Welcome to Doak Campbell

Well, yes, another post from me. I think my new life motto is “You can never post too much.” It’s so true. I mean think of all the stuff you would have never known about me had I not posted!

Well, on to my subject for this post. It is November. Today, I saw the first holiday commercial. Praise the Lord, Christmas is here! It is my most favorite holiday! I love getting a tree, decorating it, and of course, going to Tennessee to see my cousins and aunt and uncle.

They live in a small town of only a few hundred people called Middleton, Tennessee. To show you how small it is, they only have one stop light and the closest Walmart is 15 miles away. (It used to be 45, but they just put one in close-Praise the Lord!)

Anyway, what makes this trip so special? It’s because they live on a bunch of land and they have their own pond and their own woods. We, as kids, go out exploring in their woods each year. There are 7 of us kids (now that my brother got married) and we usually bundle up and trek out into the wilderness with only walking sticks to arm us. (Except for last year when my brother brought along my grandpa’s hatchet. Yeah, pretty crazy.)

Anyway, one year we found an old house with newspapers from WWII and letters from a soldier to his parents. It was pretty cool! But this last year was by far the most exciting!

We planned on getting up early that morning and making it out in the woods by sun-up, but as kids on vacation, we didn’t get up till later. We got up, bundled up, then packed a bag with lunches for us all. Then we started our trek.

We headed over the barbed wire fence, through the first set of woods, over the fallen log bridge (none of this is made up, honest.), across the field, and into the woods. It was tough hiking through them at first until we found the old road. Then we followed the path until we found the familiar break in the woods. We headed right through the woods once again until we found the lake.

This lake, which we named Horseshoe Lake, was beautiful. The woods pealed back and you could see the lake for miles. On the opposite side of the lake was a cabin with a car parked in front of it and smoke coming from the chimney.

We turned to the right and hiked a little way back into the woods to find a good clearing where we could eat our lunch. We found one and sat for a while to eat. The wind was howling through the trees and was making a faint whispering sound. We were all on edge and were ready to keep moving. Instead of following the trail around the lake, we took off further into the woods where we had eaten lunch and explored land we had never been on.

We came to a clearing and decided to cross it. We soon noticed the many deer stands on either side of the clearing and came to the conclusion that we had entered someone’s hunting grounds. We stopped but then decided to press on since no one was in site. As we followed the edge of the woods closely, we came to a fence.

On the other side of the fence was what looked like a farm. Then we noticed the white trucks. There were 4 or 5 white trucks who were coming our way. They seemed to be headed right at us very quickly. We turned and began to run. Whatever the cost, whatever the pain, we were going to make it back across the clearing to the woods before they caught us on their land.

As we entered my cousins’ woods once again, we breathed a sigh of relief. We finished our hiking and then headed back to the house for a fun time of storytelling. Man, what a day that had been. We will never forget that day.

And with Christmas time coming soon and with our plans to go back to TN again, we will probably go back and visit our friends in the white trucks again.

We are, after all, just kids who never learn