I consider myself to be an avid outdoorsman. Pretty much any chance I can get, I take my camping gear and head to the most secluded spot I can find. I started camping with my mother as a kid and it grew into a little bit of an obsession as I grew older. There's just something that feels so right about pitching my own tent, building my own fire, and catching my own food. Some say it's some primal instinct fueled by testosterone or whatever, but those people also eat raw liver and take steroids by the pint, so I tend to take what they say with a grain of salt. However, I can't deny that there is something deep within me that likes the power and independence that camping gives me.
There is, however, a sense of loneliness when camping alone. A sort of solemn solitude that hangs over me, tainting the mood. I only realized this when I took a gap year after highschool, camping in the woods alone for the entire year. I hadn't actually been alone while camping until then because it had always been a mother-son activity. I'd gone on some camping trips with just my friends before this, but I had never actually been alone. It was a surreal experience, putting up my own tent without anyone around to talk with or joke with, or even just to hear the sound of another person pounding their tent pegs into the dirt.
It was a cold October night when I was ready to throw in the towel on my gap year camping trip. I had come to the conclusion that camping is a group activity and there's no fun to be had unless the experience is shared. I was three months into my trip and my life had become so fucking monotonous. Day in and day out I was just waking up, catching and eating my meals then going straight to sleep. I decided that night would be my last out there, and as I slipped into my sleeping bag I felt a surge of joy at the prospect of a warm bed and meal whose guts I hadn't personally excised. I felt my lips curl into the beginnings of a smile as I drifted off to sleep. Society, here I come.
I woke up to the sound of rain pounding against my tent, complemented by a bright light, barely diffused by my tent's walls. There was someone outside of my tent with a flashlight.
"Hello?"a woman's voice called out, desperately. "Is anyone in there?" Shit, I thought to myself, what the fuck are they doing out there in the rain?
"What the hell are you doing?!" I yelled to the woman outside.
"I was camping alone and my tent blew away in the storm!" she shouted. "Can I please stay the night with you? You seem like you know what you're doing."
I shook my head. Some city girl came out here with no idea how to survive and now she expected some stranger to let her into his tent.
"Fuck that, lady, how am I supposed to know you're not a camp raider or some shit?" I called back.
"Please, sir, it's freezing out here and I don't have a tent or a sleeping bag." Every instinct told me to turn her away, but there was a nagging feeling in the back of my head that this girl wouldn't make it through the night without my help.
"FINE! Get in here quick!" I said, praying that I wasn't about to get mugged. I unlocked my tent zipper and threw open the door. The woman still had her flashlight pointed towards the tent, blinding me as she scurried in. "FUCK!" I shouted, "turn that off and shut the door!" I instructed her, blinking the spots away from my eyes. "Now! Before the water gets in the tent!" I heard a click as the girl turned off her flashlight, and then a series of zips as she struggled to close the tent. "Jesus now put this lock on there, I don't want any more visitors tonight." she did as she was told, muttering chattery, "th-th-thank you's" and "s-s-s-sorry's".
When we finally had the tent back in order I checked my watch. It was almost 1 AM. I looked back at the girl and she was curled up in a ball in the corner of my tent, shivering in her soaked clothes.
"What the hell are you doing?" I asked her, "Take those off or you might as well have stayed out there" she looked at me, confused. "Your clothes, they're sopping wet." I said. "You've gotta take those off." She still looked confused and I worried that she was going to go into shock. "Hey, hey, stay with me," I said, slowing down my tone so she could focus on my voice, "what's your name?"
"L-L-Lia." she said through chattering teeth
"Alright Lia, I'm Tony," I said, "Right now we need to get those clothes off you, okay?
"Y-y-ou want-t-t me t-t-to ge-ge-ge-t nak-k-ked??!" she stuttered, a hint of concern and fear coming through in her voice along with her confusion.
"I promise I won't do anything," I reassured her. "I'll get you a towel so you can dry off and cover up."
"N-n-o w-w-way!" Lia said, shaking her head in defiance.
"Listen to yourself," I said, losing my patience. "you sound like a shitty car engine." I glanced at the light pink night shirt and baby blue leggings that clung to her small frame and accentuated every curve of her body. The shirt clung to her otherwise bare chest, making her erect nipples very apparent. Her leggings were practically invisible, showing her underwear taking on the shape of everything underneath them. "And it's not like those are hiding much." I pointed out.
Lia scoffed at me, but it appeared as though I had convinced her, because she began removing her wet clothes. I looked away and passed her a towel as I had promised. She thanked me sheepishly as she took the towel. I turned back once she had covered herself.
I took the time to capture the rest of her appearance. She had long brown hair that fell to her shoulders in a wet heap. Her face was round, framing her chocolate eyes and small round nose. She wasn't particularly muscular but she wasn't thin either. The towel hid her breasts and torso, but her legs stuck out, smooth and shaven. It was becoming more and more apparent that she was not an outdoors woman. She was still shivering so I handed her a bunch of blankets to wrap herself up in, but she didn't take them.
"Lia, you've got to get warm." She didn't answer me. "Fuck!" I said to myself, before getting up and scooping Lia up into my arms.
"What's happening?" she mumbled faintly in protest.
"I'm putting you in my sleeping bag so you don't freeze to death." I said, doing just that. I then covered her body with blankets, crossing my fingers that it would be enough to keep her alive until morning.
I stayed up with her for several hours, anxiously tracking the shakiness of her breath as she slowly thawed. At around 4 AM Lia's breathing had smoothed out to a normal rate, so I let myself drift off to sleep.
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I awoke to the sounds of the forest as I had every day for months. For a moment it felt like the events of last night had just been a dream, but there was Lia in my sleeping bag, nested in a pile of blankets. It was almost two in the afternoon, so I had a lot of things to do before the sun set. I stepped outside to begin my daily routine, building a fire and boiling the rainwater from last night. I set Lia's clothes by the fire to dry as I made my way to the river to catch some fish to cook up.
As I came upon the river I saw the wreckage of a campsite that had not been there the other day. The entire site had been washed away into the river last night. The only evidence that there ever was a tent there was a single tent peg and a pile of rocks embedded in the mud that may have once been a shoddy attempt at a fire pit. It dawned on me that this must be Lia's campsite. She must have really never gone camping before. She practically put her tent in the river. I shook my head and began searching for anything of importance that I could take back to Lia.
After about two hours, I returned with a trout that I caught plus what little I could salvage from Lia's campsite. In the muddy riverbank, I found what every girl needs most on a camping trip: A pair of headphones caked in mud, a metal box containing baggies of granola bars, extra batteries, and tampons, and, most importantly, a large, realistic silicone dildo that vibrated and shook when a button was pressed. You know, the essentials.
As I approached the campfire, I saw that Lia was awake and warming up by the fire, covered head to toe in blankets.
"Good afternoon, sleepy head." I said, making her jump. "I brought presents," I said in a singsong voice, tossing all the goodies that I had found at her campsite to her feet, except for the dildo. "Your majesty," I said, kneeling down whilst holding up the massive length of silicone in both hands, like a knight presenting a sword to his queen. She turned beet red and snatched the dildo away from me, hiding it in her mountain of blankets.
"Thanks for last night, it was really nice of you to let me in." she said.
"Next time you go camping, make sure to bring someone along who knows what they're doing." I said, "You practically threw all your stuff into the river by pitching your tent there."
"Next time?" she said, "Why would I ever go camping again after that shit?" I looked at her with a realization that it was now my job to turn this girl back to the wonders of camping.
"Well you can't give up just cause you picked a bad spot once," I said, "There's so much more to love about camping!"
"Like what? How cold and wet it is?" she said.
"Yes! and the independence, the feeling of nature all around you, the privacy of the trees."
"Oh yeah," she said, sarcastically, "this feels so private." she motioned to her clothes, still drying on the log next to her.
"Here," I said, passing her a hoodie and sweatpants from my tent. "Your underwear should be dry, put those on." I momentarily caught a glimpse of her breasts as she thrusted her chest forward to shed the heap of blankets from her shoulders. I whipped my head around to look away. I heard her giggle.
"You know it's not the end of the world if you see my tits," she said, "you practically saw everything there was to see last night, you said it yourself."
"Force of habit I guess," I reasoned, "I usually go camping with my mom, so I've learned to turn away from things I don't wanna see." Lia laughed.
"I sure hope I don't look like your mom." she said, giggling. "I'm barely out of highschool, that would so be embarrassing if I had old lady tits."
"First off, Lia, we're the same age, so my mom is not that old. Second, please don't talk about my mom's tits ever again." I almost gagged as the words came out of my mouth, but Lia giggled again. She was a lot more talkative now that she wasn't freezing to death.
"So, Tony, you were going to explain to me the majesty of the forest?" Lia said, mockingly. I tried to think of a good activity to do, one that was fun and invigorating. Aha, chopping wood. I grabbed my ax and began chopping the pile of logs that I had been meaning to cut up for a few days.
