The crowd started arriving a little after 5:30.

One by one, they pulled out their gear, waved goodbye and began congregating in the usual click groups.

The back and forth joking didn’t last long as there was work to be done. The equipment in the storage room had to be hauled out and packed in the trailer. Musty canvas tents were lined up on the asphalt parking lot.

“Who needs a tent? If you need a tent, make sure you grab one that has all the poles and stakes,” shouted the leader.

After the tents, came the kitchen equipment. Cast iron skillets, empty drinking water jugs, a package of paper plates, a few metal pots and the all important hot-pot-tongs were piled up next to the old trailer.

The older boys started to load the trailer, Making sure to evenly distribute the weight. First went the coolers, then the tents. The lighter gear was tossed on top. It wasn’t long before the blue tarp had been secured across the top.

It was now a little past 6 pm. Once again, the van would be late. A few stragglers, mostly younger boys, finally made their way to the parking lot.

The leaders huddled over an old map spread across the hood of the van.

“I think we should head through Marianna”, said the leader.

“Yeah, I’m thinking that will be the fastest way. Hey, do we have it set up to arrive late? It’s going to take awhile”, agreed the assistant.

A few head nods and a chuckle at some unheard joke and they called for the boys to load up.

Most piled in the old van.

It had once been beige, but now it looked a little pink. The words containing the church name were missing a few letters, but it was still clear to locals.

The assistant leader climbed into the driver seat.

He was in his early 50’s. An engineer who worked at a local factory. His only son was a few rows behind him. He had a round face and was balding. Always quick with a joke, he seemed to have a Mid-Western accent.

As he adjusted the seat and mirrors, he looked over at the boy in the passenger seat and smiled. This particular boy had been coming for less than a year, yet he had already made a name for himself.

What had he done?

Well, it turns out that he had a very attractive older sister. That carried a lot of weight with the older boys.

He relished his new found popularity. Up to that point, it had been a rarity in his life.

The first leg of the trip would take them down back roads through South Georgia.

The tiny convoy set off with the sun getting lower in the western sky.

The van’s air conditioner had long since stopped working, so the windows came down.

Up front, it was difficult to hear above the roar of the engine and the sound of the wind coming in the rolled down windows.

It was just as well. The assistant leader drove on in silence and the boy stared out the window, deep in thought.

This boy seemed different from the others. On trips he preferred to sit around the campfire listening to the adults talk politics. He didn’t say much but would ask a pointed question once in a while. The other boys would be off snipe hunting or playing capture the flag, while this one would stay behind.

As the van raced down back country roads, the boy continued to stare out the window.

His mind was alive with the sights and sounds of the trip. There were miles and miles of peanut, cotton and soy bean fields. The earthy smell was heavy in the air. When the van would pass through a low lying area, the air would change from muggy hot, to cool, then back to muggy hot.

Thoughts of school and girls filled his mind.

I wonder if she likes me, he thought. I mean, she did talk to me in science class.

He shrugged his shoulders, as if to answer his own question in his mind.

It had been tough at home. There was so much up in the air. This trip was going to be good for him. A chance to get away from it all.

He finally was able to break his gaze and he turned and asked, more like yelled, a question to the assistant leader driving the van.

They talked back in forth about economics, family, history and politics. The boy knew the real conversation would take place later, around the camp fire, with the leader.

He wondered if the leader would make chip beef gravy in a cast iron skillet over the fire again. He always gave the boy a hard time when it came to cooking. While the boy could cook, he often found it much easier to live on a diet of Cup-O-Noodles, Little Debbie Fudge Rounds and Coke when camping.

After a while, they both turned their attention back to looking out the window and driving.

The boy had his hand out the window making his arm go up and down depending on the pitch of his hand. He thought about the aviation class they had taken. It really was so simple how a plane could fly.

There was a glowing orange light behind the trees that lined the field along the passenger side of the van. After a few more miles, the top of the moon could be seen rising above the trees.

It was huge.

A giant orange pumpkin.

Once the entire moon had cleared the trees, the van was bathed in an orange glow. There were a few low hanging clouds that moved along the bottom of the moon.

The full moon was one of the reasons for picking this weekend for the trip. They would be arriving late in the night at the campsite and having a full moon would make it easier to set up camp.

The boy hated setting up in the dark. It wasn’t that it was hard to put the tent up, he had done it in the rain before, it was because you could never inspect the ground you were setting up on. Inevitably, there would be a pine cone or a root or a rock under the tent, right where he was sleeping.

Maybe the moon would make it easier, he thought.

It seemed like an eternity was spent looking out the window. Deep in thought.

It was amazing how little and how much you can think about with the window rolled down, the wind in your face and a giant harvest moon hanging low over the trees. Sometimes to actually think about something would ruin the moment.

The old van raced on through the night, finally arriving at the campsite.

The boys busied themselves unloading the equipment and setting up their tents.

The sounds of hammers and metal poles clanking filled the moon lit night. The white sand seemed to glow under the light of the moon. It created its own light, which was supplemented by the occasional flash light.

Then the tedious process of finding firewood began. The boys set off into the woods like a band of marauding locusts.

It wasn’t long until there was a decent pile of various sized sticks and logs. As was usual, the boy from the van built the fire.

This was something he was very good at. It was because of the pyromaniac that lurks within all boys that he had the knack for starting fires. He took two larger logs and separated them by 6 inches or so. Across the gap, he placed small twigs and sticks, just as the older boys had shown him a year earlier. After a few layers of small sticks, he began to pile on larger and larger sticks. Finally, he lit a match and started the fire.

The two leaders were satisfied. The boy had built the fire without using more than two matches, their indicator of success.

With the fire started, the boys headed out into the woods for another game of capture the flag.

The leaders pulled up folding chairs and sat around the fire, a pot of water for coffee sat on a rock, almost in the fire.

The boy sat on his cooler and listened. This was what he had been looking forward to all day.

The conversation lasted until late in the evening and did not fail to live up to expectations.

Later in his tent, the boy reflected on the evenings talk and tried to fall asleep with a full moon casting shadows and something hard poking at him from under the tent.