Monday April 13, 2009
Elizabeth and I headed out for what was going to be her first backpacking trip. She's been camping with Marty and me before (they call it camping, I call it "Yogi-Bearing" Sleeping in a tent on a graded campsite with a toilet and shower less than 100 meters away). Elizabeth is going to on a canoeing / backpacking trip in June on the Minnesota / Ontario border with her youth group and though she is an experienced (and damned tough) day hiker, the logistics of sleeping/eating/cooking/ "doing your business" over the length of several days is new to her.
I had planned for about 4 days and 3 nights but gave her the option of pulling the plug during the trip if she wanted to. I'm not going to force her into doing something she doesn't want to do just because I live for it.
06:45 We leave the house for Chicot State Park , north of Ville Platte, LA. We stopped off at the McDonald's on the way out for the obligatory breakfast on the road.
09:00 We arrived at the Chicot check-in office. I had planned to aim for Campsite number 1 (closest to the South Trailhead), but as usual is was not available.
There were campsites (3,4,5) available but they were way over on the Northeast side of the the lake. I feel a little uneasy parking at the East Trail Head because last year when I hiked to it to check it out, it seemed a tad unprotected and there were a couple of guys from Deliverence hanging around. I'm not too thrilled with the prospect of being unarmed around some guys that think I have a pretty mouth.....
I chose (probably unwisely) to take us to Campsite #6 where I usually go. It's an 8 mile hike (not the best choice for Elizabeth's first backpack trip), but it was familiar to me.
09:50 We leave off from the South Trailhead. My pack weighs in at 18kg (40lbs) and Elizabeth's was 10kg (22 lbs). We stopped a couple of times to shift her weight and play with her straps to get the load to ride more comfortabley. It started off fairly cool (low 70's) and eventually warmed up to the low 80's. Not bad. Fairly early on as we were hiking, taking it slow I heard a "yelp" from Elizabeth behind me. I looked around expecting to see her ducking from a bumble-bee (the usual "yelp" culprit) and was suprised to see her tap-dancing away from a beautiful little (about 1 foot long) copperhead. The poor thing was moving very slowly in its attempt to get away from Elizabeth. In fact, despite her being startled and rattled, it elicted a chuckle from her as it attempted to slither up a very shallow grade on the trail only to slide back down. It made three attempts to make it over the little obstacle before succeeding.
What rattled Elizabeth the most is neither of us saw it. I all but stepped on it or over it because Elizabeth stayed locked in about 1 1/2 steps behind me the whole way. I'm usually pretty good about spotting stuff that might startle her, but this little bugger got right by me.
Of course for the rest of the trip, every root poking out of the trail looked serpentine (both to E and me).
We stopped frequently for E to collect herself and me to hydrate myself.Ever mindful of the poison ivy that created the lovely green border along the trail.
Though we were both hyper-vigilant about stepping on any more snakes. This didn't stop me from literally putting my right hand staff down on a small (12") Cottonmouth. Where as the Copperhead was sluggish and in avoidance mode, the Cottonmouth was a bit of a grump. It's been a long time since I've seen one's trade-mark white mouth as I've been pretty good about giving them a wide berth. But this one caught me off guard as we were both on a small bridge (about 4 feet wide). Being there wasn't enough room for both of us on that bridge and Elizabeth was literally on my back, one of us had to go. During our discussion in our discussion the snake struck at my staff a couple of times before I convinced it (shoved it off) to leave the bridge to Elizabeth and me (and they say snakes are stoopid).
Elizabeth, ever the trooper, wanted to continue on though she was very rattled by now( the warming day bringing more large bugs buzzing in her face, two snakes trying to share the trail with us, unfamilar woods).
What made it a lot more bearable was the ability to get our UTM coordinates and find ourselves on the topo map. Being able to point on a map and visualize where we were in the lush, green mass helped Elizabeth overcome the feeling of clostriphobia she was surprised to find herself experiencing.
She always enjoys our trips to Tunica Hills and the closed-in nature of the creek bottom never has caused her any problems. This was just unfamilar forest. Tunica for she and me is "home".
13:10 (1:10 p.m.) We arrived at my favorite spot at the east end of the long bridge that crosses the south part of Lake Chicot. At that point it is more swamp than lake which I love.
This bridge, less than a meter above the water, stretches for about 300 meters through cypress swamp. It is beautiful.
If you're very quiet (which we were not as I weigh a bit more than I would like and huff and puff too much to be stealthy), you can spot numerous Herons, Wood Ducks, etc.
We rested, re-filled my water bottle, snacked here for about 45 minutes before resuming our trip.Elizabeth, ever the trooper, turned down my repeated offers to turn back.
I had not told her this prior to our trip, but I had been looking forward to this day since she was born, and I was very fearful of putting pressure on her
to "enjoy" something she really didn't want. She has no obligation to live according to what I value and enjoy. Her life is her own.
I've told her this since we have returned and she assures me that she never felt pressured. I'm still leary of that though.
We were both getting pretty tired and I was falling prey to "get there-itis" so we decided to abandon our attempt to make it to campsite #6, and return home the next day. I'm not going to force her to stay out in the woods if she doesn't want to.
I chose to stop at a open area I knew about, actually an old road that the trail piggy-backs at one point for our overnight stay.(UTM coord 0569716, 3403676)
Elizabeth did a super job of clearing out the tent site (especially since this was the first time she did it) and set up the tent with some guidance and the occasional daddy-muscle to make some pole connections.
She even made sure that I was setting up the campsite with distance between the tent, food storage, and cooking areas. "Don't forget the triangle daddy" (Refering to the "Bear-muda Triangle"). Even though bears are not a frequent issue here in Louisiana, I still hang my food up to keep the raccoons, ants, and the occasional bobcat from messing with it. I sleep better not having to listen for something messing with our food.
After setting up the tent, Elizabeth took a well deserved break while I searched for water and fixed dinner.
We were in the tent and I was well on my way to sleep before it got dark.
In South Louisiana, the mosquitoes dictate when and what we do much of the time, and out in the woods, there is less room for negotiation.
You're in their home, they win, period.
I pushed her to drink more fluids when I discovered that her water bottle was still mostly full. I was on my 3rd liter. For her, the previous night's lack of sleep and dehydration just aggravated her fatigue and decreased her ability to cope with the snake-induced nerves. I blame myself for not being aware of her not drinking enough and should have checked her water bottle and intervened much earlier.
While I dozed off and on, being the protective daddy that I am, Elizabeth did a little journaling and reading. We were visited shortly after dusk by the usual oblivious armadillo.I reminded her that "if you can hear it, it most likely is not a threat".
I was worried that she wasn't going to get much sleep being that this was the first time she's been out in a small tent.
Very shortly after this picture of the giggles, I heard the reassuring sound of snoring.
She slept very well and woke up bounding the next morning, even though it was a little nippy.
A quick breakfast, breaking down camp, and we were on our way home.
Elizabeth did briefly play with the idea of staying a bit longer, but we both decided we had accomplished what we had set out to do, and it was wise to come on home.
The hike back to the car was less eventful (no snakes), and a bit cooler which kept the bugs down.We even took a detour to check out campsite #1 to see what is it about that site that makes it so popular (other than being the closest to the trailhead).
We couldn't get to it conveniently because of all the hurricane Gustav debris, and I didn't want to invest valuable energy trying to work our way through the brush.
The trip I consider a success as I got to spend time with my daughter out in the woods and didn't scare her off from the outdoors. I'm much more comfortable with the idea of her going off into the forests and lakes of Minnesota without me. She showed excellent judgment, whenever we stopped for a break, she always checked around to make sure we weren't leaving anything behind. She even successfully used one of her P-Mates although she was less than impressed.
The next time we go, I'll wait until it's cooler and the snakes and bugs go dormant, or are at least, slower and less cranky.
