The plan was to pack up the family and head to Lake Conconully. Mamma had vivid memories of going as a child with her own family and the various trips often came up when my extended family gathered around campfires at summer reunions.

“Remember that time at Lake Conconully?” someone would ask, and everyone would break out in a smile at the sudden onrush of memories. Mamma wanted us to have our own camping memories, so in the summer of 1998 the five us packed up and headed into the wilderness of Eastern Washington.

Keith was the oldest. His sandy blond hair was buzzed nearly to his skull, and braces lined his crooked teeth. His attention span was short. He would often dismantle electronics and lose interest before putting them back together, opting instead to go exploring in the small patch of woods in the backyard. As adults, the three of us would be nearly inseparable, but at 12 he preferred his independence. Scott, who was 9, had a curly mop of brown hair sticking out of his head in every direction. He was the most sensitive of the three of us. He loved painting and sculpting things out of clay. While Keith was out exploring, Scott would sit on the floor with me playing out elaborate toy wars or catching small frogs in the dusky summer evening. I was only 7, but I knew I was fortunate. While my friends at school talked about their terrible older siblings tormenting them, I felt safe and happy with mine.

Attached to Papa’s white 1988 K5 Blazer was a wooden utility trailer. In the trailer, we packed in one deflated yellow and blue rubber raft with two plastic oars, one extra-large tent, five sleeping bags, one large zip lock full of dog food, five life vests, and the green Coleman stove my parents bought for themselves with the money they got from returning duplicate wedding presents fifteen years prior. In the back of the blazer we stored one cooler of water, one large ice chest filled with hot dogs, jelly, peanut butter, ice, marshmallows, chocolate, graham crackers, bread, buns, and other necessities. In the cabin of the blazer was Mamma and Papa, us three kids, and our black Lhasa Apso, Mindy.

It was a four-hour drive through the pine saturated Wenatchee National Forest in Eastern Washington, and up north toward the touristy town of Winthrop. But, when we pulled up that hot day in August, the campsite at Lake Conconully was not the wooded, rustic getaway Mamma remembered from her childhood. Instead, it was a wide-open lot with trailers, manicured grass, and paved lots for miles. It looked more like a city park than a campground. “I suppose I should have done more research before booking the campsite,” Mamma said. “I was just so sure of the name I didn’t even think about it.” Papa asked the staff if there were any more rustic locations nearby, and they recommended Fish Lake.

Fish Lake sat just ten miles north of Lake Conconully in the Sinlahekin Wildlife Recreation Area. We got a spot right on the lakefront, surrounded by Bluebunch Wheatgrass, Ponderosa Pines, Douglas firs, and Mountain Alders. The campsite had one picnic table and one fire pit. There was no running water or electricity on the grounds, but porta potties were spaced evenly throughout the campground. Darting in and out of the greenery in every direction was the yellow flash of wasps. Undaunted, we began setting up camp.

As Keith, Scott, and Papa worked on setting up the tent, I sat beside Mama as she made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It wasn’t long before a small swarm of yellowjackets buzzed around the open jelly jar. I sat very still on the wooden picnic table, praying they could not smell my fear.

“Why don’t we make lunch in the car?” Mamma asked. She too must have been afraid and seen the darting of the twenty or so wasps as they hovered near our food. As I stood carefully, I felt a sharp, piercing agony in my left foot. I jumped down from the picnic table and ran to the car screaming, my heart throbbed in my chest, my hands, my head. Fear and pain overwhelmed me momentarily.

“What is it? What happened?” My dad asked in alarm as he abandoned the tent and came dashing over to me, but I was too overwhelmed to answer him. I just pointed to my left foot. He carefully peeled back the Velcro the strap of my Teva sandal and removed the dead yellow jacket that had wiggled its way in there without my knowing. He raised my foot to inspect the damage. “Looks like it only got ya once. You’ll be okay.”

“It hurts” I pouted and he kissed my foot.

“It’s okay Sweetie Pie, pain is your friend. Now you have someone to play with,” he joked. He pulled a wrinkled package of Red Man chewing tobacco out of his pocket. “This will help a bit,” he said.

“Gross, Papa” I squealed, but he took out a small pinch of chewing tobacco and placed it on the affected area. “Hold that on there for a little while, it will make it feel better.” Before climbing into the car, I checked my other shoe for wasps. While Mamma made sandwiches, I sat moping in the backseat lifting the tobacco and poking my sting every few seconds to see if it still hurt.

As soon as the tent was set up, the boys piled back into the blazer and we ate our sandwiches with the car running and the air blowing.

We quickly learned how to adapt to the wasps and the buzz faded to background noise. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the lake to escape the heat and the buzzing and as evening approached, they returned to their nest. That night we roasted marshmallows while Mamma played the ukulele and sang to us.

The next day, Papa used a bicycle pump to inflate the yellow raft. We ate lunch inside the hot, humid tent then piled into the raft and pushed off. Mindy figure-headed the boat, panting into the breeze as her floppy ears billowed.

Fish Lake is a small, narrow body of water about a mile in length with depths of up to 65 feet. Across the lake from our campsite, and a few hundred yards to the east, was a tall rocky cliff. We rowed toward it, admiring its stone face against the wooded backdrop and summery blue sky.

“Holy Crap!” Papa cried as we got close. We all looked toward where he was pointing. There on the face of the cliff was a yellowjacket nest nearly 6 feet in diameter, at least 3 times larger than I would ever grow to be. The wasps buzzing around the campsite felt like a mere nuisance in comparison to the sight before us. It was larger than every nightmare I’d ever had.

Papa, always the joker, raised the oar high over his head, smiling. “What do you think? Should I splash it?”

An uncomfortable panic settled in the pit of my stomach as I forced out a laugh and exchanged a nervous glance with Scott. Mamma scolded him. “Stanley. Put that down, right now!”

“Do it,” Keith shouted.

“NO,” yelled Scott. immediately after as if the encouragement from Keith would be enough to sway him. I chimed in with Scott, pleading for Papa to put the oar down.

“What? I’m just kidding arou—” as he said this the oar slipped from his hands and fell into the lake. No one said a word as the impact of the hard plastic on the lightly rippled surface sent drops of water cascading over the nest. It was a small splash, something a child would make in the shallow end of the community swimming pool, but it may as well have been a tidal wave.

When a colony is disturbed, yellowjackets can become extremely aggressive in protecting their nest. Particularly at the end of summer. Of all the pests in the wasp family, yellowjackets and hornets are of the more territorial species. Horror is the only word that can describe the look on everyone’s face as 30,000 of them rose simultaneously out of the fortress. The violent buzz was deafening.

“Hold Mindy!” Papa shouted. He grabbed the handle on the side of the raft and yanked quickly up, capsizing the boat so that all 5 of us were suddenly submerged into the cool water in our clothes and life vests, taking cover under the upturned raft. Under the boat was chaos as we quickly scrambled for someone or something to hang on to. Once we were all stabilized and accounted for, all eyes turned toward Papa.

“Whew!” He laughed. “Can you believe that happened?” None of us were amused, least of all Mindy who shivered and kicked trying to climb onto Mamma’s shoulders and out of the water. The sun shone through the yellow material of the raft, casting a sickly light and exaggerating the troubled faces of my family. Outside the raft, the violent swarm could still be heard. The silky, lake water felt cold at first after sitting in the hot sun for so long, but eventually our bodies adjusted to the temperature. We were trapped.

Mamma was furious. “Stanley!” She kept yelling over and over. She only used his full name when she was upset, otherwise they stuck mostly to nick names: My Baby, Stan and Beck, or Mr. and Mrs. B. “Stanley!”

He was reckless, adventurous, impulsive. He couldn’t stifle his laughter. “Did you see that? I’m a damn hero! I should save lives for a living. Oh, wait—” Papa had been a paramedic for 8 years, saving lives was his business. His humor and his ease quickly won Keith and I over. Keith, being the oldest, instinctively put on a brave face while Scott stared at the surface of the water in front of his face suppressing the panic rising in his chest.

Mamma kept saying, “Stanley…Stanley…” over and over again. Amazingly, no one had been stung, and no yellowjackets had made it into the raft with us.

“Well, we better start moving,” Papa said. We all started kicking in clumsy unison. We didn’t know which direction we were heading in, as long as it was away from the wasp’s nest which we judged by the fading buzz outside the raft. After about 30 minutes of slow progress, all was quiet. The tension had subsided a bit as we all worked together to evacuate.

Up until that moment, my biggest fear had been deep water. Somewhere in the vacuum of my mind, I believed in the possibility of underwater zombies. I did my best not to look down and allowed myself to be engulfed by the terror of the wasps and the jokes of my father as he tried to keep us calm. I frequently looked to my right at Scott knowing that if any slimy hands reached up from the depths and coiled their cold, bony fingers around my ankles, he wouldn’t let me slip under without a fight. It’s a strange feeling, being simultaneously amused and terrified.

“I’m gonna go out and check to see if the coast is clear.” Papa dipped beneath the water and we all held our breath as we heard him re-surface on the other side of the raft barrier. After a moment, he lifted the raft about a foot off the water. “It’s safe, they’re gone,” he said.

It was a struggle to get the raft flipped back over, but after three tries we got it. Mindy was placed in the boat first, and she stood there shaking for a moment before walking back toward the edge whining. I was hoisted in next and handed the loan oar that Papa had been holding on to. Then came Mama, Scott, then Keith. When Papa heaved himself up, he rocked the boat and pretended like he was going to capsize the whole thing again, but none of us laughed so he pulled himself in chuckling at his own joke.

“Well that was an adventure,” he said. We’d drifted about a quarter of a mile down the lake away from our campsite. To get back we had to pass the cliffside once again where the yellowjacket nest was located. We stayed as far on the opposite side of the lake as possible. Papa dipped the single oar in the water on alternating sides of the boat to keep us progressing in a straight line. As we drew closer to the cliff, we spotted the other oar floating on the surface a short distance away and Papa slipped back in the water to swim out and retrieve it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the air in search of straggler wasps that were still furiously searching for the threat to their colony, but it was nearly evening and most of them had returned to the nest for the night. We made it back to camp without any more drama.

That night we roasted hot dogs over the campfire for dinner. After we ate, Mamma sprayed detangler in my hair and gently brushed the snarls out as Papa told us stories about the crazy things he used to do when he was a kid. A hooligan, he said. 30 years later, it seemed like not much had changed.

The next morning Keith, Scott and I began clumsily taking the tent down as Papa loaded everything back into the wood trailer. No one had showered or used a real toilet for two days and
we were nearly out of drinking water, even after using it as sparingly as possible. By midmorning, we were ready to hit the road.

Mamma gave Papa the silent treatment the whole way home, but after a few days of warm showers, clean toilets, and an electric dishwasher she softened up enough to see the humor in it all. We’d survived after all, and with a story to tell.


At a family reunion in my Grandmother’s field, I sit in lawn chairs with Keith and Scott in the hot afternoon sun. They are grown men now of 31 and 28. Keith’s short buzz cut has grown out into long, sandy blonde locks and the lower half of his face is hidden behind a bushy, reddish beard. Piled on top of Scott’s head is the familiar mess of dark brown curls. A yellow jacket buzzes by us then slows down and loops back around and I feel the familiar burning in my cheeks. I have a sneaking suspicion that they know about the crimes of our family. But even in my fear, I smile at the memory of the being under the raft with them in the summer of 1998. I turn smiling to Keith and Scott and say, “Remember that time at Fish Lake?”


Andrea Noelle Brown, a senior English major at Penn State, says she is “lucky enough to be in the BA/MA program where she studies creative writing, primarily poetry.” She is from Seattle, WA and includes a lot of nature imagery from the beautiful Pacific Northwest in her work. She’s especially interested in the spiritual presence of nature, volcanoes, the movements of the earth and fire and discovering how to fit natural landscapes into her writing.