The Chicks can bearly stand the flood of excitement that Linda Norlander is visiting today. Not only is she sharing some cautionary tails, she’s also giving away one of her ebooks to a lucky commenter!
Floods and Bears and Other Lessons
When it’s New Year’s Eve, you’ve worked all day and have guests coming for dinner, it’s never good to be greeted at the door by your husband offering a (large) glass of wine. Turns out instead of spending the day cleaning the house, he spent the day in the basement going through sopping wet camping gear, sleeping bags and other memorabilia. It seems that when he tried to do a minor repair on the washing machine located one floor up from the storage space in the basement, he forgot to hook up the drain hose to the sink. We had a small version of Niagara Falls cascading down the cement wall. It’s now known as The Great New Year’s Eve Flood.
Perhaps it was the wine or perhaps it was the fact that I really didn’t ever want to sleep in a tent on the ground again, but I said to him, “Nobody died. Nobody went to jail. We can get through this.” With a quick clean-up of the kitchen, we had a fine evening, and I was able to finally throw away the last remnants of our camping era.
Not that camping is a bad thing. We had many wonderful times around a campfire. I used some of those experiences in the latest of my Cabin by the Lake Mystery series, Death of a Dream Catcher. Jamie, my New York City girl protagonist has her first camping trip and first encounter with a bear.
On one of our first camping trips, we also encountered a bear. A lesson learned. If you are in the Northwoods of Minnesota at a remote campsite, don’t leave your Styrofoam cooler outside near the tent while you take an afternoon nap. The black bear who huffed its way into our campsite in search of our bacon, butter and bread was adept at batting the cover off the cooler. It lumbered away with our breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Meanwhile, we watched from inside the tent realizing that the only weapon we had was a toothbrush and the only thing separating us from the bear was the mosquito netting. Fortunately, Jamie’s camping companion in Death of a Dream Catcher was a far more seasoned wilderness camper than we were.
I’m amazed to this day how fast we broke camp after the bear walked off with a loaf of bread. I didn’t realize you could take a tent down, throw everything in it and stuff it in the trunk of the car in less than ten minutes. I’m sure the bear was disappointed when it returned for brunch.
Who knew that years later, that bear would show up in a book? Now I need to figure out how to incorporate the Great New Years Eve Flood into a mystery. Perhaps instead of being greeted with a glass of wine, the protagonist is greeted by a bear and the husband has disappeared!
What is a memorable camping experience you’ve had? All contributors will be eligible for a drawing to win an e-book of Death of a Dream Catcher.
Linda Norlander is the author of A Cabin by the Lake mystery series including the most recent book Death of a Dream Catcher. She is also the author of the new Liza and Mrs. Wilkens mystery series beginning with The Death of Goldie’s Mistress. Both series are set in Minnesota. A third series, Sheriff Red Mysteries will debut in 2025. Norlander has published award winning short stories, op-ed pieces and short humor. Before taking up the pen to write murder mysteries, she worked in end-of-life care. During her career in nursing, she published several award-winning books including To Comfort Always: A Nurse’s Guide to End of Life Care and Choices as the End of Life: Finding Out What Your Parents Want. Norlander resides in Tacoma, Washington.
Linda can be reached at :
www.facebook.com/authorlindanorlander
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Chicks on the Case 
We were camping in New York not far from Lake Ontario when in the middle of the night there is a thunderstorm. As if that isn’t bad enough being in a tent but having to listen to the woman in the next tent shouting we are going to die on and on. Thank you for this chance at your giveaway. pgenest57 at aol dot com
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Congratulations, Linda! At least it was only a black bear. Those are generally just interested in your food (unless it’s a mama bear protecting a cub).
I did a lot of camping as a kid in Girl Scouts. I remember waking up one night to find a raccoon in our tents. Someone (not me) had violated the “don’t keep candy in your sleeping bag” rule and Rocko was foraging the rest of the tents in hopes of finding more! Lesson: Always string your goodies up in a gorp bag – protection against raccoons and bears.
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Agreed about stringing those bags up in a tree!
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Thanks for being our guest today, Linda! I’ve never gotten too close to a bear, but we did have one wandering our campground back in my middle school days.
Most recently, we did beach camping, which was an interesting twist. It was nice being near the ocean!
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Beach camping! Oh wow, that sounds amaaaazing! And no bears or snakes. I’m not sure we can do that here on the East Coast. (Ask me how I learned about that one college summer in Nantucket, when my friends and I missed the last ferry…)
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Linda, thank you so much for guesting! It reminded me that I read “The Death of Goldie’s Mistress” and really enjoyed it and think I forgot to tell you. If so, I am so, so sorry. Congratulations on Death of a Dream Catcher!
I am not a camping person. In fact, when I was a Girl Scout, I faked an asthma attack so I could sleep in the lodge with the leaders and not in a tent.
And that flood story is hilarious! You will find a way to use it, I know.
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Ha, a night in the lodge with the leaders! We had cabins at our girl scout camp, and that was about as rough as it got in CT.
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Hi, Linda! My wife and I camped a lot back in the day.y favorite misadventure was when we hiked part of the Knobstone Trail here in Indiana. After hiking all day, we came across a gorgeous little pond just off the trail, where we set up camp.
We had a yummy dinner while the mosquito coils kept the blood suckers at bay. It was an incredible day. Until it got dark and the frogs started croaking. At the top of their froggy voices. All one million of them. (At least, that’s what it sounded like.)
Suffice to say, we didn’t sleep a wink that night. It made for a memorable trip, though. And we didn’t get any mosquito bites!
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At least the frogs probably augmented the efforts of your mosquito coils, lol.
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Oh those croaking frogs. Reminds me of being in Key West with the roosters crowing far too early in the morning.
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My brother had a bear who wouldn’t leave him and two friends alone when they were backpacking in Yosemite. And they were doing everything right.
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I went to a summer camp—once—that was a disaster. We had to 1) set up our tents at the bottom of a hill with heavy rain in the forecast (everything went home smelling like sour milk), 2), BUILD OUR OWN BRIDGE to get to the showers (the leeches we picked up in the water were simply burned off by one of the counselors’ cigarettes), and 3) play a “game” that’s too hard to explain but involved getting a kiss on the cheek from one of the campers who was too sick to participate in the other activities. All in all, a horrendous experience that instilled in me a lifelong hatred of camping.
Congratulations on your new release!
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“…leeches…burned off by one of the counselors’ cigarettes.” Sorry, but I am rolling here! I hope it was a short stay.
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It was the longest week of my life. But I got some good stories out of it!
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We saw lots of black bears when we camped with my cousins in Yosemite back in the late ’60s. I remember our parents saying not to ever leave any food in our tents because of the bears, and then one night my cousin and I realized we had a packet of cheese puffs in our tent and–I forget which one of us did it–but we ran out of the tent with the snacks, threw them down far away from the tent, and ran back in.
And then there’s the story of the skunk who tried to nose its way into my tent many years later. Luckily it was coming in head-first and I was able to use myfeet to push it out the tiny opening that I’d left unzipped and zip it all the way up. Oy!
Congrats on the new book, Linda, and thanks so much for visiting the Chicks today!
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Congratulations on DEATH OF A DREAM CATCHER, Linda, and thanks so much for visiting us on Chicks today! Your hubby sounds a lot like mine. He loves wilderness camping and before he met me spent a month each summer camping in the wilds of Montana, fly fishing and that sort of thing (surviving)? When we first dated, I flew out to meet him for a camping trip–and landed in the middle of some scary wildfires. My plane was filled with smoke jumpers. The rangers let us all know when to keep moving, no big deal. I was more concerned about the rattlesnakes sunning on rocks near the river where I read. An adventure for sure! (Gosh, what ever did happen to our old camping equipment? Must be lost in the basement. Hmm…)
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Congrats on Death of a Dreamcatcher and thanks so much for setting up camp with us, Linda!
We did a lottttttttttt of camping when the kids were little. I don’t have any great stories of my own, so I’ll borrow one from my son.
When he was a young Boy Scout, he went to a Camporee (like Jamboree, but smaller). He got disoriented when he got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and wandered around for hours because he couldn’t stand the idea of “bothering” anyone to get help. Thank goodness he was fine (but tired and cold) when he was found the next morning at the mouth of someone else’s tent far away from his own. It was a good opportunity to talk about the buddy system and asking for help!
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Thank you everyone for your comments. Through the process of putting all your names in a hat, I am awarding the e-book of Death a Dream Catcher to…J.C. Kenney. The book is not up yet on Amazon but I will get it to you when it is!
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