Humor by John Christmann
When Nature Calls
My ten-year-old son and I communed with nature over the weekend in a tribal ceremony often referred to by tenderfoots as a Cub Scout Campout.
This annual event is every mother’s nightmare. It is a ritual in which fathers bond with their sons over pocket knives and pointed sticks far from the civilized world of Emergency Rooms. It is a chance for young boys to discover the combustion properties of marshmallows, soda cans, and D Cell Batteries under the watchful tutelage of their fathers. It is an awakening of the young spirit to life without soap.
But for dads, the Cub Scout Campout is a special time when we can pass along the oral tradition of scouting by sharing frightening ghost stories over a roaring, three-alarm inferno under the stars.
Every year in mid-May this event is sandwiched inconveniently among baseball games, lacrosse tournaments, and spring concerts. Most of the dads arrive with their sons late Saturday afternoon and leave first thing Sunday morning when the mosquitoes start biting and the possibility for sleep atop stones and knobby ant hills is finally abandoned.
By 7:30 in the morning my son and I pretty much had the park to ourselves. So, being the experienced outdoor person I am, I led him on an ambitious five-mile hike without proper footwear, sunscreen, bug repellant, or water. We didn’t have a map either.
Thank god I brought my iPod.
Whenever we came to a fork in the trail, I cleverly took the left path because it would be easier to remember when we became hopelessly lost and had to make our return. All I had to remember on our way back was to always turn right.
Or was it left? Whatever, we still had a fifty-fifty chance of making it back.
If I were a really gifted naturalist I would boast of a spiritual stroll through dense groupings of Swamp Maples and Possumwood that would make Henry David Thoreau pee in his pond with jealousy.
I would use magical descriptions that evoke images of colloquial beauty: vibrant Tulip Trees draped with Trumpet Honeysuckle, Marsh Pea under sweeping Willow Oaks, swaths of Creeping Mannagrass and Doghobble ringed by stately guards of Marsh Pine.
Instead, we saw a lot of trees. And some muddy swamps. And a lot of thick, green growing stuff.
Along the way we stopped and took in the natural beauty of some indecipherable trail signs that boasted the world’s longest sentences.
Common Park Tree (Jersey Plantia Grandus). Typically found along New Jersey State Park Trails, this deciduous tree can easily be identified by it’s mottled gray bark and pointed green leaves which turn red and sometimes yellow in the fall and produce white flowers in early spring, each with six petals and three sepals which open to reveal a tart smelling berry, usually in the late evening when the park is closed.
"It must be that one.” I said knowingly to my son, pointing vaguely to one of three hundred trees in front of us. “You can tell by the green leaves.”
But we learned some interesting facts. That Sphagnum Peat Moss, common to New Jersey, is absorbent and was used by the Lenape Indians to fill diapers. And that, despite its lack of hospitable nutrients, the sandy soil under our feet was still able to support a diverse and interesting array of plant life, including carnivorous plants (genus Carmela Soprano).
After a night of ghost stories by the campfire, I didn’t have to explain carnivorous plants to my son.
That’s when he informed me that he had to go to the bathroom. “Go ahead!” I said. “We are in the middle of the forest!”
There are some benefits to being a man. Unfortunately, in the woods, these benefits only accrue half the time. Or more, if you remember to bring water.
He was not of that half. And as bad a naturalist as I am, I certainly didn’t want my son sitting over a fallen Beetlebung Tree among a thriving bog of carnivorous plants, no matter how soft their two-ply petals.
“According to my estimates, we should be nearing the end of the trail.” I encouraged him.
One of the benefits in always taking the left fork is that eventually you end up where you started. And of course, the fresh hewn pine facilities rising up through a clearing just visible through the trees ahead were a pretty good sign that our pilgrimage had ended.
A few minutes later my son called from inside a clean, white State Park lavatory. “Dad, do you have any . . .” I knew exactly what was missing from his natural experience.
As a resourceful outdoorsman, I reached down into the dense underbrush and immediately came to his aid.
“How do you feel about Peat Moss?” I asked.
It will make a scary story around the campfire next year.
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