Wagner Lake, Camping, Canines and Cats, Oh My!

Today I am so pleased to have my friend Trudy guest blog. Trudy and I met on TUDiabetes and she has become a trusted and much loved confident of mine. She gives me encouragement to write and for that I am eternally grateful. Trudy wrote this post as a reflection of her life. She has five chronic conditions, including diabetes and Rheumatoid Arthritis so her thoughts are pertinent to this site. In addition to being a gifted writer Trudy is also a poet, and at the end of this post she blesses us with two poems.

Wagner Lake
or, Camping, Canines and Cats, Oh My!
Gertrude Waller/Trudy

If I wrote an outline of my lifetime of chronic diseases, some major highlights would be 1) my marriage of almost 62 years, 2) our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, 3) hiking, biking and camping, and 4) dozens of companion animals, each and every one of them a therapy animal. My family of four recently trailer-camped at Wagner Lake, Michigan–myself, my husband, Hardy, and our two Golden Retrievers. While relaxing in the shade of tall trees each day, looking out over the sparkling lake and drinking assorted beverages, I found memories crowding my mind, many of them oddly relevant to the moment.

An early accident

I was eleven years old when I burned myself badly with boiling water. I had a blister on my thigh literally the size of a hot water bottle. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of treatment in those days, so I was simply put to bed for several weeks. I taught myself how to walk again by clinging to the bar at the end of my metal bed and walking up and down. A few months later I went on a camping trip to Fox Island, Washington, with my church group. Down on the beach, the boys built a campfire, onto which they unfortunately threw some poison oak. The smoke caused me to break out from head to toe in poison oak. There wasn’t much in the way of treatment, so I was put to bed for a couple of months. The group bought me a book; nobody had read it before, obviously, since it was rather pornographic! My faithful companions during those bedridden days were a white cat and a white rat. They didn’t think much of each other, but were happy to keep me company on my bed–my very first therapy animals.

I was having a good seventh grade, particularly enjoying my tumbling class–I was small and limber then. Suddenly and out of the blue, I was struck down with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. I firmly believe that the many months I spent in bed with my burn and poison oak triggered the Juv. R.A., but who knows. Of course there was no treatment for the Juv. R.A., so I was put to bed! There was a great deal of pain involved; I couldn’t stand to have anyone touch my bed. I taught myself to walk again a few months later, using my good old metal bed, and went on with my life. I rode my bike for pleasure and transportation, but I was never to take a gym class again except for swimming in college. There were some difficult and painful flare-ups in the following years until I went into remission sometime in my late thirties. Of course, Osteoarthritis replaced the Juv. R.A.!

Marriage

Hardy and I were married in Seattle, where our lives revolved around the University of Washington. He is a scientist and was finishing his Ph.D, and I worked in the UW Library and took poetry writing classes. Our honeymoon was a bike-riding camping trip to and from Friday Harbor, where the lab does Oceanic Studies. We rented the bikes in Seattle and started our journey from there. We had to take a short train ride and some ferry rides between islands, but we biked on all five of the San Juan Islands. Hardy had our sleeping bag on his bike and I carried a few provisions, mostly bananas, on mine. We were in one of the island campgrounds, where a family was eating an enormous hot meal at a picnic table. They saw us sitting on the ground eating our bananas, and invited us to join them–Wow! One of the best meals I have ever eaten! Altogether that was one cool (and unique) honeymoon!

I was born in Tacoma with Mount Rainier just 30 miles away, practically in my backyard. At that time, the mountain was called Mount Tacoma; “The Mountain that Is God” in the Northwest Indian language, I am told. One of the great conquests of my life was climbing to the glacier with Hardy and some of our University friends. That was as far as I could climb, so I sat down and waited for the others to climb up farther, then pick me up on their way down. Horses with riders came by and the horses took a drink from the glacier. I read just today that the Mt. Rainier glaciers are melting, for which I grieve. But I really, really climbed up the mountain to the glacier, notwithstanding Juv. R. A.

We drove a bright yellow VW Convertible, doing tent camping often with one or two of our children. There was no room for bikes and such in the VW, so the children had fun just playing in the campgrounds. Of course we did the marshmallow and wiener roasts. When we lived in New York, we enjoyed camping in the Adirondacks; all four seasons were gorgeous. At Wagner Lake, our neighboring campsite had multiple kids and their Labradoodle, so children’s laughing and shouting (and dogs barking) seemed quite natural.

Our last move was to Northwest Ohio. We brought very little with us from New York, except our two cats, a Siamese and a Longhaired American. We bought some new furniture for our new house, and within two weeks, we were robbed of all our new musical equipment. We asked ourselves, A burglar alarm or a dog? So we got one burglar alarm and two dogs, a Rough Collie and a Shetland Sheepdog. The cats didn’t seem to mind having new dog friends, so we also adopted the gray cat living in our woodpile.

A new passion

With time, we found ourselves breeding, training and showing Rough Collies and Shelties. One big problem: we had a difficult time letting go of the puppies we bred, so soon we had a dozen dogs. Those were fun days! Over the years, we acquired dogs of different breeds and settled down to (usually) around four companion dogs/my therapy dogs/family member dogs. There is a special communication and empathy potential between dogs and people that has made their companionship a necessity in my life. I have found that dogs can inspire us. Two years ago, Cici nearly died but endured her ordeal with grace and courage; now she is aging with the same grace.

Wagner Lake

Then we started camping again. Among our favorite campgrounds in Michigan and Southern Ohio, Wagner Lake is high on the list; so we visited there just last week. Wagner Lake is a small, secluded lake with a rustic campground (think hauling water, running the generator for power). This is our first trip in years without our Golden Retriever, Aggie, who was a born camper. She had taught her camping skills to Betsy (7) and Cici (9), Golden half-sisters, so they were right at home in the campsite. Hardy took the born tracker, Betsy, hiking on the difficult side of the lake, where the trail is somewhat non-existent. He took the older Cici, born queen-of-the-pack, to the easier side. These were daily dog-treks, so while they were gone, I thought of some other camping trips with dogs.

Showing dogs (conformation or the sports, such as agility and obedience) often means camping out, sometimes in a big parking lot on the show grounds. Early in our showing, we were in Canada with some Shelties and Collies on really primitive grounds for those of us in RVs. Thunderstorms with drenching rains threatened us, so with some friends on the site, we all rented a big room in a motel. The room was lined with dogs in dog crates, people in and on beds and in sleeping bags. Hardy and I had a bed with crated dogs next to us and one Sheltie, Raymie, in our bed. About an hour after the lights were out, Raymie got up and began to leap from one bed, one belly, to another, then hitting the sleeping bags. He leaped on belly after belly; you could follow his path by the successive Oomph! Oomph! Oomphs! When he got back to us, he immediately fell asleep in our bed. Not everyone was amused.

Gem, our Smooth Collie, loved an adventure, and found one when we were trailer-camping at a wooded show site in the Upper Peninsula. One morning she did her little dance for me that meant, “Now I’m going to misbehave, Sorry!” Then she dashed past me and past Hardy who had just opened the trailer door. Hardy and I chased her across the camping/show area where dogs were having breakfast. She raced by dog after dog, snatching up bites of food from their bowls, leaving a lot of open-mouthed people and dogs, then took off into the woods. Hardy and I chased her, to no avail. Then Hardy sat down and called, “Help, Gem! Help!” Every inch the guard dog, she went to Hardy to help, and thankfully, that adventure came to a close.

Wendy was my Wirehaired Miniature Dachshund; she actually taught herself to be my Diabetes Alert Dog. There was something terribly amusing about this little ball of hair barking at me to do something about my blood glucose. When our trailer was parked, she lived in a little crate on a shelf high up. Lifting her up and down turned out to be great therapy for my partially frozen shoulder. One day I forgot to lock her crate; later I found her sitting loose watching the other dogs milling around, an intent look and a grin on her face. That little ball of hair was easily amused, and in her company, so was I.

Autoimmune conditions

I have five autoimmune conditions. Twenty-two years ago, I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and Celiac Disease. Gluten-free, lactose-free, diabetes-friendly, camping food can be great, at least with Hardy as the chef. We dined on such as wild-caught salmon, mixed salads, fresh vegetables, fresh summer fruit, great coffee… It was not necessary to think about diabetes much, since the extra activity just meant a little less basal and bolusing. The challenge was to remember to do that bolusing!

 We had a Cairn Terrier who loved making mischief. He also loved running in the warm Michigan sand around Michigan lakes, especially in his later life with arthritis affecting his short legs. I thought of him as I looked at the sand fronting Wagner Lake below our campsite. My legs and feet are not behaving well at this time as I approach my 85th birthday, so it is and continues to be important to me to visit our favorite campgrounds this year, while I still can. I wrote haiku to remember this excellent trailer-trip:

Wagner Lake, a Warm Afternoon

The blue-grey lake gleams
with spreading golden ripples.
Dogs bark, children laugh.

Wagner lake, a Cool Afternoon

Clouds cast silver sparks
like moonshine on grey waters.
The Pileated taps a tree-song.

Trudy