Book Club Camp went as well as it does every year. Tom, of course, was put in charge of the movie for Sunday night. But, instead of bringing up the huge screen and the projector, he brought up my computer monitor and his lap top and hooked them up to the generator. This way, we were hauling stuff that was more compact. Anyway, we all sat down to watch "Samuel the Lamanite" with the gang and about half way through the movie, we see 2 deer prance through the camp. A few minutes later, the deer ran through the opposite direction. In my mind, I'm thinking, hmmm, they must have gotten spooked by something. Then my mind starts to wonder, again. You know it's sometimes a curse to have such a great imagination. So, then I think of all the possibilities that it might have been, a kid, or a mountain lion. You know, it's possible, we are in the mountains.
Well, it's getting dark about now, and the movie isn't quite over, and Emma and Gracie have fallen asleep on me and Tom. So, the movie ends and Tom and I put the head lamps on our head and start to clean up. I take Gracie up to the truck and put her in her car seat and buckle her up, because we are heading out for home tonight and it is almost 10:00 pm. Tyler had scout camp the following morning, so I needed to hurry and clean up our stuff, so we could leave. I head back to camp and start to fold up the table cloths that I bring every year, and I hear something in the bushes on the other side of the creek. I looked up and saw something walking toward me with big glowing eyes. My head lamp was not as bright as I wanted it to be, so I start to walk backward towards Tom who is about 15 feet behind me. The thing was still walking toward me and in the process of trying to brighten my head lamp, I turned it off, apparently it was on the highest setting. Then I start to get a little scared and I can't scream, my voice went all shaky and stuff, like when you're in a bad dream and you can't scream and you move in slow motion. In my mind I'm thinking that this is a mountain lion and it scared the deer away. In my shaky voice, I say, "Oh my gosh, Tom, Oh my gosh," He says "what?", At first he was thinking that I had caught the table cloth on fire, because I was folding them by the citronella candles grandma had burning on the tables to get rid of the mosquito's. So, I'm trying to keep moving back and then he see's the glowing eyes too and says, "get behind me." So, by now, I realize that this thing coming up on me is very big, at least to my waist. I backed up behind Tom and I see fur and lots of it. The thought that came to mind was, "it's a wolf, and I'm going to get eaten." Then as it got closer, I realized that it was a huge German Shepherd. In my anger, because it scared me so bad, I yelled at it to get out of there and go home. It turned around and headed back the way it came. It probably doesn't even know where home is.
My heart was pounding in my throat and my knees felt like I just ran 10 miles and were shaking and felt like jello. The dog walked away, but apparently went up to the parking area where Bryce was carrying sleeping Emma to the truck. He saw the dog start walking toward him so he tells Emma to "get in the truck" and he throws her in and her shoe fell off in all the commotion. She starts to cry about her shoe and Bryce is scared half to death because of this huge dog. He reaches down and grabs her shoe and throws it in the truck and then has to close the back door to the truck before he shuts the front door, just before the dog gets to the truck.
We carried the plastic baseball bats around with us for the rest of the night, and watched for the dog, hoping that it wouldn't come back, but it did. Tom didn't even realize he had told me to get behind him. His protective instincts must have kicked in.
Go ahead and laugh all you want. I know someday, I will laugh at this too. The dog actually turned out to be nice enough, at least he never growled at anyone, and never ate any of us. But in the dark, he looked pretty scary, especially when all I could see was his glowing eyes for a while as he advanced toward me.
