I went white-water rafting once with a girlfriend, meeting up with a larger group of friends. It was wild and exhilarating going down the rapids, learning to survive as each set of rapids threatened us with a new way to be drowned.
The adventures downriver were nothing like Deliverance, which is a movie about men raping and murdering each other. If there was any sex among our friends on the trip, it was likely consensual. And nobody was murdered.
On our drive back to our apartment in Philadelphia, my girlfriend and I decided to camp in Virginia. This was before the internet and before GPS mapping on a phone. We didn’t even have mobile phones.
As we drove through the western end of Virginia, we saw an information sign on the highway for camping and exited the highway.
We drove along winding, twisting county roads, moving ever farther from the highway, and deeper into the hills and woods until we came to a gravel road with a sign that said, simply, “Camping.”
The first part of the campground looked reasonable enough — there were a few RVs and popups campers. But the tent campsites, which were cheaper, were way the fuck back in the woods. In the waning daylight, it seemed fine. The trees and bushes were so thick we couldn’t even see the RV section, but that was fine. Screw them.
The tent section of the campground was empty. That seemed a little odd, being half a mile from anyone else, but what the heck: We’d have the pit toilets to ourselves, and would pump our own water to wash up before sleep. No problem.
Most campgrounds pack the tent section in so tightly that you can hear the conversations inside the tents on the neighboring sites. Instead, we were completely alone in this part of the campground.
If you’re a glass half full kind of person, you’d say, “We get to pick the very best campsite.”
But if you’re a glass half empty kind of person, well, you’d say, “We get to pick the place where we’ll be murdered in our sleep.”
So we set up our tent, inflated our air mattress, used the pit toilets and washed up at the pump. By the time we zip ourselves into the tent, the sun has set and darkness came quickly in those woods. It was just us, our tent, and nature.
Then it started to rain.
Rainfall can be comforting when your inside a tent, just the steady, rhythmic pitter-patter of drops against the nylon. No wind, no thunder, no lightning.
We fell asleep.
Some time during the night, something slammed into the side of the tent, hitting so hard that my head bounced up from the mattress. I knew it wasn’t a dream because I felt the contusion.
The tent was small and the air mattress filled it from side to side, so our heads were right there at the wall of the tent. And I’m completely freaked out because something out there just kicked the side of the tent.
I ran through the possibilities in my mind:
- Maybe it’s a couple of drunks from the RV part of the campground, wandering in the rain, who thought it’d be funny to mess with our tent
- Maybe it’s a raccoon that’s confused by the rain, or maybe drunk, and it ran into the side of the tent
- Maybe it’s a murderous pervert who knows we’re alone and that the sound of the rain will muffle our screams as he kills us
I was trembling in fear so I woke up my girlfriend—I guess because terror loves company. I whispered, “Someone is out there. They just smacked the side of the tent.”
She said, “Oh shut up and go to sleep.”
That wasn’t a lot of help and also was kind of rude.
But I wanted to believe her so I put my head back down on the air mattress. And just as I settled in and got comfortable, WHAM: something smacked the side of the tent again, bouncing my face off the air mattress.
“Did you feel that?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What do we do?”
“You’re the man. Figure it out.”
Again, not helpful.
The only thing we had to use as a weapon was the ax, and the ax was in the car.
“We have to get out of here,” I said.
“But it’s still raining.”
“We have to try to get to the car.”
We pulled on shoes, counted to three, and made a break for it.
Even with our eyes adjusted to the darkness, there was nothing to see but pitch black and even darker pitch black. I gathered what little of my dignity was left and led my girlfriend to the car. We got in the car and drive out of there fast and drove back towards the highway, which was the nearest civilization.
We found a Waffle House-open all night-and ordered waffles. Coffee was poured. There we were, safe and sound at 3:30 in the morning.
As we waited for the waffles, we formulated a theory that maybe the lunatic wanted to chase us from our tent, and they were now pilfering our meager belongings.
We ate the waffles and drank coffee until the sun came up. Only then did I have the constitution to return to the campground to face whatever awaited us.
Our tent was intact when we returned. Perhaps a little wet inside because we’d left the door unzipped, but everything, in fact, seemed to be there.
Except that the mattress looked out of sorts. Rounder. Swollen, perhaps, like it was over-inflated.
And then it hit me: the air mattress normally had indents, like a pack of hot dogs. Those indents were made by baffles on the inside, I guess to minimize shifting as it was compressed under pressure. It looked like three of the baffles had given way.
Those baffles giving way would have been like little internal explosions. That’s what made my face bounce off of the mattress.
In my slumber it sounded like an angry biker gang pounding the side of the tent, but in reality it was the inflated mattress against my face popping loose.
In the dark, in my fear, I couldn’t figure out or process what might be happening, and I was convinced that my world was about to end.
Welp, live to fight another day. Or live to run away another day, as the case may be.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
I’m still suffering a chronic case of busyness, but I recently conducted two workshops on live storytelling, the sort you might do at The Moth or around a campfire. I’ve also had a kind of epiphany that may help me produce more creative writing. And it’s not using A.I., which is a dumb way to be creative. Stay tuned. Be ready.
Maybe You’d Like
Welp, I’ve joined another author book promotion, this one for a stories with a strong sense of setting… so check them out and see how where you are–like alone in the woods at night when it’s raining–can change the mood about a story:
Living Settings: An All-Genre Giveaway for Stories With a Strong Sense of Place
https://storyoriginapp.com/to/zNvPQRG
Next Picayune
I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with more stories and whatnot. Remember: don’t go camping alone, or in the dark, especially when it’s raining.
All the best,
Mickey
P.S. For my hardcore Picayunistas, here is a link to that camping story, told by me at The Moth in Ann Arbor, back in 2017.