These mentions of scout camp sure bring back some Boy Scout memories—one in particular. When I was twelve, our troop’s trip to the rugged Sespe Wilderness area, 50 miles north of Los Angeles, turned out to be a much bigger adventure than we bargained for. No rain was predicted that weekend, so when we set out on the ten-mile hike from the trailhead into the river canyon, our packs didn’t include tents, only sleeping bags and other requisite gear. Arriving at the bottom of the canyon, we set up camp near the shore of Sespe Creek…actually an undammed river…and slept under the stars in only our sleeping bags.
I remember awakening not long after midnight to the feeling that someone had cut a wide hole in the side of my bag, inserted a fire hose and turned it on full blast. An unexpected storm had developed, and the torrential rain resulted in a flash flood, water rushing across our entire campsite. We had only minutes to abandon all our gear, except for a few flashlights we managed to grab, and run a hundred yards back up to the trail as the previously relatively calm “creek” turned into a raging river.
Within a half-mile of beginning our escape, it was apparent that much of the trail, the only way out, had washed away in the deluge that persisted. The left edge of the trail gave way to a 100-foot drop straight down to the river white-water coursing over jagged rocks, the right edge of the trail being against a towering rock-wall cliff. For ten miles, we literally inched our way along in the dark, our faces scraping against the cliff-face, our outstretched arms and hands clinging the best they could to the rock wall, sidestepping the entire distance along the muddy, slippery trail that was, at most, two-feet wide and as narrow as a foot in many places. As we slowly progressed upward out of the river canyon, the dizzying distance between our trail and the river below increased, and so it continued for hours through the night.
Miraculously, none of the two-dozen or so members of our troop fell that night. Finally, as the dawn broke, the trailhead and our parked cars came into sight, and everyone breathed a grateful sigh of relief. I’m sure all of us, believers and non, had silently prayed most of that night. Someone had managed to make the trip out with a few small packages of food in their jacket pockets. He shared the food as we huddled safely inside our cars, sopping, shivering and spent. Nothing ever tasted as good as those cold, soggy strawberry Pop Tarts!
