The five of us descended on Lake Delancey one afternoon to go on a camping trip we had been discussing for some time. There were the three amigos, Jason Arnold (my husband at the time), Jason Manning, and Greg Walwik. Between high school and restocking at Winn-Dixie, these guys formed a friendship that covered thousands of miles in travel to visit each other as life took them their separate ways. There were two tag-alongs on the camping trip, one was me of course, and the other was Carrie Alspaugh, Greg’s girlfriend. Greg had met Carrie while attending college in Indiana for aviation. Carrie was from small-town Sharon, Indiana. She was fun and we got along well. It was nice having another girl to hang out with in the midst of all that testosterone. She had come to Florida with Greg to visit and hang out for winter break, and we all decided to take advantage of our time together.
When we got to Lake Delancy, just a short drive from Palatka in the Ocala National Forest, we began working on setting up camp, the tent, and all of our supplies. The weather was still nice, but as the sun went down, it became much colder much quicker. Before we knew it, we could see each other’s breath.
After building our fire and chatting around it, we decided that midnight in the freezing cold would be the best time to play hide and go seek. A perimeter was designated for game play. The seeker would get the benefit of a flashlight in their search. When it came time for Carrie to do the seeking, Greg and I paired up to hide together. I was too scared to go roaming around the dark alone. At some point, Manning bowed out of the festivities for some warmth in the tent. He was the smart one, and would usually bow out when our shenanigans got out of hand.
Jason ran toward the area I had just been hiding. Carrie was counting loudly. I felt like a kid! It was so cold, and invigorating, and I was having a blast! Greg and I headed in the direction of the lake to a small wooded area thick with underbrush. In order to get out of sight, we found a large palmetto bush and layed down on our tummies right smack in the middle of it. Side by side, face down, we lay still hiding for a few minutes when Carrie made her way in our direction, flashlight dancing around near us. We sat quiet for minutes, the best hide-and-go-seek I have ever played. As the flashlight started lingering on a bush near our location, I got so nervous that we were about to be discovered when all of a sudden, we heard a blood-curdling scream! Carrie was screaming hysterically and now she was running. She was running in the other direction! Wait, what did she see?
I turned to Greg. “Greg, her light was near us. What if she saw a gator? What if we’re in a gator nest? Let’s get the hell out of here!” We scrambled to our feet and came running, all the while alarmed by Carrie’s shrieks. When we got back to the campfire, Carrie was full on sobbing into Jason Arnold’s chest. She kept mumbling through sobs, “Dead body. Dead body.” She was gasping for air. Through her gasps, she eked out, “There.. was... a dead body.” I realized that in my stealth mode, on my stomach, when she was shining her flashlight near us, that the only thing she caught with her light was my feet sticking out of that palmetto bush, face down. In the dark, in the cold, her mind immediately took her to a dead body, not that I can talk, I mean, gator nest? It took some convincing, but finally we calmed her down and got her to realize that the dead feet she saw were actually just my feet, killing it in the hide-and-seek olympics.
Once the excitement died down, we were good and tired and ready for some sleep, and we all piled into the tent. I think we tried to make a five man tent work for four people. Carrie got prime real estate, dead center, with Greg on one side and Jason on the other. Manning and I ended up on the outside, him next to Greg, and me next to my husband, Jason. The sleeping bags gave us the slightest cushion and insulation from the ground, but not much more. The blanket that lined the bottom of the tent didn’t quite stretch the entire length of the tent, so Manning and I each slept half on and half off this extra layer of thermal cushion, half of our backs on hard ground. Being on the edge of the tent and edge of the blanket, half of my body became so cold that I began shivering, and so much so that I thought I was going to wake up Jason. Carefully, and quietly, I got out of the tent and sat by the fire, a fire that had dwindled quite a bit by then. After about an hour in the dark, rocking and holding my knees close to get warm, Manning also emerged from the tent with the same idea in mind, to get warm. We exchanged a few words, but then sat by the fire in silence for a very long time. In the pitch dark of night, Manning saw that my hands were cold and I was shivering still, even by the fire, so he kindly took off his gloves and handed them to me. After a while, the fire had died down to the point of being virtually useless and it would need to be refueled to get another flame. As the campers had already cleared most of the area already for any dry branches on the ground, Manning and I headed into the woods, axe in hand where we found a sapling that looked like it could bring some relief. We took turns whacking down a tree that we hoped could keep us warm until the sun came out. Silently, we trekked back to the campfire to reignite it.
We sat in the dark by the campfire for a few hours there, in silence, because we were literally too cold to do anything else. You would think by our demeanor, we were in the middle of a war, getting some rest after a long day of battle, our faces hypnotized by the fire. One by one, the others eventually popped their heads out of the tent, snapping us out of our daze, where it would appear they actually slept like babies.
Once everyone’s fingers warmed up, Greg got out the cooking gear, and made us the biggest, best camping breakfast I’ve ever had. The friendly neighbor gave us the weather update, piping hot coffee in hand. Eighteen degrees, the coldest day of the year, and it ended up being the best camping trip of my life, only the fondest of memories lingering in my cold bones.
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