Even Girly Girls Love the Outdoors

Fourteen 8th grade girls from a DC-area suburban day camp. On a survival hike. In the woods. They had spent the morning in front of the mirrors in the campsite bathroom, their counselor said before adding: Who knew? Who knew these girly girls could come up with twenty legitimate outdoor uses for a bandana? Who knew they'd be willing to climb down a ravine along the C&O Canal trail just to reach a handful of perfectly ripe and juicy wild raspberries. And when I pulled out a large plastic bag and asked them what they could do with it if they got lost and had to spend the night along the Potomac River? Well, the counselor wanted to make a skirt with it. But one of the girls declared a debris hut would provide more useful shelter. Her dad is a backpacker, she said. Under her direction, the other girls dropped their backpacks in the dirt, and each one gathered branches and sticks.

Peeing in the woods on the hilly and thickly wooded Maryland Heights trail was another story, however. Two brave volunteers almost made it. Then I heard a scream I thought had to be a dead body, at least a half-rotten raccoon. It was a spider.

Maybe next year.

--Linda Basilicato