I'll Never Do That Again. Ever
Taylor Rice
11-05-19
Writer’s Workshop
It was the end of November; the trees were done turning yellowish-orange and had started to turn brown and fall off. It was time for the school camping trip. This may sound like a lot of work, taking an entire elementary school camping, but the entire elementary school was only twenty kids. I was in the fourth grade.
Our class had been planning this field trip for weeks: what food we were going to bring, who was going to chaperone, and what activities there were going to be. The school sent out a packing list, and we packed bins of materials for the ‘Learning Experience’ of the trip, even though I don’t remember actually learning anything other than “wasps are dangerous.”
We brought our bags to school the morning of the trip, blocking half the classroom with piles of pillows and sleeping bags. I’d never realized how much stuff we’d need to survive one night in the “wild.” The parents who were signed up to be chaperones packed all the bags into their cars, then stuffed in the kids.
The ride was long, and it felt even longer because the chaperone I was assigned to had a black minivan with broken air conditioning. Everyone was complaining and the additional body heat of the seven kids squashed together made it unbearable.
When we got to the campsite, everyone tumbled out of the cars, then realized it was even hotter outside. It was around ninety-five degrees, and everyone was really grumpy. There was no wind, so the blistering heat felt even worse than it already was. The trees’ leaves were brown, falling off and scattering around, making it look as if the day’s heat itself was causing the leaves to burn.
We pulled all the stuff out of the cars and sorted ourselves into our tent groups, working together to miserably set up the tents. Hammering the stakes into the ground was especially hard because the ground was as solid as a rock from the lack of rain. We tried to hammer the stakes into the ground for almost twenty minutes until one of the teachers came and drove all the stakes into the ground with only one or two mallet strokes each. Me and my tent mates felt really bad about our pathetic effort after that show.
When all the kids’ tents were set up, the teachers called a group meeting to discuss the following activities. We all sat in a circle on the ground while the teachers told us about the activities.
“We will split into two groups: the archery group, and the help-around-camp group,” the teacher explained. “The archery group will meet at the fallen log. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know how to do archery, that’s what this activity is for. The help-around-camp group will find kindling for the fire and set up the kitchen supplies.”
The class instantly divided into thirds. The seven kids that wanted to do archery, including me, the six kids that wanted to help around camp, and the seven kids that “needed to go to the bathroom.” Later, it became apparent that all they wanted to do was explore, but the teachers let the seven of them go anyway.
As it was recounted by the seven children who adventured to the “bathroom” these are the events that followed:
The eldest girl in the group, Sofia, told the other girls that they were going to go exploring. Some of the younger ones, Malaika and Stella, thought that this wasn’t the best idea, but they got pressured into going anyways. The girls started off walking down a path, one that was a complete loop back to the campsite. If they had followed it all the way, the following incident may have been avoided.
“Ooh, look!” is what I imagine Chloe said, being the curious girl she was. “It’s a side path.”
“Cool!” Stella would have responded, nudging Malaika, her best friend. “Let’s go down there!”
“Yes!” Malaika agreed.
“Alright, but be careful. I’ll go first.” Sofia shoved in front of the younger girls and marched off down the path that was not a path at all, just a part in the bushes, possibly made by deer.
The path levelled out at the edge of a steep ravine filled with grass and good climbing trees. The group of girls hesitantly walked through the grass down the steep slope and to the bottom of the ravine. The grass was not growing through soft black dirt, as they had thought, it was growing through crumbly, dusty, tan rocks, hard and crunching below their feet.
At the bottom of the ravine, the girls finally realized just how steep the ravine was: so steep it might take a climbing rope to ascend. They were worried then, and contemplated blowing their safety whistles to get the adults to rescue them.
“We’ll get in really big trouble,” said Sula, the sensible one. She had tried to convince the others not to go on this adventure, then not to climb down the ravine. She had been overruled.
“That’s true,” Sophia said. “Let’s climb the trees, then we can head back to the campsite!” Sophia was the only one who liked climbing trees, so the others tried to climb the ravine while she was climbing the tallest tree.
“Hey guys, look at me!” Sophia called, her blue water bottle swinging from her hand. “Come on up! I-” The water bottle’s strap slipped from in between her fingers. She made a grab for it, almost falling out of the tree in the process.
The water bottle fell in a perfect line straight onto a mound of papery-looking earth protruding from the ground. It made a crunching sound, like biting into a flaky pastry. A cloud of insects rose up from the crushed hive, swarming around the small ravine and stinging everyone in sight. Sophia was the closest to the hive, but high up in the tree, so she only got stung a couple of times. The younger girls got stung many, many times. All of them were shrieking and running around trying to bat the wasps away with their hands.
Back in the campsite, the adults were starting to notice the screaming. “That’s not I’m-having-so-much-fun screams.” One of the teachers said worriedly. The adults decided to leave two of the chaperones at the campsite with us, and the other eight teachers and parents went rushing off towards the screaming kids.
The archery kids were freaking out because, in our tiny fourth-grade minds, we thought the other kids were going to die. The two parents staying with us were trying to get us to calm down, but it didn’t really work.
The adults back at the bee site had a really hard time getting the screaming kids to follow their instructions because when kids are scared, they tend to act according to instinct, and that instinct is not to stay put and listen to adults.
They eventually got the screaming kids up the steep ravine and back to the campsite. They told the not-stung kids to stay out of the way because the wasps were like burrs, sticking to the kids' clothes and hair and stinging repeatedly. The teachers had to ask several kids to remove clothing because there were too many wasps attached to it. The teachers got stung almost as much as the kids when they were trying to save them, so everyone was miserable.
The teachers called all the kids’ parents, but they couldn’t really do anything, because by the time the parents arrived it would practically be tomorrow. The teachers sent the kids to go change clothes and calm down while the chaperones made dinner.
When the main teacher, Ms. Kristi, went looking for the cheese to put in the salad and on the pizza, she realized we’d left all the dairy products back at school in the refrigerator. So we had cheeseless pizza for dinner (basically bread) and eggless, milkless pancakes for breakfast the next day (Edible rocks).
Overall, it was the worst camping trip I’ve ever been on, and the next day, back at home, I was SO glad it was over. Even though I got to take home all the hundreds of chocolate bars left over from s’ mores. So I guess it wasn’t the worst camping trip ever.
