Column: Camping trips, past and present
In what now seems like a long, long time ago, in a faraway land, my parents and I left the city behind in search of a place to get away from it all.
Pulling a very archaic, wooden trailer behind our De Soto we traversed dusty dirt roads, always pointing our dreams in the direction of the great Rocky Mountains that loomed ahead on the western horizon.
Eventually we arrived in the Sun River Canyon and crept along a narrow roadway that snaked around the mountains in the same pattern as the Sun River below. We parked our rolling home in a grove of trees at the base of the newly constructed Gibson Dam. Behind the dam was a wilderness that would come to be called “The Bob.”
My father carried boulders from the river and mixed some cement to create a fire pit. I made a print of my hand in the wet cement and my parents wrote our names. We were squatters and that was our land.
Summers came and went and we rarely saw other campers when we were there. Mother and I picked wildflowers with exotic names like lupine, pussy toes and alpine paintbrush. Daddy fished for pan-size trout and he cut firewood in preparation for the evening meals.
We went uphill, away from our water source, to relieve ourselves and we carried a shovel to bury our waste. I remember starry nights and blackened marshmallows with creamy centers and later, after my parents tucked me into the upper bunk, the murmuring of their conversation, and the soft strumming of my dad’s guitar.
This past Memorial Day, my husband and I drove out of the city in our motor home searching for the now elusive private campsite. The traffic was heavy with various sized and shaped recreational vehicles, all with the same destination in mind. We left the freeway and continued on pavement all the way to the campsite, which was also paved.
We registered at the hut by the front gate. Name, address, vehicle license, dogs’ names and picked up the camp policy and procedure booklet. Thirteen dollars a night. One week only. Gates locked at 10 p.m. each night, etc.
Our space had a long-distance view of the lake, a picnic table, a fire pit and was within walking distance to the bathhouse. We hooked up to water, sewer, lights and cable, and tied the dogs to the hitching post provided for pets. After reading the instructions at the automatic, coin-operated wood dispenser, we had an arm full of wood for our evening fire.
Our immediate neighbor was a behemoth motor home, with the blinds pulled. We had toured a motor home that size at the fair last year that actually had stacked washer and dryer and a small spinet piano in it.
We burned a few marshmallows and watched the neighbors on the other side tap their keg. The line at the bathhouse for a coin-operated three-minute showers was long, so, like a true camper, I went without. Our weekend was quiet and peaceful, the camp host made certain of that, but after a long, tiring drive in the post holiday traffic we were back in the our privacy of our own backyard
My dad made up a song for me on one of those nights as he strummed his guitar under the stars.
To the tune of Clementine:
In Augusta, in Augusta, in the days of ‘46.
Lived a couple and their daughter,
And they lived out in the sticks
Had a trailer house, yes, a trailer house and they loved it very much … etc.
A few years ago, my husband and I made the trek to the Sun River Canyon in search of my childhood memories and we found a small bit of the old fire pit. Written in the cement was the date July 5, 1946. Across a newly built bridge we found a campground city of RV squatters who seemed happy to pay the rent on a bit of wilderness 21st century style.
(Carol Holoboff is a former Libby resident who now writes her column from Great Falls).