It snowed at the Fiddler’s Convention, and at one point my mother tried to skip a page in Snow White. I was three, but I knew Snow White, and there was no skipping a page on me. It was the first camping trip I remember. I don’t know how true memory can be at that age. In my mind we are in lines of cars along dirt, camped out in tents. Looking back, the tents had to have been somewhere else, and we must have hung out in the parking lot where the action was.

And action there was. Would you imagine lazy days at a Fiddler’s Convention? I have seen one picture so many times that the image is ingrained in my memory as if I experienced it – a man dancing down the lane – hands clapping, feet stomping, Afro waving – full Jimi Hendrix glory in a Canadian tuxedo.

We left because it started snowing, and as my mom tells it, I was sorely disappointed. I really liking bedtime stories in the tent. When you read the whole thing and didn’t try to cheat me out of a page full of Bashful and Doc, for goodness sake.

We camped a lot, state parks and the like, but the main place I remember is Stumpy Pond, which sounds like an ideal location for a Dr. Seuss book. The Kersnaggles would live there. One arrived at the boat launch at Stumpy Pond and, ideally, launched one’s boat with all gear and set out to find an island. Any island. There were many. The Edwards clan launched a canoe, complete with Doberman.

One might say it’s a labor of love to carry one’s family across a pond in a canoe to locate a deserted island.

One might also say it’s fucking crazy.

We launched in a mist, on the trip that is the most memorable to me, gear and me and my dad and my sister and Rascal the Doberman. I was at the bow and I remember singing “All I Need is a Miracle” in my head for the entire trip. The sides of the boat damn near leveled with the water. We found an island and pulled up to rocks, and a cottonmouth sunning. I jumped the cottonmouth and helped pull the canoe in, and so began our adventure. 

Everywhere we went we had a crew. I don’t remember doing things as a family of four when I was a kid – I always remember groups of us. On this trip I remember Jeff and Marie, my cousin Ariel, and a girl named Shannon. Now Shannon must have been attached to someone, and I’m assuming that two adults came with her.

I assume this because single parents were so rare in my world back then. I think I had just finished third grade. I think it would have stood out to me if Shannon’s parents were divorced. Instead, the thing that stands out is that Shannon asked me what grade I had just finished, as it was summer, and then asked me the craziest question. 

“Did you pass?” she asked.

Did I pass? Did I pass! The question was more like did I get all A’s or A+’s. I was completely clueless that other children didn’t learn the way I did. I was dumbfounded. But I recovered.

“Yes,” I said, “did you?”

And I don’t have the first clue what she said. This was the first time I had, to my knowledge, come into contact with someone who was different from me academically. With all the hullabaloo today about keeping kids’ performance levels private, I’m here to tell you I was nobody to worry about. While I remember differences being obvious in first grade, it’s clear that in third grade I was clueless. I regarded Shannon, with her wide-set, almost Fetal Alcohol Syndrome looking blue eyes, and straw straight blonde hair as a bit of a curiosity for the rest of the trip.

My parents’ other friends were present for a lot of our travels. My dad loved Jeff, and my mom loved Marie. Jeff ate chicken bones every time we barbecued, and would drink until he fell down. Marie was soft and sweet and kind, a natural mother for her husband. She gave me and my sister our first diamonds – tiny twinkling stud earrings that we wore for years.

Ariel was there. He was often along with us. I don’t remember Joan being along, just him. He loved to lead me on adventures around the island, back up the hills and into the woods. Then – poof! – he’d disappear. Right when I reached the point of hysteria that occurs when a little kid is lost in the woods, he’d jump out at me. I remember relief flooding through me.

“Why’re you crying, jerk? I’m right here.”

It was always important to man up in front of Ariel. “I was just kidding,” I’d sniffle.

I was fishing on afternoon off the banks and got a snag. I can still picture my fishing pole, it was short and silver and black, with a compact silver reel.

“I’m snagged!” I yelled back toward camp.

Nothing.

“Hello? I’m snagged!” I didn’t know how to work the line free like the adults did. But this was a time when I was invisible. I set the pole down and walked back to camp.

I grabbed Jeff and walked him back down to the bank, where he picked up the rod, worked it for a second, and began reeling it in. And I looked up, and I saw tension at the tip of the rod.

“Did, did I catch something?” I asked.

“You sure did, little girl.”

“A bream?” I knew all about bream. I caught them in the lake and we fried them up and they were bony and so not worth it

“Bigger. I think you caught yourself a large mouth bass.”

A loud mouth bass? I started jumping up and down. I’d caught a real fish! I couldn’t wait to tell my dad. He’d be so proud!

Later in the trip we had a storm. I don’t mean that it rained. I mean a storm. We were all in three person tents except for Jeff and Marie, who had a big five-person for themselves and their dog. I remember someone trying to put the fire out with an industrial sized can of baked beans when the wind kicked up. And then our tents started blowing over. Minus Shannon and her assumed family, the rest of the party ended up in the Marr tent.

The tent was for five, and even they would have been packed in Jenga-style. We managed four adults, two of whom were snoring off liquor, one tween, two girls, two dogs, and a turtle Ariel snuck in. We were most cautious about the turtle, and what bothered me most was the snoring, not the lightning. The air stank of feet and wet dog. 

We packed up to leave the next day, and I remember walking in the woods back on the mainland with Ariel and my sister and Shannon, just hiking up rocks and through underbrush, climbing a hill like the country kids that we were. Then all of the sudden Ariel grabbed my arm and shushed me. He pointed, and my eyes followed the trajectory of his finger. 

It was an owl, a huge gray and white owl about three stories up in the branches of a tree. And he was staring at us. I don’t know how I could tell, but his head was turned backwards to watch us. Just then, he turned his head away and came back around to face us on the other side. It was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen.

“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here,” Ariel whispered. “They’re mean.”

Here I’d been watching the ground for snakes. It was hard to imagine that this thing of beauty could be a danger to me. I suppose that’s one of life’s most difficult lessons to learn.

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