Everything I needed to know I learned on summer break
IN the mid-’90s, my close friend Joel Pomerantz and I were both in our early 20s and home visiting our parents in Cleveland, Ohio, during bein hazmanim. We had both participated in the frum Boy Scout troop Taylor Road Synagogue in Cleveland Heights had hosted in the ’80s — in fact, it was a huge part of our childhoods — and we were pretty seasoned outdoorsmen.
On previous backpacking trips, Joel and I had learned plenty of lessons the hard way. They related to proper equipment (i.e., always make sure our rain ponchos are readily accessible, and not buried deep inside our backpacks); water filtration (i.e., invest in a good portable water filtration pump that can purify stream water — thus eliminating the need to haul three days’ worth of drinking water in our packs); and dealing with rain (i.e., just because it might be pouring now, doesn’t mean the rain will continue indefinitely).
Once when we were stuck out in the woods during a massive downpour, we figured it would be the perfect time to take much-needed showers, so we retrieved small bars of soap from our packs and got all lathered up. Just then, it stopped raining, and we had to run around looking for muddy puddles to wash the soap off our just-cleaned heads and faces.
That summer in the mid-’90s, we planned for a three-day backpacking trip in the nearby Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area (now officially a national park), and because we’d done this many times before, we were well-prepared. I remember the heady sense of excitement we felt as my father dropped us off with all of our gear near our trailhead. We reviewed our maps, hoisted our overstuffed packs onto our backs, and set out.
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