My January Friend

Friday began with me waking up at my condo in West Des Moines. By 2 o’clock, I had journeyed to my family’s home in Elgin, Illinois, over 300 miles away. And as night fell over the towering pine trees, I looked around and saw that I was in a State Park near Oregon, Illinois, about to get some sleep in a tiny tent. I took a deep breath of the air scented with campfire and pine needles and sighed contentedly. It had been a long day, and would continue to be a long weekend, but it was totally worth it. Whatever time I had spent in planning or traveling was entirely justified by the abundant peace and happiness.

My younger brother’s birthday is in January, which is a little bit difficult. So many birthday outings and experiences are typically held in the summertime, from amusement parks and waterparks to picnics to simply getting outside and grilling or playing around. For a January birthday, you can either wait half the year and celebrate belatedly, or just content yourself with indoor activities. That’s been the way we’ve celebrated his birthday for decades, from the summer trips to Santa’s Village theme park to wintertime lazer tag events. This year, I decided my gift to him would be a summertime event, just for the two of us. I chose a camping trip.

Now, granted, this isn’t a whole lot different in concept than the belated amusement park trips, in that we had to wait six months after the actual birthday to celebrate, but it was unique in that it was a single-person experience given as a gift. For as long as I can remember, I’ve given items for birthdays, but when I think back, I find myself more fond of experiences I’ve had than things I’ve owned, so I wanted to give that. And additionally, it was a chance for the two of us to bond a little bit again. My brother and I shared a bedroom for many years when we were growing up, and we’d spend hours lying in our beds, just talking about things, late into the night. Since I moved away to college, we’ve still been close, but we haven’t really had that together time we used to share every night.

After a great deal of research, I chose White Pines State Park, in Northwest Illinois, as our destination. With the car all packed and after hugs from the rest of the family, we set off on an hour-and-a-half car ride, chatting amiably as we went. Arriving at the park, we encountered our first obstacle of the weekend: the ford. I had been vaguely aware going in that White Pines featured fords as river crossings, where the water was directed over the roadway in a shallow enough manner that a car could just drive through, Oregon Trail-style. Fair enough in concept, until we approached and saw the scale of the thing. The water seemed to be rushing quickly over the concrete, and sure looked more than a few inches deep. How do you tackle such an obstacle? Fast? Slow? I sure didn’t know, so we decided it pretty quickly. Splashing through the water, a sudden adrenaline moment where it felt like the wheels were slipping, and finally we were through. Whew.

Setting up the campsite was pretty straightforward. We found the perfect spot, a grassy opening with a small hillside in the shade of the pines on which you could just fit a small tent. Being experienced with my own tent, we had it pitched in a matter of minutes. By this time, the sky was beginning to darken, and our stomachs were growling. Time to start a campfire and start cooking. Only one problem: I’d never started a fire by myself before. Sure, I’d been present for it, and knew the general concept, but I had zero experience. And I didn’t want to use any chemicals like lighter fluid.

We walked the area around our campsite looking for sticks to start with. I assembled those into a square pattern that narrowed as it grew, almost like an Aztec pyramid, and stuffed the inside with newspaper. Then the purchased firewood around the outside. Light a match, toss it in, and voila! It lights! Or at least the newspaper does. Then the newspaper burns up, catches some of the sticks on fire, but there is almost no effect on the big logs. We quickly crumple more newspapers and throw on more sticks, but still the larger pieces appear unaffected. Soon, we’re both blowing on the weak little fire we do have, hoping to fuel it with more oxygen. We need this fire, because I’m not planning to eat raw salmon for dinner.

Things still aren’t looking great, so we decide to throw an older piece of wood from the car’s trunk onto the fire, and suddenly we have some fire. Rushing now to actually get things cooking, we throw the grill and the salmon foil pouches on, ignoring the fingers of flame reaching all the way up around the pouches themselves. With no idea how long they need to cook for, we take a wild guess at it, and pull them off to find the salmon perfectly cooked. Somehow, with no idea how to make a fire and with raw fish in the equation, we’ve managed to pull it off and have a delicious dinner.

Later that night, it’s time to rekindle the fire for s’more’s, an absolute requirement my brother insisted on. With the experience of the first fire in mind and with hot, slightly charred logs, we succeed easier this time, and before we know it, we’re sitting around a blazing fire with marshmallows in the fire. With gooey marshmallow guts all over our fingers, we pause to laugh at the trials of earlier in the day. The concerns of starting the fire have melted away like so much s’more chocolate and we are able to truly enjoy the camping trip. After a long day’s worth of driving across the Midwest, and sharing the experiences of fire building and cooking over the fire, conversation comes easily now. We talk and laugh like we did when we were kids.

The night air fills with all the essence of camping. The piney air is thick with pleasant campfire smoke, and nocturnal creatures make their mysterious calls. The fire crackles at the logs, turning to a sudden phoom! as a marshmallow accidentally catches fire. And long after the fires are out and total darkness has descended on the world, the sounds of two brothers whispering together can still be heard.