Three-Day Hike... of Terror!

Every session at IBC the campers had the opportunity to go on an overnight camping trip.  On these overnights I learned how to chop fallen logs for firewood and how to build a fire.  I learned that burying the large galvanized jug of milk up to its neck in the ground helped keep it cool.  I learned how to dig – and use! – a latrine.  I learned that if you rubbed a bar of soap all over the bottom of the fry pan in your mess kit, it was easier to clean after you’ve used it to cook your hamburger over the fire.  And I learned that sand is almost as good as Comet for scouring out said mess kit when you clean it.  I doubt there’s a camp around today that provides that sort of education, mostly because they couldn’t afford the liability insurance.  But I’d have to say that mostly I learned how to scare myself out of my wits. 

These trips were called the “Three-Day Hike;” not because we hiked for three days, but because we were gone for three days, from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon.  The time actually spent hiking was more like three hours, but that doesn’t mean it was inconsequential.  Thirty odd youngsters, ranging in age from eight to seventeen, covered the roughly five miles from our base on Grand Traverse Bay to a secluded site on a beach on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.  We were not unlike the Von Trap family, if each of the children had invited five of their friends to escape with them.  Only instead of a dramatic mountain path over the wildflower studded Alps, our trail was the dusty, pebbled shoulder of a well-traveled highway.  And instead of singing about the hills being alive, we were chanting something about how we “left, left, we had a good job and we left.”   And instead of all our worldly possessions bouncing rhythmically inside the rucksacks on our backs, all our necessities had arrived at the campsite hours earlier via the camp bus.   And instead of being chased by Nazis, we were sitting targets for whatever evil lurked in The Woods.

The Woods, with a capitol T and capitol W.  Any eight year-old child knows – along with many Sondheim fans – that The Woods are rife with all sorts of danger.  And in my day, one such danger came in the form of the killer who had a hook instead of a hand.  A hook that he used to scrape the roofs of cars containing love-struck teenagers who had parked at night to neck in The Woods!  And after the boyfriend went to investigate the source of the scraping, it was the hook that was found dangling from the car handle in the early morning light when the cops rescued the terrified girl and told her whatever she did, “Do not look back,” because if she did, she would see her dead boyfriend hanging from a tree above the car!  But she did!  She did look back!  How else could we have heard that story?

And as if psycho killers weren’t enough to keep me awake all night in my sleeping bag (believe me, they were), there were always the ghosts who sprang nightly from the abandoned graveyard we discovered a mere hundred yards from our campsite.  Some of the older girls, led by Gail Drysdale, had gone picking the wild peas that grew along the access road and had wandered off into the in the chest-high grasses of an adjacent field where they literally stumbled upon a small collection of ancient headstones dating from the 19^th century.  After the girls reported back, wild-eyed and breathless, the rest of us campers had to go see for ourselves.  We were quickly able to determine that these were obviously the graves of Civil War soldiers because, come on, who else died in the 1860s?  And it didn’t take much for my imagination to fill in all the terrifying blanks of what was in store for us that night.  I’d seen enough Twilight Zone episodes to know that most Civil War soldiers don’t even realize they’re dead.  And if there’s anything a dead Civil War soldier can do, it’s haunt the living.  They roam the Earth at night, lost souls seeking relief from the pain of battle and the emptiness of love lost.  (I admit that second motive only came to me years later after watched the Ken Burns documentary.)  The only thing that brings them peace is the torment and misery of others.  What else could explain how sick Gail Drysdale got after she tried eating some of those wild peas?

The secret to surviving these overnights, obviously, was to try to stay under the radar and out of reach of these malevolent beings.  And indeed, one of the happiest moments I experienced on a Three-Day Hike was the time I was able to snag the spot in our tent that was absolutely the most protected from any ghost or murderer.  It is good that I remember this sense of total security so vividly, because, sadly, it was extremely short-lived.

We all shared a common tent which consisted of one massive waxed canvas tarp spread on the ground and a second massive tarp draped overhead on a rope strung between two trees.  Crude, yes; but these were the days before shock-cord ten poles and lightweight rip stop fabric, and it was effective for a group our size.  Upon arriving at camp we would claim a spot on the ground tarp, using our sleeping bags as markers.  On this one particular trip I was ecstatic to realize that my sleeping bag lay in the absolute center of the tent.  There were five rows of five bags, and my position was the third bag in the third row.  I knew I was going to sleep soundly that night because there was no way the ghost of Sullivan Ballou or old Hook-For-Hands was going to get to me without first going through at least half of the other girls (for what it’s worth, I am ashamed today at my disregard for the lives of my fellow campers.)

Unfortunately, this was the first Three-Day for many of the other girls.  So when it was announced that the tent was mostly as insurance in the event of rain and that sleeping there was optional, most of my human shields opted to abandon their posts in the woods under a tent for a position on the beach under the stars.  I envied their fearlessness, forsaking shelter from the elements – both natural and supernatural -- without a second thought.  Nevertheless, I joined them.  This was not an act of bravery so much that it was still a cautious calculation that there was safety in numbers.  In retrospect, I can see that this was also a wise choice for another reason: if the rope above my sleeping bag had ever given out, I would have surely smothered under the weight of that motherfucking tarp.

I have to confess that I did enjoy the stargazing.  And it’s a wonder a soul as cowardly as myself did not feel diminished when confronted by the vastness of space.  I was even able to appreciate the beauty in the occasional distant flash of lightening in the distance on some nights.  Although that was usually a momentary triumph of reason in response to my initial thought that Chicago had just been hit by a nuclear bomb and everyone on Earth, including my parents, had just been killed.

During the day, of course, I felt safer.  The demands of camp chores, hours spent examining an endless assortment of seaweed and driftwood, and frolicking in the considerable waves of Lake Michigan kept my ghoulish imagination otherwise occupied.  By the light of day shadows disappeared and there was nothing to fear, unless I could see it with my own two, open eyes.  Unfortunately, one of the things my own two eyes saw was the dinosaur down the beach.

I don’t remember if it was on very my first Three Day Hike that I saw him, or my second, but it was an early one, and he was there, clear as, well day.  Several hundred yards down the beach, all the way down to where the land curved out of sight on the horizon, the silhouette of his long neck and tiny head jutted out from the trees.  Distant as he was, I knew how tall those trees were, therefore, unaware I had just invented the sophisticated concept of perspective, I could tell that this was no baby dinosaur.  And yes, I realize I am describing a Brontosaurus – the most lovable of the dinosaurs – but don’t tell me you would feel a twinge of fight or flight if you saw one on your street.

Luckily, this one, like I said was so far away that I knew I wasn’t in immediate danger.  But I kept my eye on him, towering over his portion of the sand as he gazed out toward the vast lake.  Motionless.  Never moving.  Ever.  Always in the same position in the morning as he was the night before.   It was such suspicious and puzzling behavior that when we broke camp and went home that Sunday I felt not only relief for not having been eaten, but also a vague sense of incompleteness.  There remained in my young mind a mystery about this creature that would have to be solved at a later time, on another Three-Day.

My opportunity came on our next overnight, which was either four weeks later during the second session or one year later, which in paleontological terms is really just a blink of an eye.  After setting up camp as usual, we all threw on our bathing suits to hit the waves, as usual.  But my mission was twofold.  I was there for fun and reconnaissance.  Unlike Little Jackie Paper, I hadn’t forgotten my Puff the Brontosaurus, and as soon as my friends and I cleared The Woods and hit the sand I did a scan of the view to the South.  It took a moment for memory to synch up with what I saw now, as shapes, colors and shadows took on a familiar feel.  It only took a little effort, but eventually I was able to make him out again.  Still in the same position I had last seen him.  And to be honest, he seemed a little smaller.  A little less intimidating.  And let’s face it; I myself was bigger, older and a little less, well, let’s just say susceptible.

Nevertheless, I tried hard to deny the facts that were hammering hard to sink in.  If I admitted what I suspected was the truth, then I’d be losing something.  I just didn’t know what that something was.  And I don’t know why I ultimately decided to confront my dinosaur face-to-face, but that’s what I did.  The only explanation I can fathom is that the mixture of emotions I felt was untenable and that I had to make a choice between death or disappointment.  I like to picture this moment as bravely stepping over a threshold.

I made the walk down the beach alone.  Surprisingly, it was an even greater distance than I had assumed it would be.  My dinosaur seemed to stay the same size and shape for a very long time.  And then, finally, one step further and all was revealed.  As I’m sure you have guessed, Puff was not an actual dinosaur, but neither was he an optical illusion created by the weathered trunk of a fallen tree.  He was an optical illusion created by two weathered trunks of two fallen trees.  It wasn’t even one piece of wood!  From my vantage point far down the beach the silhouettes of these two dead pines had merged, one supplying the outline of the neck with the other, a good distance further down the beach, providing the head.  A myriad of feelings swirled in my head:  Yes, there was relief, that I wasn’t about to be killed by a prehistoric monster and disappointment that I hadn’t actually discovered one.  But there was also pride that I had dared to confront my fear and vanquish it all on my own.  And there was amusement that even though I had anticipated that my fantasy would be disproven, neither was the reality what I had expected.

That was nearly fifty years ago and I still remember every sensation as if it were yesterday.   But while the famous IBC Three-Day Hike at IBC was responsible for teaching me lots of helpful skills, the fact remains that these days I do not poop outdoors (if I can help it) or fry hamburgers over an open campfire with any degree of frequency.  So you might assume that the takeaway here is that the most useful thing I learned during those trips was how to deal with fear.  This would not be unreasonable, especially given that I am still able to scare myself silly with all sorts of worst case scenarios.  Granted, the adult definition of scary runs more along the lines of taking out your first mortgage or watching your kids get in the car alone after getting their driver’s license, but the lesson would remain the same in principle.  And you might expect me to conclude with some pithy adage, such as “Fear is not always based on fact.  And reality is not only less scary when you meet it face-to-face, but it can sometimes even surprise you.”  That might even be sound advice.  But no, I’m not going there.

The point of my story is that the fear was part of the fun during those trips.  A big part.  Maybe even the best part.  Abandoning all reason for the adrenalin rush of terror is a trademark talent of youth, and the youthful.  Set me down in front of a movie screen and let me watch Frankenstein, and I'm ten years old again.  So in summation, I will say that if you want me to give up the childlike ability to suspend my disbelief, to deny the possibility that ghosts exist and creatures long thought extinct still lurk in remote forests, you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead brain.  Despite any of the foregoing, as far as I’m concerned, there’s still a beach on Lake Michigan populated by a one-handed killer, a battalion of undead Union soldiers and a very lonely Brontosaurus.