Gary

“You used to camp how often?” Frank said as he and Nora caught up to them. They were having a rougher time than Gary and Benny and were breathing pretty heavily, even though they weren’t hiking through particularly rough terrain. Both he and Nora had taken off their jackets. Nora was even down to her t-shirt, with her jacket tied around her waist. When she stepped closer to him Gary could smell the heavy scent of bug repellent wafting off her.

“Are we there yet?” she asked, her face red with the effort of keeping up. That had to be a joke, since they’d started only a couple hours ago, it wasn’t even eleven, and the forest was still buzzing with early morning activity.

“Cathy is not going to be pleased with what comes back from this,” Frank noted. “She’s going to make me burn these clothes before letting me into the house”.

“Oh, come now,” Benny offered. “We’ve hardly covered much territory yet. We’re not going to reach the lake until later today, but it will be today. I see more bugs at Arby's.”

That elicited a laugh from Frank.

“Good luck,” Frank said. “I say we don’t get there ‘til tomorrow, maybe Thursday”.

“Won’t take that long,” Gary offered himself. “I haven’t gone camping for years. And this is just a walk in the woods.”

“Oh shut up,” Nora said, and then stared back at the three of them. “I wasn’t talking to any of you. You know that.”

Frank chuckled some more as they kept going, despite his claim of bug bites and back breaking discomfort.

Benny gazed ahead. Gary followed his gaze into the green.

“There we go,” he said, pointing at some haze in the distance. Gary lifted his eyes to the distant sparkling of water. At least that meant they were heading downhill. Better for Nora and Frank anyways. “That’s our goal for tonight. So keep up. I don’t want to have to carry even one of you.”

“Like you could,” Frank argued.

“At this point, I wouldn’t mind,” Nora offered.

Gary smiled at that. He could probably put her over his shoulder, even with the pack. Nora and her pack together couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty total.

They continued up the trail, and memories of camping up in Escanaba as a kid slowly returned to the surface of his thoughts. Swimming in the cold lakes, cooking smores and wieners on sticks. Singing stupid camp songs.

“Little bunny Foo-Foo,” he hummed to himself. “Picking up the field mice whack ‘em on the head…”

“Oh, god, not that one,” he heard Nora say to his left.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m not going to get any release from that song for the rest of the trip now,” she complained. “Wish I hadn’t forgotten the solar charger for my iPhone. At least I’d still have some decent old Taylor Swift to listen to.”

“I didn’t take you as a country music fan,” Gary said.

“I didn’t know there was any decent old Taylor Swift,” Benny snarked. “But I’ve got an external battery if you get desperate.”

“It’s the lyrics,” she told him. “Not the twang. And she never really had much of one anyhow. But thanks. I’m sure I’ll need it”

“I think we’re here to enjoy these,” Gary argued. “This is all you need, Nora, the music of the woods.”

“Gary,” she started. “I’m here for the triple pay. Don’t sell wilderness to me. I’ll take an actual mattress over cold ground in a heartbeat. If we were meant to for that, God wouldn’t have given us memory foam.”

“Or waterbeds,” Frank offered.

“So, says the guy who actually remembers the seventies,” she smirked. “A toilet within twenty miles would be nice as well.”