Nonfiction by Shelley Stoehr
WHAT TO PACK
Tent
A nylon pup tent should be sufficient for a nine year-old girl and her younger brother to sleep in when their family goes camping at a rustic site by a lake in Massachusetts. The tent should keep out the rain, but it won’t, even if the siblings have dug a circular ditch — a moat, of sorts — around the base of the tent. The walls of the tent should bead with droplets of condensation. When a girl writes her name in the moisture with her fingertip, cold water should trickle down her arm. She hates camping. She hates everything about it.
Sleeping Bag
A girl may forego leaving her tent to pee because of the drizzle and the chill. She may decide to just hold it in. If so, she should burrow down deep into her thick nylon sack and fall asleep to the peaceful patter of raindrops on the tent walls.
Flashlight
If it is the middle of the night, a girl should carry a flashlight to go to the outhouse at the edge of the campsite, but she will not bring one if she is sleepwalking — as she tends to do, though not usually outside of her house. If she is sleepwalking, she should take a wrong turn in her sleep and wander into the woods.
Clothing
Because it is summer and it is hot out, even at night, a girl should sleep in a tee-shirt and underwear but no pants. When she wakes up in the woods alone, she should be both glad that the rain has stopped and embarrassed by her near-nakedness. There should be dirt under her fingernails and in the crotch of her underwear too, scratchy against her privates as if she’s been crawling and rolling in the dirt, which she probably has been.
Star Chart
A girl should look to the night sky blooming between the treetops for help finding her way back to her family’s campsite. She should think to look for the North Star but won’t remember which dipper it is in.
Compass
Because she has sleepwalked many times before, once she is fully awake, a girl should know what to do by rote: pause, orient yourself, make a plan. She should stand up and brush herself off. She should think, woods, lake, road, meaning that if she walks in a straight line in one direction, she should come to either the lake or the road, and she should be able to follow it around until she figures out where she is and how to get back to her own campsite. As she pushes through the undergrowth, thin branches will snap back at her like whips. She should not cry.
Marshmallows
Eventually, a girl ought to come upon a clearing lit up by the orange glow of a campfire. She should see a woman leaning against a man by the side of the fire, roasting marshmallows. A girl should begin to approach the couple for help but will remember at the last second that she’s not wearing pants so will turn toward the road instead. She should see the site number stamped on a post and know how to get back to her own site now. She should sigh with relief.
WHAT TO DO
Gathering Firewood
If, a few years later, an eleven year-old girl goes camping with her family on the side of a mountain in upstate New York, she and her brother, now ten, should be in charge of gathering tinder for the fire. They should walk the slope with their eyes pointed down, seeking small, knuckled twigs that remind the girl of bony witch-fingers. A girl should know not to pull the branches off of live trees because green sticks smoke but don’t burn.
Hiking
Should a girl’s younger brother be angry at something — because he is always angry at something — and suddenly run up the side of the mountain, a girl should feel his rage in her own body. It will be fire in her brain and ice in her throat. If her brother disappears over a ridge into the forest, a girl should drop her tinder and run after him because he’s too little to be alone up there. Although their parents may shout from below, a girl will hardly hear them in her panic. She is responsible for her brother and always has been. When they were younger, a girl would even speak for him: Patrick wants a cookie.
Tracking
After running through the woods yelling for her brother for a long time, a girl may come upon a short wall of stacked rocks. She hasn’t found her brother and now she’s lost too and what should she do, what should she do? She may sit on the wall to try and figure out her next move. Sweat should drip down her sides. She should notice that the sun is just beginning to tilt toward the horizon behind her. Or is it in front of her? She won’t be sure because she is so lost.
Bird Watching
When a flock of small birds bursts from the undergrowth and scatters in alarm, a girl may hear her father’s voice calling her name. If so, she should yell, “Here!” and stand on top of the wall to look for him. Unfortunately, though he will have found her, her father won’t know how to get back to the campground. Still, a girl should know that it is better to be lost together than alone.
Navigating
The sun should be quite low in the sky when a girl and her father shove through a patch of reeds taller than her head. Her father’s breath should be shallow and his movements rough. A girl won’t know whether he is angry or scared or both. A girl should feel a flash of terror at the approaching darkness, and for the first time, will realize that her father is not always going to be able to protect her. This should make a girl want to howl in despair, but then she should remember fishing on the lake the day before and watching the sun set over the far side of the water. Since their campground is between the forest and the lake, if she and her father walk toward the setting sun, they ought to end up back at their campground! A girl should feel proud at having figured that out.
Cooking
When a girl and her father arrive back at their campsite, a girl’s brother, who got back more than an hour ago, should be sitting by the fire, stirring a pot of tomato soup. A girl’s mother should be angry, but she should be more mad at a girl than at her brother. If this seems unfair, a girl should quietly clench her fists and breathe sharply through her nose — not crying, not crying, not.
ALTERNATIVE ACTIVITIES
Spin the Bottle
A couple of years later, when a girl is thirteen and on the verge of becoming a woman (she thinks), she should go camping at the beach with a local youth group because a boy she likes is going too. The teens should have to haul all their gear and drinking water for about a mile to get to the campsite. The sun should blaze overhead, bleaching the sand to a glassy white. A girl’s skin should feel feverishly hot. There will be sand in her food, sand in the crotch of her bathing suit, and sand in her ears. At night, all the teens on the trip should play Spin the Bottle. If the boy a girl likes kisses her best friend, a girl should want to cry, but she will not, will not, will not.
PRECAUTIONS AND SAFETY
Smoking
When a girl is fifteen, she and her new best friend may get caught smoking cigarettes under a giant rhododendron on the corner, a block away from her house. Afterward, a girl may not be allowed to see that friend anymore. She will be devastated. The girls should concoct a plan to go camping together with a local youth group, even though at this age, the girls find both camping and youth groups to be lame. It will be worth it to get to see each other.
Swimming
If there is a lake carved out of limestone cliffs near the campground, the youth group may go there to swim. There should be a ledge for jumping off the top of a cliff that looms over the lake some fifteen or twenty feet up. Though a girl and her best friend won’t jump, they should hang out near the ledge anyway, far away from the youth group, because there will be some older guys there with beer. It will be fun to stand around listening to rock music and drinking beer and acting cool. A girl should feel uncomfortably exposed in her bikini top, but she shouldn’t put a tee shirt on over it because that might reveal her discomfort. It is strange to want so desperately to be seen, but at the same time, to be so afraid to be noticed.
Drinking
The girls should get pleasantly tipsy. If a girl’s best friend likes a guy with long, stringy hair who is twenty-seven years-old, a girl’s best friend should push out her chest and flutter her eyelashes at him and claim to be eighteen. When the guys invite the girls back to their campground up the road from where the youth group is staying, a girl should decline to go because it won’t seem safe. If a girl’s friend calls her chicken and gets into the guys’ van without her, a girl’s heart should hurt with a confusing mix of fear, loneliness, and shame as she watches them drive away.
Nighttime
When spindly shadows lengthen and darkness eventually falls, if a girl’s friend still isn’t back from the other campground, the youth group leader should ask a girl where her friend is. A girl should lie and say that her friend is sleeping in their tent. Then a girl should sneak away to look for her friend. When a girl gets to the other campground, she should call her friend’s name over and over until her friend finally emerges from a tent. When a girl asks whether her friend is all right, her friend should say, of course. When a girl asks again, her friend should get angry and say to stop asking. Back in their tent, the girls should smoke cigarettes long into the night, filling the tent with thick whorls of smoke, but they should not discuss what happened. Even the next day, a girl’s friend should not say, so maybe it was nothing.
BACK AT HOME
Unpacking
When a girl arrives home, she should wonder why her friend doesn’t seem to like her anymore. She should hear rumors that her friend is becoming a slut. They should grow further and further apart until they eventually lose touch altogether. A girl should mull over that camping trip for years, still wondering what happened at the other campground that night and getting a bad feeling about it. She should be in her thirties when she finds her old friend on Facebook and reaches out. She will learn then that her friend was gang-raped in that tent by those guys from the other campground. That will be a lot to unpack, and a girl won’t know what to do with that information except to be so, so sorry for not having probed harder, sooner. Knowing will feel like falling endlessly down a dark and airless hole.
Reflection
When a girl is much older and has a family of her own, if she thinks back on camping trips past, she should feel regret and sorrow and sometimes anger, but she should also know that growing up doesn’t mean that she now has the ability to fix the past, only that she now has the maturity to accept and release it. She should feel ok to cry, cry, cry.
As an adult, a girl should never have to go camping again. She should mourn those whom she could not save or keep safe, but she should also understand that sometimes, saving oneself is all a girl’s got.
And sometimes, that must be enough.
Shelley Stoehr teaches writing at Southern Connecticut State University and writes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. She published four novels with Bantam Doubleday Dell in the 1990’s, and her short work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She is the winner of a 2023 de Groot Foundation Writer of Note grant and has received awards from The North American Review, New Millenium Sunshots, Writer’s Digest, and WOW: Women on Writing. Her poetry chapbook, Glitterotica, was recently published by Dancing Girl Press, and she has just written her first full-length memoir, Girls! Girls! Girls!
Arcturus 