Campers Lorne Wilson   © Copyright 2026 by Lorne Wilson

Dawn. Photo courtesy of the author.

I hung around outside our homemade trailer, which we had camped across the road from a lake. I wandered around the yard, exploring, and would have gone to the lake across the road to look, but I wasn’t allowed. If I went there, I could drown, my mother had said. I argued I wouldn’t go in the water. She still said no. Instead, I checked the shed for mice, where I’d found some before. I poked holes in the grass with a stick and then wandered out onto the road.

I thought I saw something moving far down the gravel road. For a second, I wondered if it could be a mirage. On very hot prairie days, you could see mirages in the distance on a road. The morning was too cool for that. Then, I thought my eyes might be playing tricks on me. I kept looking until certain of movement too slow for a car.

Could it be a team of horses? Almost no one used horses for travelling anymore, except in the winter, sometimes, if it snowed too much over a day or two. I stared down the road until I could see it was a team of horses. Their bobbing heads gave them away. They came closer and closer, but I wasn’t going to hang around and watch a team of horses plod its way down the road. I went to see if anyone was up.

When I came back, the team had closed half the distance. Two people rode on the wagon seat. At first, something appeared odd about them. Their clothes looked different. I couldn’t see why at that distance. Mom called for breakfast, so I went to the trailer to eat.

By the time I returned, the team had plodded up to our yard. Now that the wagon was close, I could see an American Indian man and woman sitting on the driver’s seat. Nowadays, we’re told not to call them Indians, but some call themselves Indians, so how do you reconcile that?

They sat in an old wagon, the type with high board sides and wooden wheels wrapped in iron. A tarp covered the box behind them. The man wore an open-crowned Stetson with a feather sticking out of its headband. Braids hung alongside his face. The woman wore braids that hung over a shawl around her shoulders.

They turned onto the driveway to the lake and steered back to the grass clearing between the road’s ditch and some poplar trees. They wagon stopped, and they climbed down. The man unhitched the team. Not very exciting; I’d seen that before. But then he unharnessed the horses and hobbled them. I’d never seen horses hobbled before. He turned them loose. I wondered, wouldn’t the horses run away? One tried running a few steps, but his front legs stumbled. After that, they just wandered around eating the grass.

Mother called. She wanted firewood. Why couldn’t my brother do that? He always got a break. When I got that chore done, I went back to the road.

Wow! A teepee stood near the poplars. In awe, I watched a man, dressed like a warrior, stand up from behind the tent flap. He had a black vest over his plaid shirt, and a long whitish breechclout hung over his jeans. He cradled a rifle in the crook of his left arm. My chest tightened like when you hear something rustling in the dark. I’d never seen an Indian dressed like this before. The few I had seen dressed like us. He looked like someone in a television show I had seen at my aunt’s a year ago, or maybe in a comic book.

Mom called again. This time, I had to get water. We camped only for the summer, so we used the lake water. She handed me the steel pail, and I trudged across the road, down the gravel driveway to the lakeshore.

As I approached the shore, I saw a group of brown kids. Where did they come from? They were all chattering in their language and squatting, looking at bugs or minnows in the water until they saw me. Someone muttered, “White man.” Then they fell silent and stared at me. It felt eerie, not scary, but not welcoming either.

They surrounded my favourite watering spot, so I walked past, filled the pail and set it on the shore. I hesitated to walk past them again, so I wandered away looking for fish. I liked this lake because sometimes I could see big fish. Later, this was where I learned to swim. I learned by accident when I was by myself, and the rubber tube someone left behind, and I wasn’t supposed to use, deflated in deep water. That was scary until I dog-paddled like mad to stay afloat and get to shallow water. For a while after that, I stopped swimming out into deep water.

As I had wandered away down the beach, two of the kids picked up my pail. They walked away with it. Now, I was frightened. What do I do now?

I walked back to tell Mom. She said to go back and get that pail. Well, I felt afraid of them and afraid of her. I went back. The kids crowded around the pail. It now had minnows in it. Settling my fear, I walked up to the pail, picked it up, and walked away. I felt relief as I got away with them staring after me.

Mom asked me what the minnows were doing in the water. I explained. She said to go back and get another pail. I said no, she could go get it. Why, she said. Those kids scared me. OK, she said, the water had to be boiled anyway, then she fished the minnows out of the water.

I returned to the road to see the teepee. The horses were hobbling around eating grass. I got called back for supper. When I returned at dusk, the Indian family was sitting around a campfire outside their teepee. Mom called me to bed. As I climbed into bed, I wondered what those campers would do tomorrow.

The next morning brought the usual quiet. When I walked to the road and looked across it, the horses, wagon, and teepee were gone. Only ashes from the fire remained.

That was the first and last time I saw campers like that.