INTO THE WOODS

Sunday evening, we gathered for Self Care Circle and Rose asked us where in our bodies were we feeling gravity. Sarah said her arms felt heavy. Xander felt weight behind his eyes. Tania felt gravity in her legs. Most everyone felt heavy in some place. I confessed to not feeling gravity. In fact, I felt/feel like the only thing holding me down onto this planet is a thin piece of string tied to my right ankle. The other end is weighted with a marble. I am at work, frantically trying to finish up imaging on the latest batch of slides while troubleshooting computer issues on the very same microscope I am using to image that batch of slides. Multiple terabytes of data still needs to be transferred from that computer to the network for further processing. I am at home thinking about chicken care and if I packed enough of the right things for camp. I just remembered that I haven’t packed shoes of any kind, but there are socks in my suitcase. I am at camp thinking about the classes I’m supposed to be teaching.

I am dreaming about my three o’clock massage appointment on Saturday.

This untethered weightless feeling will go away once we are at camp with our camper setup and camp things put in their places. The groove of the camp routine will take hold and I will give in to pool floating time and laying my body on the cool concrete floor of the yoga shala. I will feel weighted and heavy and full. These are not wishes or hopes. These are truths. Every camp experience has been different and I expect that this one will as well, but there is a part of the experience that remains consistent between camps. Cell signal is shotty at camp, so there’s no email, no news, no remote accessing into to work. The ideas I have for some blog entries and where my book writing is going will be handwritten in a notebook, with possibilities of seeing the light day when I return. My camera is packed, along with my tripod because if the weather cooperates, I’d like to play around with some night sky photography. But if I end up napping a whole lot, that’s okay too. Camp is a time where I have no choice but to set my usual daily life over on a shelf not to be touched for five days.

It is a terrifying thought that I am welcoming with open arms.

OCTOBER CAMP

The fingernail on my left index finger is painted with blue nail polish. All the other nails are bare. One night around the campfire, maybe the first night(?), Rosie came around asking people if they can paint a nail and that’s the finger I held out for her to paint. The next morning I was looking into the mirror to apply moisturizer to my face and was visibly startled by the sight of that blue nail because I had forgotten all about it. That’s really all I need to say about camp.

Except, that’s far from the truth.

There are lots of things I could say about camp. I could give you a long list of things I did not do for four days and an even shorter list of the things I did do for four days. The thing I did the most over those four days was laugh and laugh and laugh. My body still aches from all the laughing. The most important thing was that Michael and I walked away from camp with new framily members. One of our camp staff members, Shiny, had one word for camp and it was community. Webster’s Dictionary defines the word ‘community’ as a “unified body of individuals. Such as:” and then goes on to list various types of communities. The list contains other words like ‘fellowship’ and ‘likeness’, yet none of them really fully encompass the feelings of being part of a community. Being part of a community is so much more than being “unified” or sharing common interests. Community comes from the way we care for one another, encourage and support one another.

This is the essence of Camp Wildling.

I had two words for camp: confidence and gratitude. I one hundred percent feel like a total fraud when it comes to photography. It doesn’t matter the amount of material I have read on the subject or the practice and practice of photo taking that I partake in daily. For me to be able to share my knowledge to others and to see them engaged and really truly learning from me, stops me in my tracks.

I mindfully create energy to pursue my own advocacy goals of abolition. Sometimes it looks like a calming practice. And sometimes it looks like play. - Zuri Adele

I did not once sit down with my Lightmaker’s Manifesto and journal to start brainstorming what I can do to be an activist. When I returned home on Sunday, that quote above was posted for our prompt this week and my memories of camp were still fresh in my head. Camp provided me the space to grow energy, to build up and charge my energy supply. At times, camp was calming, but honestly…it was a whole lot of play.

Somewhere in the middle of all that play, I discovered that I do have gifts worth sharing.

THINGS I DID AND DIDN'T DO

Nine days is a long time. Over those nine days, I did not check email. I looked at Facebook for a minute while we were in Bryce Canyon City and had a moment with Wifi. I did not exercise. I did not do yoga, even though I took my mat. I did not stress about the amount of green things I was not eating or the amount of junk food I was eating. I did not read the news. I did not write in my journal. I did not take as many pictures as I thought I would, but the ones I did take are good ones. I still need to process the pictures I took with my Nikon. I do not have words for describing any of the landscape that I saw. I do have a list of animals that we saw. We collected forty seven license tags; this includes Hawaii.

I cried the first time I used my Gold Star Family National Park Pass.

Michael told the Park Ranger that this was the first time using the pass and we had questions. The Park Ranger went from business to empathetic in a snap. She said all of the things I didn’t want to hear. Then she warned us that some people may not know what a Gold Star Family member is and that we will have to explain it to them. After that first time, nothing was ever said about it again. At one National Park, the Park Ranger mistook the pass for the Fifth Grader pass and we did not correct her. But that first time….that first time took the breath from my lungs and I sobbed all the way to the visitor’s center.

I had a vision of pictures of me standing at the Grand Canyon in my pink tulle skirt and J’s combat boots at sunset. I changed in the parking lot and crammed my right foot into a boot and laced it up. Then I reached for the left boot and discovered that it was a different boot. It was also a righty. When Katrina sent me the boots, I barely looked at them before shoving them into my closet because that is what I do with things that poke at my heart. I thought for a second that maybe I could just put the right boot on my left foot and no one would notice and then Michael suggested an alternative plan. It was a good plan and I am more than pleased with the images that came from all of that.

I left Chris with canyon views in both Arizona and Utah. I did not take any of Dad, but he was with us in spirit on our second day of travel when the tire blew on the truck and then Michael ran over tire debri that ripped out our shower drain pipe and water line. We never use the shower any way and the water line is an easy fix. For the first time in my life, I camped in Colorado without a fishing pole. I sat on the banks of the Colorado River without ever casting a line. I ate my trout in restaurants. On the last day, I soaked in pools of hot springs and floated on my back in the mineral water. I thought about what I would write about this trip and I came up with very little. There were parts of this trip that stung me in unexpected ways. There were moments when I was so awestruck with the landscape, I could not hold a camera. I have not known what day it is since June 9th, when I left for Camp Wildling. I never had time to adjust before heading out on this trip and now that I am home, I am resisting an adjustment to days of the week and times of day.

In fact, I am not even supposed to be at work today. I put the wrong dates in the work calendar and no one expected me back until Wednesday. So, I’m sitting here with my second cup of coffee, scrolling through thousands of emails and getting myself halfway organized for the rest of the week. And that is all I have planned for today.

THEY MAY HAVE BEEN POTATOES

Let the season begin!

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Last Friday, Michael drove the trailer over to Longview Lake campground which is about twenty minutes from our house. By the time I loaded up some dry goods and the dog and fought my way through traffic to meet him at the campground, he had already set everything up and was even lounging in his camp chair with a beer. All I had to do was hang up the camp lights. This is monumental because Michael and I have been discussing some things about traveling and the camper. We’ve been talking about Michael and the Cabbage driving out to where ever, California, the Grand Canyon, the East Coast, and then I would fly out to meet them. We spend a lot of time getting to the place where we really want to be. Then we don’t get to spend as much time as we would like in that place before we have to start back home. I have less vacation days. Michael and the Cabbage can take their time. Now we know that Michael can set the camper up all by himself. So…next year it looks like we’re headed to Washington!

We also discovered that potatoes do not last a year sealed up inside a plastic bin.

At least I think they were potatoes.

I got the utensil bin out so we could make ourselves some sandwiches that evening and everything inside that bin was covered in stinky mold. I threw the whole bin away. Do not worry. All of the titanium sporks are in the kitchen utensil drawer at home. Probably because I feared something like this would happen some day. No one knows how those potatoes got into that bin, especially since we don’t even store our food in that bin. But this is why we chose the closest campground to the house to set the camper up for the first time this season. This was the trip where we de-winterized the camper and took stock of the things we need and the things we need to replace and the things we’d like to have. Like a cooking prep table to set up next to the camp stove or some bus bins for washing dishes with the outside shower head. This was also our trip to discuss future trips.

We are not doing a big trip this year. Michael’s going to come with me when I go to a conference in Boston in July, but we do not have an epic camping family vacation planned for this summer. Instead, the plan is to take the camper to nearby state parks and have travel distances of no more than four hours. We had talked about taking the Cabbage to Omaha for a weekend, but the roads between here and there are under water. We are trading the Omaha Zoo for Silver Dollar City. Apparently teachers get in free and can purchase half-price tickets through the month of June. I have not been to that place since maybe 1998 and the more I think about it, the more excited I get about revisiting this particular childhood haunt. We were there so often that I had all the lines from the Saloon show memorized. I could play any part. I also knew the exact spot on the train ride when we’d get ‘robbed’ by the Bolins and where to stand or not stand during the Rainmaker show. If you were peckish, you could always grab a hot cracklin’ from the sample bowl at the craklin’ booth and giving Mom dipped candles that you made all by yourself was just like handing her a bouquet of wildflowers. We dipped so many candles.

Sure, the place is hokey. But it’s good ole family fun hokey. Maybe I can talk Michael and the Cabbage into getting an old timey family portrait made. Maybe that can be our Christmas card for this year!

Last summer we took the Cabbage on a tour of my childhood stomping grounds. She got to do all of the things that I got to do at her age. Except catch a fish. She did not catch a fish. She did get to run around various campgrounds with other kids in wild packs.. She did get to play in the dirt and climb up (and fall off) giant rocks. She got to see the stars and go for days without taking a bath. It seems almost fitting that we should be taking her to Silver Dollar City this year. I wonder if she’ll let me tie her hair up in pigtails like Mom used to do to me.

And then I can buy her bonnet to wear.

And dress her up like Laura Ingalls.

I’m probably going to have more fun than she will.

AMELIA

We stumbled across Amelia's birth place by accident

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When Michael booked us into the Lewis and Clarke State Park, I never really looked at a map. He said "It's about fifteen minutes north of Weston." and I just shrugged and said okay. Weston Missouri is this little town north of Kansas City where everyone goes on weekends for wine and distillery tours and antiquing. Fall is crazy pants there. One year we took the Cabbage to a pumpkin patch and orchard near Weston. We thought we'd have lunch in town, but when we drove into the town, Michael just continued on driving through because there was no place to park. Anywhere. Weston Bend State Park was number two on the list of best state parks in Missouri last year. It is nearly impossible to book a campsite in this park. So, Lewis and Clarke seemed like our best option. 

We arrived Friday afternoon and set up the camper and Michael ran water through the lines to clear out the antifreeze. Things went surprisingly well with our first setup of the year. I noticed that we were missing some food items, so Michael suggested we find a nearby grocery store. He looked up grocery stores and found that we were ten minutes from a Walmart. He entered everything into his navigation system, who we call Hazel and then proceeded to follow Hazel's instructions. Along the way, we passed a billboard for Atchison Kansas and the birthplace of Amelia Earhart. I said to something to Michael about it and he said "That's weird because, we are no where close to Kansas." Which I should have known better, because Michael is the type of person who, when facing north, will say he's facing any other direction than north. So, yeah, that Walmart we were headed to was the Atchison Kansas Walmart. What this really meant was that we were ten minutes from the birthplace of Amelia Earhart. 

This completely changed our itinerary for Saturday. 

Saturday morning, we found ourselves back in Atchison and wandering around Amelia Earhart's old stomping ground. We did not go inside her house. It is now a museum and was not open at the time of our visit, but we peeked in the windows and walked all around the outside. The brick path around the house is dotted with memorial bricks where loved ones and friends have donated money to the museum to get a brick in memory of someone. So many of the bricks are memorials for women pilots and members of The 99s and so many of those bricks shared words of gratitude for Amelia Earhart. My eyesight blurred as I became overwhelmed with tears. Amelia Earhart broke the rules that conventional society had established for women during a time in history when it was so much more difficult to break those rules. She did not just inspire women to be pilots. She inspired us to defy convention, to be true to ourselves no matter what, to take risks and seek out adventures. When I wasn't playing Little House on the Prairie, I was sitting in my tree flying an airplane and being stranded on a deserted island. I was Amelia Earhart. She was one of the first to teach me that women can do anything, be anything. We make our own rules. 

Michael and I eventually made it to Weston and out to a creamery where we ate so much cheese, but Amelia Earhart took over this trip. Later on, when we were reminiscing about our day as we sat around our campfire, Michael said "My partner is basically Amelia Earhart reincarnate. How could we not visit Atchison." Atchison had not been part of our plans, but it turned out to be the best part of the adventure.

CAMPING

Leaf portrait of Dad

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Michael and I hosted a camping get-away this weekend at Watkins Mill State park. It's a nice state park, tucked just far enough off into the country and woods to make you think you've gone off the grid, but it's really only an hour's drive from our house. You're like twenty minutes from the encroaching sprawl of Kansas City. We invited a couple (the Willards) that Michael has known forever who have two girls around the same age as the Cabbage. So the weekend was full of little girls running off to play, learning to ride bikes, glow sticks and hide and go seek. There was lots of Play-Doh and slime. Many many s'mores were consumed. 

This was a first time camping trip for the Willards. They had borrowed an eight man tent from another friend. Michael and I took turns with helping them figure out how to set the tent up while simultaneously trying to set our camper up. Michael would work on leveling and stabilizing while I showed them how to thread the poles in the tent. I pushed the beds out and popped them up on the camper while Michael helped assemble tent poles. Finally the tent was up and the camper was popped out and we were only left with the task of installing the door on our camper. The door on our camper is a two man job that usually takes us about twenty minutes of sweaty cursing to get in place, but this time we popped it into place right on the first try. No sweaty cursing required. 

It seems to me that there needs to be a proper initiation process for first time tent campers. It sort of makes or breaks you as a camper. It is the defining moment that determines whether or not camping is going to be something you do more than this one time. Mine involved a rabid raccoon attack. It was a terrifying experience that ruined our tent and almost a relationship, but we survived. A new tent was purchased and the relationship prevailed. We learned that we were made of strong camping stock. The Willards' initiation came in the form of a storm that included lightening and high winds and a torrential downpour. One corner of the tent collapsed but was easily set right. The rain fly, the whole tent really, flapped so hard in the wind that it seemed that the only thing keeping the tent on the ground was the weight of their bodies. Yet, they emerged the next morning with minimal damages and they were mostly dry. 

Despite the storm and being plagued by yellow jackets (I looked them up, they're Western Yellow Jackets, mostly harmless unless provoked; three out of seven of us managed to not provoke), the Willards declared this trip to be a success, so much so that they said things like "the next time we do this we'll...."

I'm glad that they enjoyed the experience.

I SHOULD HAVE SENT YOU A POSTCARD

Shopping dog

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Michael and I got back into town around six thirty on Saturday evening. We were tired and dirty and hungry, but we unloaded the camper and checked on the chickens before ordering pizza and taking showers. Sunday was spent doing laundry and grocery shopping and laying on the couch. I did manage to upload and begin editing some pictures. I did not dig out the Nikon as often as I probably should have, but I did use it to take a series of images of the Wigwam Inn #2 and I'm really happy with some of the pictures I captured. Something else I didn't do on this trip was take notes. I did not sit down in the evenings and write about each day's adventure or even keep a list of things from the day. As a result of all of that, I am now sitting here trying to figure out what to tell you about our Abraham Lincoln trip of 2017.

The Lincoln family home in Springfield is lovely. If you are lucky, you will have Park Ranger Peter as your tour guide through the Lincoln's home. If you make eye contact with Park Ranger Peter, he will speak through his tour directly to you like it is your own personal tour and there are no other people with you in the room. Park Ranger Peter also has an eye twitch that makes it look like he is winking. He would also like you to know that he is very interested in being Secretary of Interior. Springfield, as a whole, is kind of like driving through the bad side of town. This may have worked in our favor because on our first day, the power went out for the whole campground. We had to take Josephine with us for part of the day because we could not leave her in a hot camper. She traveled with us to the farmers' market and Lincoln's Tomb and lunch at a walk up fish shack. Then we went to Gander Mountain for their going out of business sale and no one said a word about Josephine riding around in a shopping cart. It was a good thing we brought her too because she took up space in the cart that we would have otherwise filled with crap we didn't need. 

That night, we experienced our first big storm in a popup camper. I had been asleep for maybe an hour when Michael came in and said that the wind was picking up and that he was going to run our trash over to the dumpster and stop off at the bathroom. Less than five minutes later, the sky opened up and wind started howling. I sat up in my bed and watched the canvas walls of the camper flap in and out as if the camper was breathing heavy. The sound of the rain was deafening. Josephine sat alert in my lap while I reached for my phone in search of a weather report, hoping that it was just severe weather and not a tornado. I feel like riding out one tornado in a camper in a life time is enough. The power flickered on and off. Michael was trapped in the bathhouse. We started texting each other. Michael decided to make a run for it and I said 'okay' just as I read the weather report that warned of being struck by lightening. There was a loud clap of thunder and flash of lightening and thought "great! Michael's just been struck by lightening." Then he hopped into the camper, his clothes soaked. We ate string cheese and lunch meat while waiting out the storm.

The next day, we realized while we were trying to fold the camper up that the wind had actually twisted the frame of the camper slightly. We now have to do some magic tricks to get it to close up properly. Something happened to the battery during all of this too, so the camper has to be plugged in to raise and lower the roof. These are minor things that the dealership will deal with because of the warranty. It seems though that our camper needs a spa day or at least a vacation after our vacation. 

LEAVING ON A...LEAVING IN A TACOMA

Color

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Friday morning, Michael and I head out for this summer's road trip. (Sing it now!) The camper's packed. I'm ready to go. That's really the only part of the song that works, because there's not a jet plane and I am not lonesome. But I am ready to go. Sort of. There's the whole actually packing a bag of clothes that needs to happen. That should take up a good ten minutes of my evening. I have had some time this week to do some research on Atlas Obscura, a site Talaura turned me onto years ago. Now it has become a reference guide for every trip. I got a little excited about the possibilities ahead, like a Lincoln Totem Pole and maybe sneaking into an abandoned amusement park in Kentucky. There's also Dinosaur World, which is dog friendly and I think I'm going to drag us all to this place. There's a pterodactyl flying out of the opening and they've totally mimicked the Jurassic Park font for their website. 

Look... the largest ball of twine is a road side attraction made for people like me. I once paid a dollar to see the oldest Cyprus tree in the US. It was dead because it had been struck by lightening the year before. 

I will be posting pictures when I can, but I am also banking on not having decent cell signal. Michael has plans to teach me how to play backgammon. I have plans to look at a screen as little as possible. I have been spending too much time looking at a screen, doing nothing productive. If I get my iPad out, it will be to read a book or maybe color. I haven't done that in while. I've packed the small spirograph kit that Heather sent me and my yoga mat and I am looking forward to some stillness. Maybe even get to a place where my brain doesn't catch fire while holding some yoga poses for five minutes at a time. I am so excited about the adventures ahead!

So, consider this my Gone Fishin' sign. More like Gone Adventurin'. I'll be back eventually, hopefully with some new stories and most definitely with some new images.

TWEEDLE DEE AND TWEEDLE DUMB GO CAMPING

Camping

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We took the Cabbage to Hannibal MO over the weekend and the first thing she said as we pulled into the campground was "Do we get a house like all those other people?" She was referring to the giant travel trailers that surrounded us in the campground. I think she still harbors some disappointment that we didn't swing for the four bedroom camper with a fireplace and wifi, the kind of camper that costs more than my house. We set up camp reasonably well considering we had arrived after dark and opted to only hook up the electricity for the night. We'd hook up the rest of the things in the morning when we could see what we were doing. 

The next morning started out with pee all over the camper floor because the waste container had shifted during the drive. Then Josephine got in trouble for barking. One of the neighbors complained to the camp host. These were the same neighbors who's dog barked constantly inside their camper all day. Next, we drove out to the Mark Twain birthplace, which is on Mark Twain Lake. We realized very quickly that we should have stayed at this state park instead of the over priced tourist trap campground we were staying in. After learning all about Mark Twain, we loaded up to head back to Hannibal for lunch, but Michael wanted to take a different way back so we could see the lake dam. We did not find the dam and ended up lost on gravel roads and dead ends. Finally we made it back to Hannibal, found a dog friendly place for lunch, and waited for over an hour for a grilled cheese sandwich. 

Michael and I just watched the slow meltdown of the Cabbage. At one point, she got so fed up and said "I'm going to go see what's taking so long." She got up and marched herself inside, but came out soon enough because she lost her nerve. It was now almost 4 o'clock. The kid was starving. After telling the Cabbage all day long that we would not go to McDonald's, we walked out of the restaurant and went to McDonald's. Everything was great after that. We had campfires and smores. Josephine learned to curb her barking. The Cabbage made some camping friends to play with. I ate the biggest ball of cotton candy I have ever seen in my whole life. The Cabbage ordered a grilled cheese sandwich with baked beans, the same thing she ordered the day before, at a new place and she got it within ten minutes. She told our waitress "This is the same thing I ordered yesterday at the other place and I NEVER GOT IT!" We climbed two hundred and forty something steps to see a fake lighthouse that had been built as a Mark Twain memorial. I conned the Cabbage into "whitewashing" a fence and Michael and I were momentarily mesmerized by what turned out to be a christmas light. 

We are getting the hang of setting up and breaking down the camper. We have learned something new on both camping experiences. I suspect that by the end of the summer, we'll be old hats at all of it and may even find that missing set of camper keys in the process. Oh yeah...we've misplaced some keys, but at least we remembered to actually latch the trailer to the hitch this time!

JAYCO-PEECOTRAIN

First trip came with many unknowns and mishaps. No heat on the first night. No sleep on the first night. But tonight we have heat and full bellies and full hearts. Tonight we sleep.

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We've been trying to come up with a name for our popup. The day we drove it home, Michael asked me what we should name it. I couldn't come up with anything off the top of my head. As I looked at the side mirror of the truck, watching the reflection of the trailer bouncing along behind us, I said "Jayco Peecotrain." Micheal said "What?" and I replied "Jayco Peecotrain." We both found this funny, but did not agree that this would be the permanent name for the trailer. Except we haven't come up with anything else, so I'm calling it Jayco Peecotrain for now and here is an account of it's maiden voyage to exotic Joplin MO.

Most state campgrounds are still closed to full hook-up campers, which is why we ended up at the Joplin KOA. It was a fine campground for what it was. It sits right off the interstate and is more of a stop for the night kind of place than it is a hang out for a few days and enjoy nature kind of place. Our camper ended up parked right next to a privacy fence for a big-rig truck repair place and on the other side of that was the interstate. There was an area of woods with a walking trail that Josephine and I would walk in the mornings that was nice, but we did not have a campfire ring. The Cabbage made herself a cold smore on the first night, which would not be the only cold thing about that night because Michael could not get our furnace to kick on. Sometime around three o'clock in the morning, I piled all of the blankets onto one bed and convinced Michael to crawl in. The Cabbage was fine as long she remained wrapped in her blankets like a burrito, but Michael and I did not get very much sleep. 

He spent the the next morning on the phone with technical support, troubleshooting the furnace. We had almost reached the decision that we would have to pack everything up and go home when I pressed a small piece of metal inside the thermostat and the blower for the furnace kicked on. The on/off switch was faulty, but we were able to repair it on our own. This was great because my Mom had driven in to spend time with us and I would have hated for her to come all that way for nothing. We all went had a nice lunch before visiting the George Washington Carver National Monument (which I have so much more to say about later). We had a nice day and then everyone slept (mostly everyone) warm and snug. I say everyone mostly slept because the wind kept blowing stuff outside our camper like the door and the awning, making a banging sound. I would wake up thinking that either someone was trying to come into the camper or the camper was collapsing. Neither of those things were true. 

Despite the freezing time and the lack of sleep, I think we all had a nice time. It was the Cabbage's first camping trip and she said that her favorite thing about the trip was eating a cold smore. So there ya go. Michael and I learned a whole lot of things about the camper. We determined that cooking outside is the way to go because of counter space and how there isn't any inside. Once the camper is closed up, there is no way to get inside to the tiny fridge. We will always need to carry a small ice chest. Our setup time was pretty good. Michael ran into a snag with turning on the gas, but that was easily figured out. I learned the sweaty hard way that installing the door is a two person job. It took us a lot longer to break camp then we thought it should. The new rule is that breakfast on the last day should be something cold that doesn't require dishes. This way we can pack up kitchen stuff the night before and water and gas can be disconnected first thing in the morning. We are also amazed that we didn't lose the camper on the way home seeing how neither one of us actually latched the trailer hitch down onto the ball on the truck hitch. One good bump and it would have been bye bye trailer. 

On the second day, after getting the heat to work and eating dinner, Michael asked "So, are we keeping it?" I looked at our little camper with the sky turning purple and pink behind it and said "I think so. I think so." We've already booked a campground for Memorial Day weekend in Hannibal MO. It will be the kickoff for our summer of camping.