90. A Familiar Face
This memory is over 20 years old, and super foggy because I was super little, but here goes. We used to camp at this same spot every year, until we moved. Anyway, this one summer I remember when we were first pitching our tent, the nearest campers came over to say hello and pass on some advice that had been spreading across the campground.
Something about bears, and how everyone should haul their food up in the trees or something. I remember the guy offering my dad some spare rope if he needed any. All seemed fine and dandy. Mom was antsy, but dad assured her a bear wouldn’t come into a campground this busy. On night two or three, everyone was woken to a crash and the sounds of a car alarm.
I remember pressing my hand over my sister’s mouth because I was afraid that if she cried the bear would come over. Or something silly like that. There was some distant shouting, and my dad decided to investigate. So, he grabbed the tiny little skillet and his equally dis-proportioned (but in the opposite proportions) flashlight and exited the tent.
I remember rolling over because there was this little tear in the tent that I’d discovered the last time it rained. There were a lot of flashlights and people over by the bathroom, where a car’s lights were flashing. It wasn’t a bear that had been breaking into people’s cars and stealing stuff all summer. It was a crazy homeless guy who’d been hiding out in the woods.
They were actually pretty sure he was the same guy who’d tried to attack two teenage girls at one of the nearby hiking trails a few weeks prior, leading to it being closed for a time.