filled with rugged scenery, especially once I reach the mountains. The winding road becomes a narrow, rocky lane strewn with boulders hazardous to a vehicle that isn’t a 4-wheel drive.  I slowly make my way up the slope as the road becomes narrower until it's barely enough to allow one-way traffic.  
   
It’s ages since I’ve been there; a young girl during summer vacation.  My parents dropped me off where the buses were, with eager girls, from ages 8 to 16, getting on board, while drivers loaded sleeping bags and overnight cases into the bottom storage of the buses.  I was 9 when Mom announced that I’d get to go to summer camp, by myself.  I had never been on my own; it was always with family: Angeles National Forest, Yosemite, Death Valley, camp grounds along the west coast, and taking the all-day boat from San Pedro to Catalina Island for deep sea fishing.  I remember when I caught my first fish – an ugly barracuda!  I loved those trips, getting up at 4am, piling into Dad’s van – with Mom, and my two older sisters.  Once the buses set out in a caravan filled with girls with arms waving out the windows, hair flying in the wind, we’d all join in a singalong at the top of our lungs;  every camp song we could think of, over and over, for miles and miles.  
   
I break from my reverie when I realize the sun is down, the night has settled in, and clouds are gathering.  I turn on the wipers as it begins to sprinkle.  The road, more like a trail at the moment, will level off, becoming less rocky, where I will head for the camp’s parking lot near the main structure that houses the staff where my sister is, waiting.  My vehicle jolts violently whenever I hit a boulder, and the rain is falling in sheets, socking me in for the night.  I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and feel myself shiver.  I lean forward, squinting, trying to see with my high beams.  It's hard to navigate despite the wipers, the road gooey with mud.  I feel desperate and reach for my cell phone.  I can’t feel it – where is it?  Is it lying on the floor?  I reach up to turn on the cab light as I hit the brakes just as a flash of lightning slices through the darkness, illuminating the relentless rain. It seems like it's been coming down for hours, but it's probably only been about 15 minutes.    
   
It's a disoriented feeling; the sensation of careening over a waterfall.  I crane my neck, looking behind me through the back window.  The SUV is sliding backward, the mud causing it to lose traction, heading towards the railing. Too sudden for me to react in time, the SUV rams into the barrier, whipping my head back and sending my body forward into the steering wheel, knocking the air from me.    
   
There's only the sound of rain pelting the roof, and the faint roll of thunder.  
…..  
   
I look down and find I'm sitting astride a black horse whose name was Navajo.  How bold I was, telling the camp counselor I could ride (oh yes, born to it, I said).  I loved everything about horses, except how to ride them.  I sat on the resentful beast, squirming in the saddle, trying to keep my feet in the stirrups (they were too long, or I was too short).    
   
I brought up the rear of a caravan of 9 and 10-year-old girls spending two weeks of summer in the Tehachapi mountains.  Swimming, hiking, singing old camp songs, like –  
I been workin' on the railroad, all the live-long-day..., performing skits round the campfire after a supper of beans and franks.  
   
 I been workin' on the railroad, just to pass the time away...,  Buying pixie sticks, chewing gum, and Hello Kitty glitter at the camp's general store that looked like a log cabin.  Every building in camp looked like a log cabin.  
   
Can't you hear the whistle blowin', rise up so early in the morn'... We had to get up every morning at the crack of dawn.  
   
Can't you hear the captain shoutin’, Dinah blow your horn..., and you had to run down a hill in your nightshirt with a towel, bar of soap, and toothbrush in your hands so you could get a spot in the loo before the older girls came in.  They would hoist themselves up to look down into the stall where I'd be shivering on the john.  I'd look up and would always let out a high-pitched scream,    
   
Dinah won'tcha blow, Dina won'tcha blow, Dina won'tcha blow your ho-o-orn..., they did it to all the first-timers, and I'd make a break for it and run back up the hill until they'd clang the triangle over a loudspeaker way up in a pine tree - the call to breakfast.  
   
Someone's in the kitchen with Di-nah, someone's in the kitchen I kno-o-o-ow, someone's in the kitchen with Di-nah... strummin' on the ol' banjo.  
   
So there we were, the 9 and 10-year-olds. The older girls were prolly on their period, and were not gonna ride those ol' horses, so they were all hanging out at the camp cee-ment pond in their bathing suits.  I wasn't gonna swim in that water, I might find a tampon floating nearby, ew!  I was the last one in the string of girls making their way down a winding mountain trail, with the mountain on the right and a sprawling view of the valley below on the left.  
   
Down in the valley, valley so low, hang your head over, hear the wind blow. Green pastures surrounded by mountains, the sky and clouds.  It really did look like a purple mountain’s majesty, like in the song,    
...above the fruited plains... America, America...    
   
"Wait a minute, what's that out there?", we all shouted, pointing.  The cute wrangler guy, who was leading the tenderfoot girls on an adventure, replied,    
   
"Oh, that's the stables."  
   
"You mean where the horses live?"  
   
"Uh huh."    
   
...and crown thy good with brotherhood...  Navajo let out a deep rumbling whinny that I could feel right through the saddle, and vibrated my thighs that were sweating on the leather cause I was wearing shorts.    
   
Navajo bolts out of line and takes me along whether I like it or not (I don't!), heading for the bend in the trail ahead where there's a fence to keep people from rolling down the mountain.  I'm too scared to holler, besides, no one can hear me because all the other girls are screaming!  
   
The fence was getting closer fast.  My feet flew out of the stirrups.  Everything blurring.  I was certain to pitch out of the saddle any second.  As it happened (and you knew it would), the big handsome wrangler galloped up just in the nick of time, grabbing the reins, to pull the homesick beast to a halt mere moments before sailing over the fence.  
   
As for me, I couldn't wait to get back to my bunk so I could make something out of ice cream sticks and Elmer's Glue-All; the obligatory camp craft project.  Maybe something like a little box where I could keep my pixie sticks, chewing gum, and Hello Kitty glitter.  
   
...from sea – to – shi -- ning – sea. . . . .  
. . . . .  
   
“She’s waking up.” My ears suddenly fill with sound, like coming up for air after being underwater.  I blink as if sunlight is on my face; my head nestles into a soft pillow.  I look over at a window and see the rain has stopped, the clouds are gone, and a full moon hangs high.  There's the warm touch of a hand.  I follow the arm it's attached to and see my sister, smiling.  
   
   
©2016 Jade-Pandora  
   
This piece placed runner-up in the DU competition "Strange New Year".  
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