Outdoor Showers and Kerosine Lamps

I wasn't raised the way most young girls are raised.

When I was young and it was warm out, it was normal to make sure to take your showers before it got too dark and the light faded from the sky, mainly because our shower was outside.  Our "summer" shower consisted of a fifty gallon drum that sat on a scaffold in the back of our house. Well, it was in the front but people had a habit of coming down our long drive way causing whoever was taking a shower at the time to run for the house covered in soap. The best way to take an outside shower was to do it fast, in other words get wet, soap up, and rinse off, hopefully before the water got to cold since it was only warmed by the sun and usually not very warm at that.



There is something amazing about showering outside and hearing nature around you while you get clean. In the winter time I always missed taking showers outside. Mainly because then I had to heat up water on the stove and haul it to the bathroom to be mixed with cold water by the scoopful to bathe with.  Even now in the summer I will often take cold showers indoors just to remember what its like to be hot and sweaty and to have it all washed away with the coolness. The other thing I miss about my childhood are the kerosine lamps.

We used kerosine lamps because we choose to not have electricity. Living out in the middle of the woods there were no power lines and it was every bit as rustic as camping, the only difference was that we had a house and gas stove and fridge.  I miss the soft warm glow of a kerosine lamp, and even the smell of them as they burned.  I even miss the sound they made as they sputtered when getting low on fuel.

People now cannot seem to live without television, electricity, or their cell phones, but, what they don't realize is what they are missing because of those things.

People are so wrapped up in texting on their phones, they sometimes miss the simple beauty in the world that is all around. So used to taking a hot shower whenever they wish that they don't appreciate the running water they use to do it. What they don't miss is the sounds of crickets singing to you as you take a shower in the woods at dusk. People don't realize they are missing these things because they never had them.  They never had frogs sing them to sleep, roosters waking them up, or owls hooting to them in the night. Some have never sat there listening to classical music on the radio while sitting on the porch watching the fireflies in the woods.

Some people are so wrapped up in their electric worlds that they fail to fall in love with the natural one.

I miss my mountain home with the creeks winding through the trees, and days spent just simply watching life. Not the life of a city which hums with as much beauty as a forest but just simply life in its simplest form, nature.