Camping

My “Cafe Vanile” vending machine coffee tastes like the mochas we’d drink as we sat around the campfire in yet another Michigan State Park.

Steam clouded my glasses as I tilted the mug to drink. In the shade of the whispering trees, the Northern mitten breeze was cool on my skin. The fire warmed my scrawny pegged-jeans-clad legs and made me smell like camping.

Though the parks blur together in my mind, the memory of that percolated-coffee-and-powdered-hot-chocolate in my sturdy blue plastic mug is unforgettable.