Experience Counts

Experience Counts by Gary Benton
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I can remember, a few years back, a very interesting camping trip I went on with two of my friends. We were living in New Mexico and planned to take a few days and head north, into the mountains around Taos. The weather was great, and we had been excited all week about going. As soon as Friday’s work was finished, we loaded up the car and headed out.

Of the three of us, John and myself were very experienced campers, while Jim was not. He had never spent the night in the woods in his life. All the way to the designed area Jim bombed us with questions about the great outdoors. He wanted to know about bathrooms, sleeping arrangements, and many other things. I could understand his concern and excitement, but for me it was just a hiking and camping trip.

We soon arrived at the spot we were to leave the car. Loading up our backpacks and gear we were soon walking up a meandering mountain trail. I thought our packs were lightly loaded, around forty pounds, and we were making very good time. Then, after about fifteen minutes on the trail Jim called for us to wait. Turning back, I could see he was in no shape to continue walking at that moment.

“What’s the matter, Jim?” John asked as he removed his backpack, placing it on the ground. I noticed that John had not even broken into a sweat yet.

“I am tired. This is a rough trail.” Jim stated bluntly as he threw himself down on the ground with his pack still on.

I noticed beads of sweat on the man’s forehead as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. I knew right then, our backpacking trip would not go as quickly as I had expected it to. John looked over at me with a slight grin on his face. He knew that Jim was out of shape and our trip would have to be kept at the slowest man’s pace. We paced our backpacking to the slowest person for safety reasons. We would never leave a person on the trail because they could not keep up.

John and I both knew, that while the trial had a slight upward angle, it was not really that hard. Nonetheless, we both gave a grin and decided to make the best of it. After all, there just wasn’t much we could do now except to continue on at a slower pace. After about twenty minutes we were up and moving again.

It took us over three hours to make a hike that would usually only have taken John and I a little over an hour. But, we were there and things, at least in my opinion, were looking better. John and I had camped together so often that most camp chores were not even discussed. We each just did our thing to get organized. As he constructed our shelter, I gathered the firewood, dug a fire pit, and got a small fire going. Jim, I noticed, had fallen asleep. We just let him sleep for a while.

Once the fire had been burning a while, I took out our dinner. Placing a folding grill over the deep red coals, I soon had three nice thick steaks cooking. The smell of the searing meat teased us as John placed a small loaf of French bread near the hot coals. Jim still did not move a muscle. He was obviously exhausted. In less than thirty minutes the meal was done and I jarred Jim awake.

“Oh, dinner is done?” Jim asked as we wiped the sleep from the corners of his eyes. I could still see the redness of fatigue in his eyes.

“Yea, and so is everything else.” John replied with a little contempt and sarcasm in his voice.

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