CAT HOWELL

Family Ties: Storytelling of an American Heritage

Chapter One – Prologue

Heading up to Big Basin Redwoods State Park

Excited we pull into our camping pitch. Our spot is nestled in a grove of spectacular Redwoods, towering above us in a majestic yet almost nurturing group. The smells are pungent and fresh, they let you know you’re in a forest. That smell of soft wood oil, the smell of Christmas trees, comfortable and familiar and evoking happy times.

The camp consists of a picnic table, a self locking food store, a large circular fire pit and a wooden cabin with a canvas roof and mesh windows along each side.

We gather the items for our camp from the back of the car distributing them to the places they will belong for our stay. Very soon with the help of our trusty cook box and two tablecloths a very welcoming field kitchen is created. The cabin with its wooden platform and pad is made up with the camp bedding we brought with us. The wood burning stove stands proudly in the corner ready to be made up for the cold autumn night.

It is one of my favourite moments when all is settled ready for a home away from home out in the wilderness. There is no one around as it is off season and we welcome the seclusion and peace. The illusion of a pioneering spirit is something that many of us modern humans enjoy, albeit for just a week or so.

Soon the food is bubbling away on the stove and two fires are being set, one in the pit and the other in the stove in the cabin, not long now the light will be fading so we need to get a move on before it gets dark.

Sitting at our huge picnic table resplendent with tablecloth we’re pleased with the field kitchen and dining table at the heart of our camp, we are ready to tuck in and so open a welcome bottle of wine to wash it down with. All is right with the world.

As we finish our meal the mist mingles in among the trees, and the forest begins to lose its definition as the twilight turns to dark grey, then suddenly blackness is here and the owls call to declare the night has begun.

And as our eyes adjust to the darkness we look up through the forest canopy to see the sky way up high a cold grey blue, the trees becoming only black silhouettes, crowding together above us as the cold rolls in to the clearing where we are camping in the small wood cabin.

We need to clean the dishes to leave the kitchen clear of food and tasty morsels for interested creatures in the forest. It is difficult to see now that the light is gone. Adjusting to life without electricity takes a little time with candles and little lamps dotted around, but it is all part of the great outdoors, adapting, managing, coping, the sense of achievement is a welcome feeling.

Comfortably full and relaxed we make our way to the fire and its welcome glow. Flames of translucent yellows flap loudly around the edges of the burning logs in the metal fire pit. The warmth is almost instantaneous as we draw our camping chairs closer for our final glass of wine before bed.

Of course no campfire would be complete without talk of ghost stories. We really begin to scare ourselves. Thankfully our dog is lying by the fire with us, he will warn us of any spooky arrivals – we hope.

The cold night begins to wrap itself around us, the fire no longer keeping us warm as embers are all that is left in the ashes.

It is time to hit the sack.

The fire in the cabin has been lit as we prepare for bed and now the potbellied stove is filled with burning logs, flames dancing and flickering, its door yawning open warming the cabin ready for the night.

We climb into the sleeping bags covered in blankets looking forward to a good sleep wrapped up cosy and warm, safe from cold shadowy darkness of the forest.

As we settle into the quiet, ready for sleep our elderly and very thin cat jumps onto the bed to find herself a warm spot, camping is a new adventure for her but she has settled in well.

A peaceful calm fills the cabin as my three companions drift into sleep, all breathing softly.

I lie awake as sleep evades me for now. The darkness in the cabin is made blacker by the contrast of the moonlit trunks of the redwoods outside the wire mesh windows.

What creatures are out there, one is known as it had presented its hallmark on our unsuspecting dog, the rank odour lingering still even after a thorough dowsing of water to rinse him, but how many unknown creatures are lurking in the dark, will they creep nearer in the hope of some human offerings.

The crushing silence is suddenly broken by haunting yells and caws of unknown birds.

The woody smell of the smoke lingers as the glowing embers in the stove in the corner become less and less in the dark of the cabin. The fading aroma of smoke with the dwindling light from the fire reminds me that there is a long cold night ahead in the forest.

My mind wanders to my ancestors, recently discovered, who settled 300 years ago in a land far from anything they knew so they could live the beliefs they had without fear of judgement and oppression. Building cabins in unknown country, sounds around them different from those that were familiar in the old country. Knowing little of the dangers they may face, as the people who came here before them had only arrived a little time ahead of them.

The boat that brought them across the vast ocean took months to get here. Men, women and children in squalid conditions crammed into the belly of the ship, rocking and writhing in time with the boat as it bangs and sways against the waves as big as houses. Some would make it but some would not, but the determination for a new life in a new world was the greatest test for those emigrants as was the human suffering that voyage inflicted on their very being.

What were those first days and nights like when they arrived in Massachusetts Bay, how could I even imagine the depth of feelings and resolve for survival there must have been. So many of my ancestors had arrived on America’s eastern shores over the first hundred years of the colonies as I have discovered, their lives all different but for one element- determination to be the champion of their own destinies working for a better life against so many odds. In our cold little cabin in the woods as I snuggle in to get warm my thoughts weave in and out of consciousness, as dreams of those pioneers, my family, become more and more real as I finally feel myself dip into sleep.