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| Day of The Snails by � kanee For two weeks out of every summer, we went camping with my aunt, uncle and cousins. Every week before the big camping trip we were in a whirlwind frenzy as we begged, borrowed and stole enough camping equipment to accommodate a family of seven. Many years we not only wrangled cots, tents, tarps, lanterns and Coleman cook stoves, but somehow managed to wrangle a boat, skies and lifejackets as well. Throw in the giant semi-size inner tubes and we were in camping paradise Every year, on the night before we were to leave, our front yard could be found literally covered in camping gear, clothing, and groceries to last the duration of the trip. Mom and Dad set to the challenging task of packing it in all in the boat and car and still leave enough room to haul five little kids. And there wasn�t just the normal equipment you would expect to take on a camping trip, there was also the lumber and plywood for the L-shaped, tarp covered �kitchen� my Dad would always build and the rebar and chicken wire he used to build a huge pen for the littlest ones who may be tempted to wander down to the water unaccompanied. We rarely slept a wink on that night. We would lay on our bed and peek out the window and giggle half the night as we watched them pack. We would just barely drift off to sleep when they would carry us from our bed to the car, still in our pajamas, at 4 or 5 a.m. It would take the better part of two days for Dad and my Uncle to set up the camp just the way they wanted it. When I look back on it now, I realize they worked himself half to death all in the name of having fun. But they didn�t work any harder than my Mom and Aunt who cared for nine children between them, which involved a lot of cooking, a lot of bathing with ivory soap on a rope and a lot of hand washing a lot of diapers on the rocks in the lake. Several years in a row we camped on Lake Texhoma on the Oklahoma/Texas border. Our preferred camping spot was just outside of Little City and was a beautiful, remote spot hidden amongst the blackjacks right on the water. Many a time we would go the entire two weeks and never see another soul and that is the way we liked it And on those rare occasions when a car would wander down the dirt trail to our camp, they were met with cold stares and a cocky stance from my Father and Uncle, which always sent the intruders back down the trail in reverse. My Dad would take my oldest younger brother and I on �explores� along the beach. We would walk for miles sometimes. It was on these explores that I first developed a love for fossils and anything old. I was always finding old broken shards of depression glass, dishes, old bottles, buttons or canning jars and still have a collection of old metal and porcelain canning lids that I found. With Dad�s help, I became good at knowing where would be a good place to find such treasures.. a lone rose bush or other cluster of flowers that seemed out of place would nearly always, upon further investigation, reveal an old foundation or the remnants of a chimney. And I was rarely, if ever disappointed, because if you just looked long enough, you could always find a treasure of some kind, even if it was just a rotten old wooden clothes pin. Don�t take much to thrill me. lol And I would spend hours holding them and getting a feel for who they belonged to, imagining what their lives must have been like and getting lost in a daydream of their being. More often that not though I was compelled to return the treasures to their original resting place before we came home. Dad also taught us to study the ground as we walked along, looking for animal tracks, fish bones, and fossils. It became a game to see who could find the most animal tracks and identify them (raccoon and crane were common along the shore line). That�s when I also fell in love with rocks. Sitting on the beach, watching the waves break on the rocky shore, seeing the rocks come alive when the water washed over them, listening to the music they made and watching the sun transform them again was something that I literally lived for from year to year. Dad took to making me carry an old coffee can on our explores because I weighted his pockets and mine down with rocks. But the first time I found a marine fossil embedded in the sandstone and Dad explained to me what it was, I became a hopeless fanatic, even as a very little girl. We came upon a secluded beach one day that had dozens of uniformly shaped rocks ranging in size from 1 foot in diameter to possibly 3 or 4 feet in diameter. My brother and I would jump from one to the other. I thought it was so kewl because they were all shaped just alike, even though they were different sizes. When my Dad and Uncle caught up with us they both stopped short, their mouths agape, speechless. Their reaction stopped us in our tracks. �What�s wrong, daddy!?� Dad nor my Uncle took their eyes from the huge rock beneath me. My Uncle said, �Bruce, are you seeing what I am seeing?� Dad answered, �Well, if you are looking at a beach full of giant petrified snails... then yeah, I guess I am.� �YIIIKES!!� My brother and I simultaneously jumped down, not understanding that �petrified� meant they were long since dead. lol When Dad was finally able to convince me that they really were dead and they were kind of like a fossil, but not exactly, I turned from frightened to fascinated. I lay down on one of them then and immediately went to sleep. My Uncle told me later it was because I was absorbing the slow, sluggish energy of the snail. Coming upon those snails was the definitely one of my best days ever. We returned to that beach a couple more years in a row, when we camped there, but I've not been there since I was a little girl. I�d just love to go back there now, though I doubt seriously I would ever be able to find our old camping spot again and I wonder if the snails would still be there or have they long since been carted off. Dad did bring one of the smaller ones home one year and placed it in our front garden, but it mysteriously disappeared straight away. I�d give anything to see it one more time because I sure could use some sleep. hehehe! kanee |