Camping comes in many forms, ranging from “glamping” in an RV with full air conditioning, to tent camping at a campground with the steel fire ring and a picnic table, to dry camping (not guaranteed to be dry at all) far away from prepared sites and campground restrooms and screaming kids (also not guaranteed). This pretty much covers the full spectrum of camping for most people, but as they say, “We ain’t most people.” For the more avid outdoorsmen, the slightly looney, and even the Boy Scout earning his Wilderness Survival merit badge, all of these aforementioned luxuries are just a little too much.
For my family and I, we often took it to the extreme. Honestly, we seem to have taken most everything to the extreme, so why not camping. And since Dad had taken us dry camping pretty much every time it was just our family – from hiking in the [Santa Fe National Forest] to digging into the snow drifts at Buffalo Lodge in North Dakota – taking camping to the next level was just required.
All that said, camping in bear country is not an absolute requirement. But that’s another story for another day.
So when it came to earning my Wilderness Survival merit badge in the Boy Scouts, it was a fun experience that I honestly didn’t consider to be a real challenge. I had been there and done that. What I had not done before was survival camping with my good friends, Lee and Larry Montz. These guys were next level survivalists who knew no limits. James Largin was also with us, but he sort of considered himself a loner. Little did we know.
Lee and Larry were true Alabama boys. They worked hard and they played hard. Like, I worked hard all the time, but I couldn’t keep up with these guys. One summer we were all three working at the Montz’ uncle’s farm bailing and stacking hey. These were eighty pound bails and we had to toss and stack them in a forty foot trailer being towed behind an old F-250 pickup. We would put the truck in first and just let it follow the ruts from one end of the field to the other, then one of us would run up and steer it around the other way. Meanwhile, we took turns tossing the bails onto the trailer and stacking them up higher on the trailer.
I’d been camping with Lee and Larry before too. The craziest of those experiences was when we skipped out of a big group campout in Lee’s car. It was the three of us with another kid I didn’t really know. Lee knew him. He was younger than me and the only black kid among us – relevant in a minute. Lee was driving like a mad man (not unusual). We were going about 60 mph on a curvy gravel road when Larry pointed out a pair of raccoon eyes in the woods just ahead. Lee hit the breaks and swerved into the woods. We were all screaming and laughing (nervously, to say the least). We got about a hundred feet into the woods when we hit a small-ish tree. It stopped us but didn’t destroy the car. Lee put it in reverse and made room to go around the tree. Then Larry spotted the raccoon again and off we went. This was like an old Toyota Corolla or something like that. Not meant for offroad of any kind. But here we were, mudding it and chasing a bandit through the forest. I don’t think any of us knew which direction the road was. Lee picked up speed and we suddenly went airborne. Again, not that this old Corolla would do that, but that the ground beneath us did. We didn’t quite reach terminal velocity before we hit water.
The car was sinking fast and all of us were scrambling to get out. All of us except the kid I didn’t know. He was in shock and couldn’t move. Larry said something about a snake or snakes and this kid didn’t like snakes or water. Lee and I both headed back to the car – now sunk about three feet to the bottom of a shallow creek bed – to get the boy out. Lee pulled him out kicking and screaming, and dragged him to the bank. We ended up walking back to the camp, which took all night. So yeah, camping with Lee and Larry was not typical of anything anywhere else.
On the Wilderness Survival campout, the guides dropped us off at the trail head that wasn’t a trail head at all. It was five of us. They gave us each an orange and told us they would check on us each day but we had to stay three days. We each had to build a shelter of some kind and stay in it. Before the guides left, one of the boys backed out. He said something about he wasn’t afraid of the woods, but he didn’t trust us. No worries. We could do without him.
We decided to work together and keep our shelters somewhat close, but not within eyeshot of one another, and to have a central site for gathering. Each of us wandered around a while just scouting out the area for opportune locations.
I started building a lean-to shelter. Unintentionally but providentially, it was more than a single scout would need. I used twisted vines to lash the wood poles together and had it pretty solid. Then I laid smaller sticks across those to close some of the gaps. I noticed the large leaf magnolias about a hundred yards away and decided they’d make perfect shingles for my roof. Just as I got there, Lee and Larry both arrived at the same place with about the same idea. But these giant magnolia leaves were far too high to get to.
That’s where the climbing abilities of the Montz boys came in handy. I have honestly never seen anyone who could climb like Lee and Larry Montz. From Lee chasing a raccoon to the end of a branch to Larry practically running up a pair of trees like a circus animal, I’d seen them climb. Larry led here. He scrambled up the first thirty foot tall tree that was no more than six inches in diameter, began snapping off giant magnolia leaves, and dropping them to the ground. Lee went up another one and followed suit. That was crazy enough, for me to decide I didn’t need to add to the show, but then I watched each of them leap from one swaying tree to another like Tarzan himself!
After a while I had grouped all the falling natural shingles into three even piles, and the guys came down. We each headed our way and came back for a second or third load. My lean-to was taking great shape and I was pretty pleased with it, using just my “Rambo” knife and available natural resources. I made a small Indian fire pit in the back side of my supposedly temporary shelter, and was admiring the look of it when the rain started.
If you don’t know Alabama rain, let me tell you, it is NOT a little thing to get hammered by a vertical flood of quarter-sized raindrops. Add to that the sound of giant rain drops falling on a simple shelter and it gets loud. The rain came quick and hard, but almost my entire shelter remained dry inside. The entrance and one corner got wet and there were occasional drips here and there, but I was fine! I added to the fire and kept warm.
Just as I was about to unroll my sleeping bag on the twig bed I’d made, I heard Larry come running. He plowed into my shelter like he was running from something. It was just the rain.
Larry explained that he had built his A-framed mini leaf hut against a large log because it gave good cover. What he had not considered was that his shelter was perfectly aligned in a shallow gully – fine if it doesn’t rain. He was soaked to the bone and came to my shelter for an escape. He had only been there about a minute before Lee came in. He had seen where Larry set up and knew the rain would mean danger for that spot. When Larry wasn’t there, Lee went looking to rescue him. I still don’t know what kind of shelter Lee built, but I’m sure it was more solid that mine.
James came in about an hour later. He was also soaked to the bone. His shelter has collapsed and washed away. We were all safe and in the process of drying around the little in-ground fire pit in my shelter, telling stories and having a blast. I wouldn’t let go of the fact that they’d all ended up in my shelter and I should get four Wilderness Survival merit badges. That might have been a good argument, but the next day it was Lee who fed all of us with a possum he killed with a hand made forked spear.
No, opossum is not a delicacy – even in Alabama. But for these four rednecks proving our caveman capabilities, this was good meat. It would have been better with some basic salt and pepper, but we didn’t come THAT prepared.
The second night came with a similar but shorter rain. We all worked that day to reinforce the shelter I’d built and make it more worthy of four. It was certainly sufficient, but there is no escaping the smell of four waterlogged, sweaty teen boys sleeping on a twig covered dirt floor in the woods. So we spent most of the day out away from our shelter. We made a bigger fire pit, a basic bridge to cross over the stream, and even a fish snare to catch what few fish we could. They made for good eating on the third morning.
Around noon the older scouts arrived to pick us up. Lee, Larry and I all gave our oranges back to the kid that first gave them to us. James had eaten his, but we were determined to show them that we didn’t need that freebie. Theresa had us guide them to our little shelters and other structures to show them what we’d done, and I think they were both impressed. Then they had is tear it all down. “Leave no trace” was the motto where there are no picnic tables or RV hookups.