Running the Traps - With a Twist

Our days have been routine since returning to our volunteer assignment after the mini “vacation” to Zion.  Just running the traps, scooping fire pits in the morning, checking in campers in the afternoon, generator checks in the evening and quiet hours checks after 10:00pm.  It was on one of the evening generator checks that something not so routine, shall we say, presented itself.

With Arizona not participating in daylight savings time the sun sets just a few minutes after 7:30 and with our heavily wooded campground, it gets dark quick.  At 8:00pm we walk the campground to do the generator check because the vehicles currently at our disposal are louder than any generator (except those el-cheepos from Harbor Freight & Northern Tool.  You can hear those things over a jet engine.)  We have to carry flashlights lest we step in a hole or run into a tree.  But in the first few minutes of our rounds we can manage on the twilight, and that is just what we were doing on this day.  Our walk starts at the top of the campground and we make our way around the perimeter road, following the giant oval until we are back at our camper.  Half way through, at the bottom of the oval the light had begun to fail us.  RVs, tents and people were reduced to just shadowy figures.  Until that is, a flashlight from within a campsite changed that.

There was a momentary illumination immediately to our left and we both turned our heads in that direction just as there was some anxious voices in the language of the Netherlands.  I don’t speak that language but I am pretty sure it was something to the effect of; “For God’s sake, turn off that light!”  At that point Cyndee’s voice came through the returned darkness saying; “Was that man naked?” 

Yes, yes he was.  But by this time we had taken a few steps forward and now his RV blocked our view of him.  I was able to see a stream of water running from beneath the RV though.  We both realized that this guy was using his RV’s outdoor water sprayer to take a shower.  I know that the European’s views on nudity are a little more relaxed than what we Americans are accustomed to but this guy was standing in his campsite butt-naked taking a shower in full view of anybody with half-decent night vision.  He had a perfectly good shower inside his RV but he just had to take full advantage of being in the great outdoors.  Too bad he did not heed the rules about no outdoor showers or release of any water onto the ground.  Actually, it was too bad for me.  I was the one that had to go back and hit him with my flashlight beam to let him know he had been observed committing a federal crime.  Like a deer in headlights he stood there holding a towel in front of him (his northern-clime-white backside reflecting even the faintest starlight for all the campsites behind to see).   I think I detected a glow of red at the picnic table behind him.  My guess is that this was the teenage son that made the mistake of illuminating dad to begin with.  Or maybe it was no mistake at all and he was just trying not to bust a gut as I was educating dad about the rules.

We’ll never know.  By the time we did first rounds the next morning at 6:00am, they were packed up and gone.