Outside the rented van, the landscape sped past. I saw the "You Are Now Leaving Pennsylvania" sign as we flashed past it, heading for the troop's annual summer camping trip to Camp Treasure Valley in Massachusetts.
"Hey. Lou. Pay attention." Mark snapped his fingers in front of my face. "Don't make me smack you. We gotta decide what merit badges we're doing."
"Ah, come on, Mark. I got a bunch of my required ones already. I'm down to the electives now."
"Yeah, well, I'm not and I still gotta choose. I'm thinking Reptile Study."
"Have fun with that. I hate snakes."
"Oh, yeah, I forgot." A wad of crumpled newspaper flew just over Mark's head and bounced off the window. Mark turned and flung it back in the direction it had come. "Hey! Knock it off! I'm watching you, Rusty!"
I leaned in toward Mark. "I think, when we get to camp, we tell Rusty he has to exchange all his Pennsylvania money for Massachusetts money."
"Both states use the same money," Mark said.
"A buck says Rusty doesn't know that."
"You're right. You take Cooking yet?"
"Couple of years ago. How about you?"
"I'm thinking about it. How about Wilderness Survival?"
"What do I have to do for that one?"
Mark looked over the handbook. "You have to go out overnight carrying only a knife, and live in the woods until morning. Build your own shelter, that kind of thing. Think you can do that?"
"Hell, I'd be asleep half the time. I might try that one."
"I actually didn't think you slept."
"And maybe I'll go for Astronomy, too. I don't have that one yet."
Another newspaper ball flew over, this time just out of reach.
"Rusty!" shouted Mark. "I swear to God!"
I stacked up the wood and held a match to the kindling, getting the fire started. The flame caught the small stuff underneath, and spread upward, beginning to ride to the sticks and bigger pieces above it. I watched as it rose, and grew, and then I sat back as it became an actual fire. Someone else could use it to cook breakfast.
Mark sat down next to me. He was wearing his maroon jacket from his little league team. I had my green denim jacket, which was ratty and beaten up, but I loved it.
"How's it going?" he asked.
"Pretty good. How 'bout you?"
"I was just listening to the radio. Tonight's the night you're going out, right?"
I nodded. "Yeah. I'll be taking my Swiss Army knife and hiking out around the lake. It's past the chapel---I might stop to climb the chapel on the way past; they made that thing just too tempting. All the guys working on the badge are gonna be spread out over like a mile of forest, so we can't team up. I'll build a shelter, sleep in it, and come back in the morning."
"Yeah, well, about that....You think they'll still make you go out if there's tornado warnings?"
".....Are there tornado warnings?"
"I heard it on the radio. The weather's gonna get bad tonight, and they say there might be a tornado."
"Seriously? Like a hundred kids a year get this merit badge, but when I try it, I get tornado warnings."
"You want me to sneak out there, bring you some supplies and stuff?"
"No, I don't want that. You stay here at camp."
"You sure? I could bring you food and a Walkman---"
"No, they're letting me take my knife, and maybe a few other things I can fit in my pockets."
"Are they gonna, like, inspect you guys?"
"I doubt it, we're not even gonna be really supervised. The counselor says he's not going because it might rain."
"Well, he's not wrong."
"No. There's tornado warnings. But he says he's going into town to watch Howard The Duck, so maybe I'm dodging a bullet there."
It was a dark and stormy night. No, really.
We'd left at around three in the afternoon. There were maybe a dozen scouts, none of the others from my troop, and we'd hiked out and around Browning Pond, into the more remote forested area. One by one, we'd gone off the trail and claimed a campsite for our own.
My site was on a hill with some huge trees around, with a small meadow, and it looked pretty much like all the rest of the forest. It was raining. It wasn't raining real hard, at least not yet, but it was wet and rainy. I couldn't tell how close I was to an actual tornado, if one was really imminent, or if this was just rain. Maybe they all looked like this.
I started by gathering supplies. The most important thing was going to be getting a shelter built. I walked around the edges of the meadow, picking up stuff I could use to live in for the night.
The nice thing about camping alone in a remote area is that there's literally nothing else to do but survive. I was in no hurry to finish the shelter, which was good for quality. I chose a tree with a Y-shaped fork maybe three or four feet up, and got to work.
I found a long, thick fallen branch and propped it into the fork of the tree. This was going to act as the center beam for my new home. Then I gathered up a lot of white pine boughs, and spread them out on the ground below it. Floor.
I had the time, and the inclination, to lavish a lot of care on this shelter as I built it. I took some branches and propped them up on each side against the center beam, spacing them all maybe six to eight inches apart, in some cases sawing them to the right size with my knife. This gave me a sort of double-wide lean-to, with a small opening on the big end.
Then came the trickiest part. I gathered up a lot of fallen sticks with leaves still on them---The biggest, flattest leaves I could find. Oak leaves were perfect, and I found a lot of fallen oak leaves in my corner of Camp Treasure Valley. I placed them carefully on my shelter, leaning them on the side supports. I began at the bottom and worked my way up to the top, which gave the leaves a shingle effect and would block out the most rain.
When I finished, I stepped back to study my new shelter. It looked pretty good. It was never going to exactly be featured on Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous, but it should keep me out of the rain until morning.
I was hungry. I walked around the meadow, picking some dandelions---Every part of a dandelion is edible. I shoved my pockets full of them and crawled into my shelter.
I looked at my watch. It was about seven-thirty. I had a long night ahead of me, but the good news was, all I had to do was stay where I was and wait it out. I leaned back against the tree, sitting inside the shelter, and sat down to eat my dandelions.
It was sometime around midnight when the tree went down.
I'd been sitting up, studying the Astronomy merit badge book that I'd brought out in a jacket pocket. There was just enough light to be able to see it by. So with nothing else to do, I'd been technically working on two merit badges at once, learning about the constellations while I ran out the clock for Wilderness Survival.
I heard it happen---A loud, prolonged crash. Scared the hell out of me. The wind had been building up, though the rain was no worse. A tree somewhere to the right of my shelter creaked, broke, and went down hard to the ground. If a tree falls in the forest.....
I crawled out of the shelter. It was maybe a hundred yards away, a big maple that had been blown down. I studied it for a while. I was really, really lucky it hadn't been closer.
The bottom of it was dead and beginning to rot---Probably why it came down. I looked it over, and then went back to the shelter. I crawled back inside; the tree I was up against looked solid enough.
I sat down with the Astronomy book again. After a moment, I took a pen out of my pocket and began to write.
"This is Lou. If I'm found dead out here...."
If anything happened to me, they'd send someone out to search when I didn't come back. And with my body, they'd find this note.
"I don't have all that much to leave behind, but what I do have, I want to give away. To Mark I leave my Boy Scout Fieldbook. My dad gave it to me, and it's taught me a lot of good stuff. I want you to learn from it the way I have."
I was out here, alone, in the forest. And it was a dangerous situation. If anything happened, I was on my own.
"To Kline, I leave my backpack and my whip. Use them on adventures."
And it wasn't just this one individual camping trip. Since my suicide attempt in January, I'd become an adventurer. I'd been doing dangerous things. And that led to some scary situations where anything could happen.
I could die.
"To Misty Jo, I leave my Swiss Army Knife. It's been helpful to me, and I hope it's just as helpful to you as you grow up."
And I signed it, this weird little impromptu last will and testament, scribbled in the back of a merit badge book in the middle of a forest in a tornado. I put it in my jacket pocket, where it would eventually be found if something happened to me.
It was one in the morning.
I opened my eyes around four AM. I was cold and stiff, but otherwise okay. The rain had slowed down considerably. I could hear the water still dripping off the trees, but the storm and wind had died down.
Once again I crawled from the shelter, standing up and looking around. The tornado appeared to have passed.
I looked up. I could see the stars now. Just a little bit of pink light was beginning to creep in at the horizon as morning approached. I could pick out some of the constellations I'd seen in my Astronomy book.
I stood there a long moment, thinking. Looking out over the meadow. The green and black and pink, a beautiful scene, really, in spite of all I'd gone through out there. This spot, this place that I'd somehow ended up in, so far from my home. The chain of events, throughout my whole life, that had led to this---Me standing in a field after a tornado, watching the sun rise.
As the sun came up, I knocked down the shelter and cleaned up any trace that I'd been there.
By sunrise, I was heading back.
The troop was eating breakfast when I trudged back into camp. Mark was at the picnic table, and I sat down next to him. There was oatmeal.
"You made it," he said.
I nodded. "I'm home."
"How'd it go?"
"Not like I pictured." I spooned some oatmeal into a bowl. There was toast, too, burned over the campfire. I looked for a knife to spread the butter with, didn't see one, and pulled out my Swiss Army knife. I slipped the Astronomy book out of my pocket, and then opened it and glanced at what I'd written on the back page.
"What's that?"
I closed the book.
"Just something I needed ti write down. A few thoughts I had to get down on paper."
"Ah, Lou," said Mark dismissively. "Don't sweat it. That kind of thing can always wait until later."
I smiled.
"Yeah," I said. "Yesterday I thought that, too."
