“Sponsored by Coleman and hosted by the Outdoor
Blogger Network, this is
my submission for the Coleman
Camping Heritage Essay Contest.” It's a little snippet into my personal life before I was married and had my own children. Does it bring back any memories for you? Anyone else depend on Kerosine Coleman lanterns for hours of game-playing?
I grew up in Alaska with a dad who was trying
to always get away from the phone.
He worked on-call as a doctor, and the phone meant having to leave his
family and/or get up in the middle of the night (often working throughout the
night and next day too.)
Therefore, we spent a lot of time at our remote cabin on his days off.
“Cabin” to some people means electricity,
running water, and no chores. To
us it meant lighting our Coleman lanterns in the winter for light (in the
summer it never got dark enough to NEED lights), working to clear victims of
the Spruce Bark Beetle for firewood (we literally had an entire shed full) and
going through the endless task of sorting trinkets left over from previous
owners. The cabin (still) has
character, and plenty of it!
The only access to it (besides bush plane) is via snowmachine (the “correct”
term for ‘snowmobile’ if you are from Alaska) in the winter and hiking then
boating across the lake in the summer.
