In Hiding
Once we realized that the invaders were still in the area, we gave up the idea of finding a farmhouse; we decided it would be safer to move a lot farther away from Border City, feeling that moving east would take us away from any immediate danger. Before leaving the city, we took one slight detour to the local armory where we picked up some more interesting supplies, a couple of which were professional, military level night vision goggles. We had noticed that there was less traffic in the skies at night, so using the new night vision, Bruce in his vehicle and I in mine, we took our wheels and drove to a familiar site once used for camping, at the base of a huge escarpment. The clear starry night gave us adequate illumination for the drive. It was amazing how bright things looked powered only by star light. But the going was slow. Parts of the highway were still under construction and occasionally the six lanes were narrowed to two with large cement barriers between the oncoming vehicles. There were a lot of obstacles on the highway that night, damaged cars, vans and trucks strewn about, some even turned upside down, but in spite of our leisurely speed, we completed the trip well before dawn.
My uncle Frank had worked at a summer camp back in my teen years. Camping had been a lot of fun here. There was a lot to do. But what I particularly remembered about this location was that there had been caves. We had enjoyed exploring them and hiding from one another, especially our counselors. Caverns might have been a better way to describe them. The passageways, some smaller at the openings, while others were quite wide, quickly grew to large chambers, then narrowed, and led deep under the escarpment in several places. The deeper in, the cooler the passages seemed to become.
When dawn arrived, we located four caverns in close proximity to each other. Dr. Manning required one for herself and her infirmary, Bruce didn't wish to bunk with me, which didn't hurt my feelings, yet the girls were quite content to room together. It was possible that at some distant point under the cliff that the caves linked, but if they did, it was of no concern to us now.
Our first task was to make something comfortable to sleep on inside the carved- out rooms. We made our first mattresses from materials we found in the forest. Many years before, I had built a temporary bed from piles of branches and sticks. After one night trying to sleep on one of these creations, I realized that what might work as a bed for a teen wouldn’t do the trick at my age. I really needed something with springs and padding. As I tried desperately to find a comfortable position on my pile of wood, a camping trip I had taken Lynn-Eve, just a few years after we had been married, came to mind. Whatever had convinced my young wife that the thing she called a tick would provide a comfortable bed when stretched out on the ground I didn’t know. I had tossed and turned all night. Sleep escaped me. I arose early the next morning, about 4:30, and decided to go fishing, anything to take my mind off my aching back and hips. At least the fishing had been good. Soon after that trip, we purchased our first, large, inflatable mattress. I wasn’t sleeping on a tick now, but I was going to have to find another sleeping solution.
There were many long, layered rocks lying around the foot of the escarpment, which seemed normal considering that the cliff itself was made up of sedimentary rock. With a little difficulty many of these were collected and put to good use inside the caves, as tables, benches, chairs and shelves. Outside, we built a huge brick oven, perhaps better described as a barbecue, but we hoped to be able to bake as well as cook when we got our hands on some fresh food. As it turned out, that was a long time coming.
These rock slabs were useful for another important function. We created a tall, thick wall close to the cliff, for an enclosure to protect us from attack. Little did we realize how important this would eventually become.
Two things became immediately apparent as we began preparing for our stay here. We needed a supply of water and a bathroom. At one time, both were available for the group campers, but whether or not they were still functioning was anyone’s guess. Since the actual camping area was quite removed from the caves, we investigated the area looking for a large open field. This would be the tenting area. The toilets and water would be nearby.
We soon came upon two types of bathrooms. One, the ideal as far as we were concerned, contained sinks, showers and toilets. It was situated between what I figured was the division for boys and girls camping areas. Unfortunately, this depended on a water supply that was presently nonexistent. The other drawback was the distance one would have to travel to get to them. If someone were in a hurry, which sometimes happens, particularly after drinking bad water, that could be a major problem.
The other was the pit style, but made of plastic, not wood. We found them located around the periphery of the camping area. They were either positioned over a deep cement pit-- a holding tank-- or were self contained, meaning they would have to be emptied regularly. Upon investigation they turned out to be the self-contained, which was good for us. For the time being, we decided we would take our bathroom breaks where the buildings were stationed, but soon, we would have to move these closer to our hideout. In the mean time, we would locate some small portable chemical toilets at a store and keep them in our rooms. They too would have to be emptied regularly, but would at least be private and close. Having used these before, I knew they were good in a pinch, but I also knew that they wouldn't long be popular with anyone. They didn't smell all that great after use, didn't flush well and didn't seem all that sanitary. Besides, the bowl, if you could call it that, was very shallow, so you had to watch yourself when you were using the paper so as not to get anything on your hand. With water at a premium, that was a major concern, to say nothing of the disgusting thought of fecal matter on one's hands.
Did I say a concern? There was no water at our camping site. All the water at the park was hooked up to municipal supplies. We had no idea which municipality was supplying it. Where would we fix things, assuming that we could? And, we wouldn't know how to treat the water if it needed it. For the time being, we satisfied ourselves with bottled water. We emptied the stores of gallons of water from cases of the small bottles to the large four and a half gallon bottles. Until we solved this problem, there could be no baths or showers, something that most of us normally took for granted. Doctor Manning was particularly unhappy with this situation, and rightly so, but our thirsts had to take precedence over total body cleansing for the moment. There were streams somewhere in the area, we just had to find them. Collecting and storing water would be a priority. Ideally, we needed a water tower and piping to our rooms, or if not to our rooms, then at least to a central location where we could make use of it.
I began to envision several needs for our camp, some luxury, others not. We would eventually require a distiller. It would be the only way that we could safely drink most of our water, other than what we melted and boiled from the snow or managed to catch when it rained. Large barrels would be needed to store rain water. A pickup truck would be really handy to haul a lot of the gadgets we needed. It could be used to transport the large portable toilets, too. We certainly weren’t going to drag them by hand the distance they were from our caves and they weren’t going to fit into either of the vans, even with the seats removed. Besides, we didn't want any leftovers pouring out into the inside of vehicles that we traveled in.
We needed some way to wash our clothing and dishes. It almost seemed that our location was not well thought out, but security seemed to trump all other considerations. And I believed that we were now in a secure place, so other considerations would be dealt with as we were able to tackle them. We were alive and I intended to keep us that way, problems be damned.
It also dawned on me that we would have to find a place to dispose of our trash. Paper and plastic, we could burn, but metal cans or spoiled food was another story. There weren’t many of us, but we didn’t want to have a garbage dump outside our front doors. There were important considerations about a dump site. It had to be close enough to be useful, but far enough away that we wouldn't be subject to objectionable odors. It couldn't drain into a water supply.
My wife, Lynne-Eve and I had once owned a piece of property in the eastern part of the country many years before that we used for a summer retreat. The cabin was on about an acre of land bordered on two sides by a spring fed brook. Each spring we had a neighbor plow and harrow a small part of it so that we could have a garden when we arrived. Many people along the brook had dug holes next to the stream and sunk large discarded whisky barrels into the holes up to within eight inches of the tops. Pipes then led from these barrels up to their small pump houses and from there to their homes. What struck me as my wife and I were walking along that brook one afternoon was that some of the same people who had these springs were dumping their garbage over the edge of the hill that led down to the stream, in effect polluting their own drinking supply and that of their neighbors further downstream. We too used the brook water, but we never drank it, for obvious reasons. Now that we were going to be living here at the escarpment, I didn’t want to do the same to our own supply, assuming that we found one. I made very sure that we scouted out the area carefully before assigning a location for our dump.
There was another consideration in locating the dump at a distance from the camp. We didn’t want it to attract wild animals, some of which could be very dangerous, to our homes. Enough people had been killed by bears. We didn’t need to become part of any statistics. This was just another incentive to make sure that it was far enough away.
I could see that we were going to have to assign jobs so that our lives would be a little more pleasant. Unless we took turns, I knew that this would never fly with the younger generation who were always concerned about what was fair. I had some things to learn about young people though that I would never have discovered in the high school classroom.
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