I would just like to share with you, my first memory of nature.

            

                          My earliest experience with nature. I don’t remember my earliest experience with nature. I think the earliest I remember is going camping with my mom and dad and my cousins, aunties and uncles. We camped at Babine Lake that year and it was my cousins’ and my first time there. We climbed on rocks and trees the first day, trying to explore as much of this exciting  “new world” as possible. 

            I remember the one tree, right beside the water; just one of its thick branches was hanging sideways about five feet over the rocky beach. My cousins and I, as little kids do, just HAD to explore it. We climbed the tree and shimmied our way down the branch until we were all sitting on its end. The branch was bouncy and we giggled as we sat there making it move up and down. We got bored of that quickly and left the branch for another day. 

            Getting back to camp we found that our fathers had made a “toilet” out of a bucket shoved into a hole in the ground surrounded by tarps held up by tall branches that they had also stuck in the ground. 

            On the third day I remember my uncle Kyle saying “we are going on an adventure today.” What he meant by that was that we were going to the small rocky island a little ways off shore from our camp. The whole family piled into a little car topper and we headed to the island. On the island was an abandoned mine. My cousins and I were ecstatic and practically flew into the cave, leaving our parents and the outside world behind. Once we were through the wooden barriers, we saw spiders, beetles and other creepy crawlies scuttling about. That’s when my uncle Kyle, the toughest man I know, came in and saw the spiders… he screeched like a banshee and, with a horrified look on is face, sprinted out of the cave faster than I ever thought a man that size could run. 

            That night, when we got back to camp, we played with glow sticks and had a fire and did all that “happy family camping” stuff. I haven’t been to Babine Lake ever since, but I still remember that trip that was so much fun as a small child with a huge imagination.