By Hutton Mann Shaw

My 55-year-old aunt Gab is remarkably laid back about 99% of the time. She’s one of those people who confidently lives unknowingly, making hasty, heat-of-the-moment, almost never irrational decisions. Whether it’s joining a random singing band at a restaurant, hosting a cherry pit spitting contest, or signing her name FA (favourite aunt), Gab is always teaching us to take life a little less seriously. Her philosophy, a stark change to the regimented life my family usually lives, has always been most adored by the kids. Say, we wanted to go to Dollarama to spend $3 on 15 pounds of candy, Gab was the first one we’d ask because, in all likelihood, she was thinking about doing the exact same thing.  

On this particular occasion, when I was 14, my brothers, cousins, and I had just finished our sailing lessons for the morning, and, lucky for us, Gab had come to pick us up. After some disruptive meandering in the very crowded boat-docking area and a quick snack to nourish us for our 15-minute journey, we were out of there, the 7 of us zooming home on a boat meant for 3. It didn’t matter that we had left 4 hats, 2 lifejackets, 3 water bottles and a pair of shoes; it was the weekend, and Gab had a plan. On our way home, she revealed to us that she had booked a camping site at “Graves Island” (a reassuring name) and we were all going that night. Since camping is typically a spontaneous activity which usually requires no prior planning, we were all up for the idea and immediately began thinking about the essentials: what candy and soda we were going to bring. Luckily, Gab reasoned with us, and so we quickly rearranged our priorities to encompass a special mattress to ensure that she would be comfortable throughout the night.

Only half-soaked, we arrived home from the boat ride, brains filled with brainstorms (for the night ahead), and we began the real packing. To cover ground quickly on the (hopefully similar) imaginary lists we all had in our minds, we determined that splitting up was the best course of action. Most of my brothers and cousins went to raid the cottage as my parents were out celebrating their anniversary for the night. Alternatively, my first job was to get sleeping bags from our grandparents’ house. So, as one does, I asked where their sleeping bags, which I knew they had, were. Of course, they asked what I needed the sleeping bags for, and I, very carefully, responded that we were going camping. Let me say, I did my absolute best to avoid the word ‘today,’ as I knew it may conjure up some doubts about the impending trip, but it was awfully difficult to explain why we were packing up their minivan, AT THAT VERY MOMENT, without revealing our plans for the night. Fortunately, my younger brother walked in just as I was bombarded with inquiries, and bluntly told them that we were leaving in 30 minutes. Despite the horrified look on their faces, I managed to squeeze it out of them that the sleeping bags were in the basement. After packing them up and a swift check-in with Gab, the question dodger, I moved on to the next item: getting an assortment of pots and pans from my grandparents. Not wanting to feed into their obviously irrational worries about the camping, I decided to just grab the pots without asking. Eventually, after packing my personal bag and a few enthusiastic nods from the food packers about items in the cooler, we were off to the site. By the way, to avoid having to bring a small, lightweight, battery-powered mattress pump, we opted for the more convenient option of blowing up the mattress at the house and holding it, through the windows, to the roof of the car while we slowly drove there.   

Within basically no time, we arrived at Graves Island and checked into our site. This step, which is usually not a big ordeal, only took us about an hour as we so expertly didn’t click confirm when booking the site. Anyways, after purchasing more wood than necessary, we made it to the only campsite, which was surrounded by no trees. No worries, we thought, who needs privacy when camping? Going off the vast experience we evidently had, we put up the tent next. Apparently, according to my brother, this commercial tent came with no instructions, so we put it up on our own. This actually proved to be fairly easy–we even used the 10 extra pieces that came in the box! With 2 more hours before dinner time, we decided to go for a drive to the other side of the island to find a small beach we had heard about. Unfortunately, the arrows along the road were very deceiving, and, despite our world-class directional sense, we ended up reversing into an extremely narrow, walk-and-bike-only path. For some reason, rather than just going forward 3 meters to return to the car-designated path, we figured that this was, in fact, the way to the beach, and we persevered. It was a mere 10 minutes later, and 150 meters into the very bushy path, that we deduced we were on the wrong path. By a stroke of bad luck, this misjudgment, coupled with my grandparents’ pre-existing worries about their car, had plunged Aunt Gab into an anxious state, where she no longer trusted herself to drive out. After about 50 “Jesus Murphies,” some anxious laughter, and minor shifting of blame, we were left standing in front of the car in awe of our foolishness. Thankfully, after some assurance that we would be liable, we convinced a passing senior cyclist on her afternoon ride to jerk the car (now covered in pillowcases to protect the already ruined paint) out of the path. Although we did not make it to the beach, we cautiously returned to the site for dinner.

For dinner, we planned to eat mac and cheese with hot dogs. Of course, before cooking, we had to make a fire. Our abundant supply of dry wood and newspaper made this no easy feat, yet, with some help from our neighbour, we pulled through. While my brothers and Gab gathered sticks to roast the hot dogs with, my cousin and I started boiling the water for the macaroni. It took a while, but once the water came to a subtle boil, I threw in the macaroni and set a timer for 5 minutes. Now is a good time for me to note that my Kraft dinner cooking abilities were sub-par at this point, and have since improved. Anyhow, as a simple mistake, I put the powdered cheese onto the cooked pasta before removing the water, leaving orange water, and still unflavoured pasta. I did try to stir the cheese into the pasta and the water, but it turned out that the cheese only dissolved or remained on the surface. In a final salvaging attempt, I drained the water from the pot and added 1/16th of a stick of butter (all we brought) to the pasta. I sent a brother to get more butter from the kindling store, but, bizarrely, the kindling shop did not sell salted, low-fat 250g butter sticks. It’d be fair to say the pasta was not a hit, but the marshmallow-less s’mores were a tasty dessert. It did feel like they were missing something, though.

After our dinner, we were all pretty tuckered out and moved into the tent. It happened to be really easy to transport all of the sleeping bags and coverless pillows from the car to the tent in complete darkness with all the bugs. A flashlight made this transition even smoother, but mysteriously, the bugs were attracted to the light, and many of them joined us in the tent. Once settled, we told some funny stories and reflected on our amazing day. The great thing about the minimal tree coverage of our site was that we didn’t need an alarm, as our neighbour’s military-grade flashlight woke us up at 5 am. Naturally, 15 minutes later, we left the tent to make breakfast. Walking out of that tent, we all felt something was wrong. It’s tough to say, but the garbage, once sealed nicely in a bag, now strewn everywhere, may have been the cause of our suspicions. Who knew that wild animals liked getting into garbage?!

After cleaning up, we shifted focus to making a fire for breakfast. Surprisingly, our supposedly huge amount of wood had not lasted us, and we needed to buy more. Unfortunately, when we reached the kindling store, by some miraculous coincidence, they told us this was the one day of the month with a fire ban.

That was it for us. Quicker than ever, we packed up everything and drove to the Kiwi Café for breakfast. After further inspection throughout breakfast, it became clear that it could have been a lot worse. Marvellously, we came to the conclusion that we would have done lots better with more preparation, and we should give it another try. “Well…there’s always tomorrow,” Gab said.