The Bluestocking 2022-23

Avery Southam | Grade 12 Pine Trees

I hate the way my dry sack dangles against my lanky legs, and I hate the feeling of pebbles swimming into the holes of my Crocs. It all felt the same three years ago, when my legs were a little bit shorter and my Crocs were a couple of sizes smaller. I look up at the lake and the towering pine trees that engulf the landscape, challenging the size of the sky.

As I paddle along the lake, squished between oars and lifejackets, I equally anticipate and dread the trip ahead. We’ve been paddling for a few hours. The conversation and laughter has been swallowed by the wind, so I focus my attention on the trees.

I have always marveled at the way the pine trees don’t lose their needles. In winter amongst the dead, they stand proud and green - full of life. They appear to defy age as a whole. Both unchanged and ignorant to the fact that they stick out like a sore thumb amongst other trees. At seventeen, I am aware of how we were dissimilar in this way. Concealing my blemishes and rolling my lashes in black. Whatever. At the first campsite, my bladder calls me to the thunderbox. I am taken back to the way I laughed so hard, a couple years ago, when someone explained the concept of a thunderbox to me. Looking at it now, it doesn’t seem funny at all. More, it seems disgustingly unsanitary. I remember the way I was told on the first day of trip that I needed to give my tampons to the trip leader, and how my older sister handed me my first tampon, saying, “You are a woman now.” That feels like long ago. I remember be ing confused about how I was now a woman, yet I wasn’t an adult. I didn’t know there was a difference. Now that is what makes me laugh: my own naivety. On the last full day, it becomes my turn to navigate. I get handed the map. My heart starts pounding, and, all of a sudden, I am eleven, being asked what I want for my fu ture. “How am I supposed to know what to do?”, I ask in unison with my younger self. I am met with looks of disapproval and sad smiles. I should know this by now. It’s a map, and I’m an adult next year.

On our final stretch of the route, raindrops hit the lake hard. Water floods the canoe and starts swimming into the holes of my Crocs, again. I hate this feeling. It floods into the fabric of our sacks. Shit.

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