They say smell can be the strongest trigger for memory, which is perhaps why I remember this weekend so vividly over two decades later. Because it smelled like death the entire time.

Honestly, I don’t remember why we didn’t turn right around and drive back that minute. I’m sure I used my limited vocabulary to advocate for that very action. But being an RVer means never saying no to a challenge, so apparently we spent an entire weekend bathing in boiled egg water and just dealing with it. I asked my mother years later why the hell we didn’t turn around and go straight back home when we turned on the faucet and the cursed souls of egg demons poured from the tap, and she said we stayed to “enjoy each other’s company,” because apparently some people are satisfied by nothing more than conversation with other humans and are willing to overlook the minor inconveniences of tainted water and diaper pools. And yet the sulfur water was hardly the only terrible thing about that weekend. It was all terrible. There were bugs. It was itchy. We spent the whole weekend sitting by a campfire, where I learned that my body is extremely allergic to mosquitoes, which is a thing you can actually be allergic to, because every one of their tiny clawing bites turned into a giant welt. My only toy that weekend was a fly swatter, which I used to great effect, but still. I was being literally eaten alive in a tiny house car with nothing but egg water to soothe my wounds. On top of all that, I had the distinct privilege, as the youngest camper that weekend, of sleeping on the breakfast table. In true RV fashion, the surface of the kitchen table was detachable and, with a few maneuvers, turned into a bed. Imagine a restaurant booth, but take away the supporting leg and put the tabletop flush between the seats, and voilà, you got yourself an RV bed. At least that’s how they sold it to me when they told me I was sleeping on a breakfast table. Once you get over the initial excitement of getting to sleep where you eat your Froot Loops, you realize you’re sleeping on a literal table, which is perhaps the least appealing of sleeping surfaces. I was a kid, dehydrated from a scarcity of egg-free drinking water and sapped of all my blood from thirsty mosquitoes, so I’m sure I passed out.

When we finally escaped on Sunday evening, the rest of my family apparently content enough with a weekend of one another’s company, I spent the entire car ride home scratching my mosquito bites into bloody gashes and cursing the outdoors forever. Nature, I knew then more than ever, was nothing more than an itchy, putrid adventure into hell itself.

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