A Camping Story in two parts

I am here in Portland, OR, staying with a lovely lady who is housing me as I go through the Servant Teams program. She is part of a writing group, and this evening she invited me to join her and the two other ladies in attendance. They have prompts, and then take 10-12 minutes to write about the prompt. I had fun doing it, and thought I'd share with you the little stories I came up with.

Two of the prompts ended up kind of being one story for me...so here goes :)

The crisp autumn wind swayed the boughs of the pine trees above us, whispering through the arms of needles. I and my cub scouts had trekked deep into the forest for a camping expedition. All day we had explored the area, hunting berries, fishing, and hoping to be lucky enough to find a bee hive full of honey. But the last had not come through.

So here we were, five of us, gathered around our campfire which pushed the boundaries of darkness out of our little clearing. And the cub scouts were asking for a story! Our earlier failure brought a youthful escapade back to mind.

"When I was a young cub scout," I began, "I was always one to get into trouble. But I also had the best senses in my pack. I could hear the buzz of a bee's wings and follow it back to the hive better than any other cub scout! Then one day, I found the most massive hive ever. It was about 20 feet up, in the decaying stump of a lightening-scarred tree. I could hear the whine of thousands of bees inside, and I so craved the sweet treat they hid that my mouth salivated!

"I reached up as high as I could, but I had a problem. A very embarrassing problem--I was afraid of heights. I was too afraid to climb that tree and retrieve the amber nectar. But I also didn't want to leave the tree, possibly never to find such a treasure trove again! Finally, my hungry craving won out over my fear. I grabbed that tree, gripping it tight with my nails. I climbed it and scooped up a big helping of honey. And it was the most delicious thing I ever tasted!

"And that is the story of how I finally became a climbing bear!"

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So the prompt for that one was to pick one of my hostess' bear statues and put myself into the shoes of the bear, writing a story from its point of view. Here's the statue I picked:

For the second prompt, we had to somehow incorporate one of the two following ideas: "He woke to birdsong" OR "'Sh! Hear that?' 'I didn't hear anything.'" I was going to try to include both, but ran out of time too soon.... As I said, this ended up being a continuation of the previous story! :)

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Later, after I tucked my cub scouts into bed, I sat for a long time staring at the dying embers of the fire or gazing up at the starry sky. Eventually, my eyes began to feel heavy, as the cubs' had, and I lumbered a short distance to my bed of pine boughs.

The next morning, we awoke to the sounds of birdsong--the sweet whistle of cardinals, the drumming of woodpeckers, the harsh yank of Blue Jays. The best part of being a bear and going camping is that there is no tent to break down, no sleeping bags and luggage to pack away. You just wake up and, when you're ready, mosey on down the trail--if you're even following a trail.

Today we were, because we had big plans: exploring a cave that my grandpa bear had discovered nearby! The cubs, always full of energy, scampered and pranced through the trees. By the time we reached the cave site, it was mid-morning. Thankfully we had stopped by a river earlier to catch a fishy breakfast. Well, I had caught some. The cubs had just wanted to splash about, until I scolded them for scaring all the fish!

But now we were preparing to descend into the dark depths of the cave. Grandpa bear had told me how he hid here for a couple days when some man creatures came hunting for him--and I was eager to see the place that had saved him and made my existence possible!

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There's my two brief story snippets! :) Thanks for reading!