The place is Sater Meadows near Brundage Ski area in scenic McCall, Idaho. My family and I (mostly just my dad and us kids) usually camp there every Independence Day. Fortunately for me, I had Driver's Ed too close to when the annual camping trip was planned, so I had hoped it was cancelled. To my reluctant surprise, the day before he planned to go, my father tells the family we are going on the camping trip. My thoughts? "Great, stuck with the whole famn damily, no showers, hot hiking, and an unfathomable amount of mosquitoes."
You may think I am going on to tell you this is not what the camping trip was like, but it was exactly this, and then some.
I don't enjoy nature, I don't think a scraggly tree with lichens clinging to it is something to behold, and to me, a river is clearly just a river, but while I was camping, something changed. First, it was the smell. The fresh, clean smell of pine trees and dead deer was just amazing (okay, so no dead deer, but hey). Then, when the fam visited the lake, I gawked at a snowcapped, crescent-peaked mountain situated between two stretches of normal mountains, with rolling hills of conifers down to the lake that splashed my toes.
The very last thing that changed my mind about the outdoors was the storm.
It had been a mildly hot day, and apparently mother nature agreed, for she started a little sprinkle to cool everything off. Then, out of thin air, came torrential bouts of rainfall. So much rain that you could not see out of the windows because of the cascading sheets of water flowing over the window. I loved it. Then it hailed ferociously, and finally, by nightfall, it became calm. I was volunteered to go shut off the generator, and once I stepped outside, I would have sworn I stepped into a nature scene from a Disney movie.
It was calm, with a slight breeze that carried the scent of clean earth and rain and rustled the meadow grass. the burbling of the nearby creek caught my attention and when I looked at it, all I could see were sparkles from the moon's shattered reflection. In a smoother part of the water, the reflection of the moon reminded me of a circle of spilled mercury floating atop the water. I then looked up to the sky to see the moon itself, and instead was mesmerized by all the little stars blinking at me. I realized that any stargazing I did in my subdivision was a joke compared to what I was taking in then. The city lights drown all the pretty little dots of light.
I'm glad I stopped being ignorant enough to appreciate my surroundings. It's too bad I realize this on what could definitely be the last camping trip with my family.
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