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Camp Quesadillas

Summer Camp Challenge

By Dakota RicePublished 2 years ago 10 min read
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The street stretched out straight and flat for the first time in hours. The sun blazing upon the northern islands scorched the flesh of my shoulders and neck despite the layers of sunscreen I had lathered. Sweat beaded beneath the cheap foam of my helmet, dripping to sting my eyes already watering from a morning of wind blast.

Behind me wound the ten or so campers, squeaking bicycles rolling along the sweating asphalt, over the cracked and wild roads of the San Juans we rode. The ride had been long that morning, the longest leg so far of our five day journey, packing from one campsite to the next, a quest of moral fortitude and leg strength.

The stale taste of gorp still clung to my tongue like some parasite refusing to leave its host. The sweet of chocolate chips, craisins and raisins, the dull and vaguely allergenic sting of almonds and walnuts, cashews and pecans, sea salted sunflower seeds and saccharin banana chips, a personal concoction that I’d been perfecting and mostly surviving on during those long rides throughout that summer.

Periodically throughout the day’s trek I’d squirt sun-warmed water into my mouth with one hand as I steered my creaking steed with the other. At first in an attempt to cleanse my palate from the residual gorp, and then out of a dangerous dehydrative need. Some may turn their noses up at the idea of drinking warm water, let alone warm water stolen from the hose behind a local bike shop, but there is something to drinking from a spigot or a hose that reminisces of childhood. Running through the forests of the Pacific Northwest, lapping up the hose water from our backyard as I’d seen our dog Mickey do so many times, or finding the occasional stream with clear running water I would use a crimson licorice straw to drink from.

Sure, hose water isn’t the cleanest water I’ve ever had, but it's never done me wrong, and it certainly doesn’t carry the same chemically residual taste of most tap waters. An invigorating drink, regardless of how boiling hot the water may have gotten after a long day biking in the August inferno, the cheap plastic of my bottle sun baked and softened in my grip.

My thighs still burned from the last hill crested, I had climbed it first, with the strongest and fastest of campers close in tow. Then after a quick breath I had bombed to the bottom and started once more, leaving the strong atop to join to slow below. At the time it seemed only right, I couldn’t focus all my energy on the fastest of shredders, when the weakest were usually the ones most in need of support, I knew this well. A former benchwarmer lacking in any sense of confidence, long years it had taken to grow into myself, long years I hoped to help shorten for the riders below if able. So climb the hill a second time I did, a meandering pace, speaking gentle words of encouragement to the back of the pack.

Few campers ever got off and walked their bikes when I did this, a little bit of added encouragement can go a long for a young buck. Besides, the ole hike-a-bike always ends up harder on the body than shifting into a low gear, accepting the tedious pace, and grinding away.

We reached our campsite in the early afternoon, the August heat of the north a bitter scalding that left us red faced and thirsting. The campsite's small fire pit sat along the edge of an evergreen forest, the latrine hidden in the hillside woods, overlooking where we had laid out our sleeping pads and bags. Below where we would slumber that evening a short cliff hung over the lapping surf of the Puget Sound, cold water foaming beneath us.

After a long day’s bike, hike, ski, or any other activity spent in the nobility of the outdoors, there is nothing more relaxing than sitting around the warmth of a fire. Watching the flames sparring itself in the never ending battle of orange and red, waiting in quiet solemnity for the stars to arise from their day’s sleep. But there were still hours of daylight left, so the other two councilors and I put the campers to work, gathering firewood, chopping vegetables and fruit, mixing the can of frozen lemonade that had been melting in my panier throughout the day’s ride, chopping the massive block of the cheapest American cheese camp dollars could buy and gathering water from the spigot hidden a few hundred yards away in the forest above.

After the preparations were made the councilors and I set the campers free to swim and run wild as we did the actual cooking. I’d learned early that summer to never trust a kid to cook, when half our patties had toppled from the grill to sizzle and burn in the fiery coals below during the first trip of the season.

I laid the girth of the blackened griddle above the flickering flames, letting the cast iron warm, prepping the tortillas and tossing all the chopped veggies into the pot hanging just so the waving fire brushed the rump of the kettle. We tossed off-brand taco seasoning into the cauldron of peppers, red, green and orange, mushrooms of an unremembered breed, spinach for the hell of it, half an onion, and a sprinkling of jalapenos and toreados, all chopped and diced. Had I been the sole consumer, a larger ratio of these latter peppers would have found themselves into the sizzling mix, though the palette of the young tends to disagree with the calm burning of those gently vicious peps. Paprika, salt, pepper, and a spritz of cayenne found their way into the pot as well, each unmeasured as always.

While the fixings fried in their own juices, we spread shredded cheese across soft flour tortillas having begun to warm atop the griddle, the imperfect tan circles curled up around the edges ever so slightly to let us know it was time to flip and cheese. We did this with calm efficiency, one councilor watching the tortillas warming, one ready with the cheese, and the last of us scooping veggies onto the torts, the heated American melting under and over the just below boiling sautéed vegetables.

We prepped around thirty of these, the campers trickling in to eat as the quesadillas readied, ravenous after the day’s twenty plus mile ride. Soon we found ourselves sitting around the campfire munching as dusk began to fall. The blue sky dimming to a deep indigo, the glow of the fire spreading as the evening approached.

Melted cheese burned my mouth as I took the first bite, though unyielding hunger pushed me onward and I slurped up the juices and crunched on the veggies, the flour tortillas little firmer than soft, though still malleable enough to roll in an effort to minimize lost fillings. The mix warms my belly even now, there is nothing better than a hard earned meal, despite the cheap ingredients used.

I'm of the belief it isn’t the fine quality of the food that brings out its flavor, it isn’t the ingredients, or how well it was prepared, to me a meal is about how one earns it, the journey that leads to the dinner. We could have been eating dry cereal after such a long ride and it still would have been delicious. Though I will admit, the fresh bought and locally grown ingredients we (for the most part) used sure did help.

The first quiet since lunch came then, I relished in meals, devouring our quesadillas and replenishing ourselves. Everything tastes better after it’s earned, and earn it we had. There is something no one tells you when you become a camp councilor, something that should go without saying, but until experienced I had not grasped the true breadth of how curious kids truly are. They question everything, their young minds ripe for fresh knowledge and a yearning to grow, to learn everything of their world within their grasp. The incessant questioning then falls to the councilors for answering. I tried with all my patience to answer to the best of my ability whatever and whenever asked, though after biking and camping, unshowered and running on little sleep, I found myself growing testier with each question asked throughout each trip. And so as meal time arrived, and the children contented themselves to their munching, I always found myself relishing in the silence, no matter how fleeting I knew it to be.

The ceased questioning was palatable as we ate, allowing each of us to enter into a near meditative state as we enjoyed our camp quesadillas and cool spigot water. Soon though, as the food found itself all but eaten, the campers began to stir once more, and the ever present energy of a child can only simmer for so long before needing to burst. Before we councilors let them run free again, we all hunkered down for the dishes, for if we had been foolish enough to let them postpone their chores, they would never be done, and I was loath to do their work for them.

Each camper took their plate and utensils to the salt sea to rinse along with community use dinnerware, soaking in the cool water and using the wave smoothed pebbles to remove any scraps, then trekking up the winding hill into the forest to soap and scrub in the same spigot we got our precious well water. Only once the dishes were done were they free to run wild once more.

The three of us councilors took the time to rest, the final night of our five day bikepacking adventure would soon be behind us, the last of the season. I found myself reminiscing of the ups and downs, the tumultuous first trip, the nervy second, the triumphant third, the casual fourth and of course the efficient fifth. We had over a twenty mile ride back to the ferry on the morrow, and another ten on the other side, hopping from Lopez to San Juan Island. The big day, I bid the campers get a good night’s rest, I knew I was going to.

Eventually the kids trickled back to the fire where we three adults had been idly chatting, and soon enough all had joined us. We opened the fixings for s’mores and they each in turn got to lighting mallows aflame and laughing the evening away.

I sat staring into the trees in companied solitude for long time that evening as the stars began to poke their glittering heads from the onyx abyss above, the hiss and crack of the fire the only sound beside the gentle splash of the surf churning not a hundred feet from where we sat. I relished in the moment, the gooey remnants of my last s'more still stuck between my teeth, sweet in my rehydrated mouth. The group quieted as they had with dinner while they ate again, I always took advantage of a rare hush among adolescents when given. The quiet smacking of unbathed campers munching on their burnt mallows, melted milk chocolate, toasted grahams; and the natural sounds of the pacific northwest our only music. A therapeutic resonance that I think even the least mature of the campers understood and found a serenity in. But as with all good things, they only last so long. One must take advantage of them when they arrive and let them go in peace when they pass.

“You know, trees are just nature’s stripper poles.” One of the older campers chimed in between bites, breaking the long silence of the s’mores meditation. Chilled out as all of us were, no one had been expecting a comment of that nature, but as I looked into the forest beyond the dying flames, the amber firelight dancing off the narrow trunks of Douglas fir and maple I had to admit, he wasn’t wrong.

nature
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About the Creator

Dakota Rice

Writer of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and a little Horror. When not writing I spend my time reading, skiing, hiking, mountain biking, flying general aviation aircraft, and listening to heavy metal. @dakotaricebooks

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