As a youth up to my early teens, my family would go camping from May (Victoria weekend) until mid-October (Canadian Thanksgiving).  I would literally go for a quick swim about a week after the ice had melted…just to impress my father and he and my sister would take down the tent often in the snow in October.

Every weekend my parents, sister and I would ride up to Isle le Motte, Vermont (on Champlain Lake) to spend a weekend in the fresh air.  Friday night when we arrived, would consist of eating split pea soup before going to bed and Saturday we would often have T-bone steak with huge wieners and baked potatoes on the BBQ for dinner.

Thankfully the family that camped next door were our good friends (more like our second family) from our hometown and had three children, the two eldest were teens; so the parents would sit around a campfire and do adult stuff like tells jokes and drink lots of Bloody Mary’s except for my dad who was sober since I was seven and the teens would listen to The Rolling Stones and the Beatles on our turntable….yes, there was electricity that served for our entertainment so we did not whine to our parents we were bored; electricity was only for tacky lanterns lit around the campsite and our record player.

Before starting the fire however, my father would combine the fixings to make home-baked beans, put it all in an earthenware pot and he had purchased a tiny square oven (looked just like a tin box) and dig it in the centre of the ground beneath the bonfire. The beans baked all night long .

New dawn whispers
Sunday breakfast simmers
neath amber ashes

© Tournesol’15

Carpe Diem “Dawn”