Camp Gratitude
by Kaye Miller
after Ross Gay
i remember July before the wildfires, when we nestled on the porch beneath clothesline, the dripping of dishrags, and tucked ourselves small between grill and propane tank, waiting for that first tin-roof chime of rain. our team of fifteen, before the campers came, our anticipation, o’ sweet pinewood porch, watching the cap of clouds on the horizon. a ghostly pillar of cumulonimbus, slow gliding into camp.
later, we would collect rainwater off leaky gutters, wobbling basins set aside for this weeks’ showers, dishes, water fights, the rain cooling us with relief that the water tank wouldn’t run dry yet. and eventually a thunderclap would drive us indoors for favourite evenings by wood stove, gas-lantern puzzles or secrets, late-night three-ingredient nachos, and Tess’s acoustic guitar, if we ever replaced the high e string.
i am thankful for i have stood at the belly of a valley of blues and violets and sages of tallgrass prairie and walked a straight line down no paved trail to find my feet landing steady on lichens, luminous frayed oranges and fluorescent greens of algae and fungus, as it hundred-year chews away at granite.
for i have shortened my reins, risen in my stirrups and clucked, and Jericho rose to a long-stepped canter, covering the field in five strides. the dipping sun crested the mountains gold, caught in every forked tongue of crimson paintbrush, the white knuckles of yarrow, whimsy tufts of prairie smoke, and powder blue forget-me-nots.
i remember a herd of counsellors who instead of bear spray, reached for cameras, and hot-footed down past the arts-and-crafts shack to catch a glimpse of a black bear. he padded soft-footed down the beaten path, nose to the earth, and they laughed in gratitude and joy at their first bear sightings. upon hearing our celebration, the animal lifted its nose to the wind and took off into the aspens two legs at a time.
and thank you, my young friends, one summer, for rising again so late past your bedtime, and shuffling through the door in pyjamas, slinging your dim-lit, double-a flashlights, sleeping bags wrapped around your shoulders. you waited as i smoothed out a tarp by the picnic tables, over grass cold and rough with pine, dewed in late-night air, and you laid shoulder-to-shoulder, eight stargazers, zipped up to your chins, to watch the stars, the falling Perseids. you traced my finger as i studded the sky with constellations. sleepy eyed and smiling, you threw your silent wishes in the air for the bowing stars to catch, like how bats swoop for mosquitos on Clearwater County nights like these.
o’ mornings after late-night campfires, still shaking ash from our hair, o’ creek swimming, 11 p.m. hooting and hollering, the sting of the glacier melt sharp enough that we could see every star and follow the rise and hum of the milky way, so bright we might imagine it thrumming through our veins.
and thank you, tiger salamander beneath the dock, rising from the silt to sip the air before tail-flicking back to the bottom of the lake. thank you, red fox, your green path traced in silver dew across the field in the morning, thank you whisky-jack perched atop a lodgepole pine.
thank you, doe with twin fawns, for taking such good care that we could watch your babies grow with the summer.
o’ spider, spared for your service of mosquito management! o’ leech plucked from the gunwale of a red tandem canoe! and set upon the arm of a twelve-year-old girl with glee, looked over by her bunkmates and cared for and never salted, plucked safe and returned to the lake before dinner time. o’ the endless weirds of twelve-year-old girls!
and thank you, my bunkmates from long ago, i remember the smell of melting paracord from the burn bracelets we made. a little acrid, a little sweet. we wore ours for years, beneath gloves and raincoats and parkas, proud to return a few summers more, brandished with pride on our wrists, the memories they held of woodsmoke and grease on our lips, lake water in our shoes, those summers irretrievable.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Kaye Miller grew up on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot, Îyâxe Nakoda, and Tsuut’ina nations in Calgary, Alberta. They love dinner parties, giving book recommendations, and collecting beach glass. Their work can be found in Plenitude, The New Quarterly, The Ex-Puritan, The Malahat Review, and elsewhere. They hold an MFA from the University of Guelph.