This is a Beautiful Spot! (Or Is it?)
Dear Grands, Campsite 13 was big. There was a picnic table and a fire pit straight ahead, to the right a steep cliff, at the bottom, a pretty little stream. To the left were other campsites, almost all having trailers, made to withstand disasters. Only one site, not counting ours, had a tent. Two young men sat on the hood of their car, whittling with Bowie knives, their hound dogs sprawled out nearby.
Beyond the fire pit, was a forest, a deep, dense forest. A narrow path led into the forest… into the unknown.
As Grandma cooked burgers she said, “This campsite is a mess.”
“Yes, people should be tidier,” I agreed, feet up after finally erecting our little orange and green tent. (It fell over and trapped me inside only two times. Okay… three.)
“Well,” Grandma said, putting a hundred syllables into the single syllable word. (Do you know what a clue is? You may have figured out that Grandma was giving me one. Good for you, it took me a while.) Anyhow, using a big garbage bag, I picked up all the debris that surrounded us… the plastic, the wrappers, the empty cartons that had been licked out. And the bones… chewed up rib bones, chicken bones torn apart, other animal bones (at least I was pretty sure they were animal bones).
I thought I was finished but Grandma asked ‘what about the rest of the garbage’ which lay along the path that led into the deep, dense forest… into the unknown… the wild unknown. I took that path, all by myself, picking up plastic and wrappers and bones… a million bones. Chewed up bones. Crushed bones. Annihilated bones. It was a yucky job. Soon, the path narrowed until I was so far into the deep, dark, wild unknown that when I turned around, I could no longer see our orange and green tent.
Somehow I made it out alive. I was never so happy to see Grandma. And she wasn’t even wearing her orange and green bikini.
“This is a beautiful spot,” she said.
“Let’s eat before it’s too late,” I said, though I should have said, “Let’s get out of here before it’s too late.”
We’ll talk again soon, Grandpa.
(Here’s a picture of me going into the unknown.)
