The jam count is now up to 4. Unfortunately, we did not get any more apricots this week. Instead, we got half as many plums as I would need to make plum jam. I’m not sure whether I’ll attempt to buy enough plums to make jam or attempt to eat the plums. 18 is an awkward number of plums to eat in a week. Happily, I did have enough peaches and made peach jam last night. Interim reports are that it is delicious. Also, I am now out of jam jars.
I’m thinking of making apple jelly this fall.
Then, while the jam was setting, I went upstairs to finally get all the pictures off my camera. I won’t pretend this is the best edited set of pictures ever, or the best pictures ever for that matter. It sort of goes like this:
But we’re going camping again this weekend and I’ll likely take another set of pictures nearly identical to the last three sets of camping pictures, so I figured I’d clean off the camera. I make no apology for the nearly identical gorgeous pictures of Mt. Rainier.
The next morning we awoke (still a bit jetlagged) under cheerfully cloudless blue skies. Amongst the bustle of the morning, I put my contacts in. One of them was torn, due to lack of light when I’d put them away the night before. It was with great relief that I recalled I had actually thought to tuck two new contacts into my pack the night before. No problem! I got the new contact and popped it in.
Or dropped it rather, I thought. Everything was still totally fuzzy, and nothing felt wrong in my eye. I felt all around. I looked everywhere. I called my husband to help. We searched and searched. A tent isn’t that large a place — there was no drain for it to fall down. But we couldn’t find it. I had one spare contact left. If I put it in, I would have no backup, but after fruitless searching, I had no other choice.
I put the second contact in. And I dropped it too, not to be found! But wait! What are the odds of that? I wear contacts every single day. I put them in and take them out no problem. Dropping two in a row and not having them findable? My husband looked at me and said, “Are you SURE it’s not in your eye?” I think you see where this is going. I took one contact of my eye. Then I took a second. I put one back in. I took it out and put the other in. Nothing. Totally out of my element, I left one of the not-helpful contact in and attempted to proceed with my day. It was hard. The information from my bad eye was very confusing. I had trouble judging distances (very bad on the trail with steps down and up, etc.) I kept closing my eye to rest my poor brain. And, in the rush, despite being on the list, I had not packed my glasses.
Disaster. But what could you do? We started hiking anyway.
Between Golden Lakes and North Puyallup is a truly lovely section of trail. There’s an ancient burn area jutting out from the mountain with blueberries, old whitened tree trunks and spectacular views on every side. As we stood with our backs turned to the astonishing mountain that is Rainier and gazed out on the Cascades, I remarked that anywhere else, this Cascade-view would be worthy of its own National Park. The breeze blowed strongly, whisking away the mosquitoes and flies which were our persistent companions this trip. The sun was hot, but the wind blowing off the glaciers was refreshing. It was the sort of trail that seems as though it might go on for many chapters of the story. The only problem was the one-eyedness, and that indeed was a problem, but it couldn’t spoil my delight.
Between Golden Lakes and North Puyallup
We stopped for a break at what my mother and I, on one of our previous (failed) attempts at the West Side had called “Almost There” Creek. It is not, for the record, almost to North Puyallup. It is a lovely example of one of the cascades the mountains are named for. The water is cold and crystal clear, crashing down on rocks and crags with the exuberance of youth. There are deeper pools and white shards of water. It is surrounded on all sides by vast trees in the primes of their fir-existence. For all the glory of the mountain, this little crossing is actually one of my favorite spots on the trail.
North Puyallup Campground, on the other hand, is not. For the record, the toilet is out at the campground and you have to cross a very perilous bridge and walk roughly 1/4 mile to get to the toilet that IS functional. It’s buggy, hot, overgrown and unpleasant. The North Puyallup River roils and boils with dangerous intensity under your feet as you cross the bridge. The walk up out of North Puyallup is another toil. The view of Mt. Rainier is lovely. That’s about all that can be said for it. Unlike the other climbs/descents, this one is largely in a vast gash from a 20 year old avalanche. You walk through switchback after switchback of nasty scrub, full of devil’s club and clingy, itchy bracken. The footing is insecure. The bugs are plentiful and determined. It was, therefore, a great delight when we crested the slope to come to Klapatchee Camground and Aurora Lake.
Klapatchee had the worst bugs of our stay. (Travelers the other direction told us that the bugs at aptly named Devil’s Dream campground were epic. One described them as ‘Biblical’.) We had used our head nets before, but they were critical to any enjoyment of that lovely little lake. Our campground looked out past the Park to the West, and there was an amazing view of Mt. Rainier reflected in shallow Aurora Lake, which was teeming with frogs, tadpoles and water beetles. (We had no cell reception. I was hoping we would. We had no cell reception anywhere.) We read each other “The Hobbit” in the quiet of a starlit tent.
We climbed Aurora Peak, to the right
That night’s dinner was Mexican Style Rice & Chicken by Mountain House. It was bland, but acceptable. The other meals were to be preferred. I also figured out that the spare contact I’d brought with mere were of a prescription +2.75. My prescription is -2.75. I’d ditched the bad contact at Almost There Creek, and things improved.
It took us nearly 2 hours to break camp every morning, but the third day it mattered less. We only had 4 miles to go. Hiking out of Klapatchee Park campground, we saw an enticing trail break away from the Wonderland, without the standard, “This isn’t a trail, don’t walk here” boilerplate that the park service puts up when it doesn’t want you meadow stomping. A careful analysis of the trail even indicated some maintenance, so we decided it would be ok if we checked it out. We dropped our packs on the trail, and headed up Aurora Peak.
Boy, were we glad we dropped them. It was STEEP. It was gorgeous. We walked through fragrant fields of bee-busy lupine in the morning sun. Towards the top, there were dropoffs that made me cling to the trail with all my might. They were likely not survivable. It is a strange thing to do something which is truly perilous — we’re prevented in so much of our lives from doing anything really dangerous (except driving) by guard rails and warning signs. All that was between us and falling to our deaths on the rocks below was our own common sense and a few scraggly flowers. But the view from the top of Aurora Peak was astounding. We could see our paths ahead and behind. We could see as far as the Olympics (sadly it was a bit hazy). It was extremely buggy, so we didn’t linger long. Even our headnets didn’t protect us enough.
The view from Aurora Peak
We took our time crossing St. Andrews Park, then headed down to South Puyallup. For a lowland campground, South Puyallup is lovely. The toilet there is set against these amazing basalt cliffs. There were very few bugs there (to our relief and amazement). The forest canopy is high and deep. The campground is delightful, even if the water could be improved. We got in early, so we had plenty of leisure time. At one point, Adam said, “Brenda, what are you doing?” Lying there, my boots off, looking up at the dancing branches, I sighed deeply and happily replied, “Nothing.”
The amazing basalt cliffs
We ate two dinners that night. These backpacker dinners are only 300 – 400 calories a serving, which is less than I eat for dinner when I’m dieting and NOT enough to feed a body that’s been working as hard as ours did. We didn’t bring enough breakfasts, so I wanted to be as full as possible that night, and I knew that with a hard, 11.5 mile day the next day we’d need our strength. They were both excellent: Mountain House Lasagna with Meat Sauce, and Mountain House Chicken a la King with Noodles.
Even pushing hard, it STILL took us 2 hours to break camp on our out day. We woke up early, but somehow found it was 9 by the time we hit the trail. We had 2.5 uphills and 3 major downhills over 11.5 miles to do. Even without having to make camp at the end, that’s tough. The first vista of the day was Emerald Ridge. It’s one of the oddest places on the trail – a place where you become unnervingly aware that Mt. Rainier is an active volcano. A red scree falls of to your left — ferrous stone left behind by a glacier. To your right these strange moraines — long straight ridges like the ominous backs of sleeping giants. No loam underfoot, only slippy rock, clattering against your ankles and making footing treacherous. The ferrous glacier-foot of Emerald Ridge Ominous dragon-back ridges at Emerald Ridge
At the bottom of the downhill comes a vast suspension bridge. This is no section for agoraphobics. It is high. It is narrow. It swings. And there is no 911. It was fun. The uphill afterwards, however, was the most brutal of the trip for me. I knew we needed to make time, so I tried to keep up with Adam’s pace. About halfway I had a litany of why I couldn’t, starting with “I gave birth 9 months ago” and ending with “I have a torn meniscus in my left knee” with a few stops in between. Not for the faint-hearted
The top of THAT uphill is Indian Henry’s. Indian Henry is a gorgeous area. However, at the best of times it’s extremely buggy. In this bumper year for bugs, it was nearly unendurably so. We pelted through the alpine meadows, glancing back over our shoulders at the mountain as we ran. We hiked with our nets on, which was hot but preferable to the alternatives. (At one point on the journey, a woman told me that if she had $100 she would give it to me for my hat/headnet combination. I wouldn’t have taken it.) We kept pushing through Devil’s Dream, which was truly infested. The iconic cabin at Indian Henry's
The downhill out of Devil’s Dream was actually not bad. South Puyallup seemed a million years ago. The crossings were tough at Pyramid Creek. The uphill to the top of Rampart Ridge was not so bad. About halfway down Rampart Ridge, we met a couple. I greeted them with the standard backpacker’s greeting, “Where are you headed?” We chatted. Then they said, “Are you Aunt Brenda?” My sweet niece Kay had asked them, they said, if they knew me. The kids were on the trail to meet us. A new wind swept under my weary feet and we fairly flew down the rest of the mountain, until we heard childish voices. My sweet boy Grey ran forward to give (deet-covered, sweaty and smelly) me a big hug. Baz swung his walking stick perilously as he carefully explained what they were doing.
I think I come closest to being who I really am when I am on the trail. I have a deep, abiding, passionate, and slightly hard to describe love for those Northwest mountains. I take what they are (some of the most spectacular scenery in the world) and layer on top it uncontaminated imaginings from my youth about the mystery, majesty and non-factual histories overlaying the rugged rocks and ancient trees. To tell you how I feel about the Northwest mountains – my mountains – would probably require reams of digital screen, not quite convey what I wanted to feel, and sound like a 13 year old’s Tolkein-inspired fantasy coming from a nostalgic 30 year old. So let me just sum up: they are an ideal of my youth that has not been found wanting with my adult eyes. I love them. And I feel very much as though I belong in those mountains.
The first mile or so is always prosaic, though. My husband and I are no longer 20. We were carrying 40 pound packs down a very steep decline towards the Mowich River under a deep canopy of trees. We were racing daylight, having started at noon with 9.8 miles to go with a major downhill, a major uphill and a more-major-than-I-realized kind of flat to go before we could take our rest.
The downhill was lovely, but unremarkable. The uphill from Mowich River is one of the most consistent and long elevation changes of my memory. We counted. There were 33 switchbacks, many of them quite long. You hear the roar of the river below grow increasingly distant, but there are a good three miles of turning your face to the mountain, walking, and then turning your back on it again.
At last, we broke out of the soft fir-needled path and into daylight. “See! We’re almost there!” I gaily called as we walked between blueberries, bear grass, columbine, lupine and all the familiar flowers of the alpine slope. (The flowers for the entire trip were fantastic and at their prime.)
I thought we were almost there. I was very, very wrong.
That sound you hear is my husband cursing the memory. Erm. It’s possible it was more like 3 miles than one. Oops! Trust me. Two miles, carrying 40 pound packs, at high speed, without enough food (bad planning on that one) and at high elevation? Two miles is a lot. Golden light was streaming into an avalanche-lily strewn meadow as our tired feed pulled us into camp.
A shooting star at Golden Lakes
Lessons learned:
We had brought electrolyte solutions that we poured into a small water bottle. This was fantastic for perking us up after expending lots of energy.
Watch the map for water. We were fine because I planned ahead, but there wasn’t a drop to be had for about 6 miles.
The “Santa Fe Chicken” by Backpacker’s Pantry was extremely tasty and welcomed at the end of the day.
We left the rain flap off our tent. I kept my contacts in until the last moment so I could watch the stars as I slept on the bones of my beloved mountain. We slept well.
In our next installment: Good planning comes to naught, mountains majesty, why I’m glad I got the mosquito netting and the rationing of DEET Golden Lakes (not pictured: swarms of mosquitos)
See that mountain, son? That's where your parents are headed.
The highlight of my vacation was backpacking the West Side of the Wonderland Trail in Mt. Rainier.
I knew I wanted to go backpacking during our vacation. I planned out my daydream trip: four days, three nights, all the best campgrounds on the hardest side of the Mountain. I went to the website to watch the melt rates (it can easily still be iced in the first week in August, scuttling a trip for those of us not up-to-date with our ice axes). I checked the reservations log, which showed that pretty much every campground on the Wonderland Trail was booked solid for our entire vacation. I still dared to hope.
You see (and I almost hesitate to admit this on the internet lest it spur more competition for me), the powers that be reserve 1 camp site per campground a night for last minute, walk up reservations. Longmire, the place to make these reservations, is over 2 hours from Seattle, but less than half an hour from my folk’s house. This is what’s called an unfair advantage.
The day after we landed, after a nice lie-in (well, for us. My poor parents were up all night because SOMEONE WOKE UP for the day after we arrived at home, at about 1:30 am Pacific.) we trekked up to Longmire with an unscheduled week, and a top priority to get some time on Mt. Rainier. I knew what I wanted, but I also knew it was HIGHLY unlikely I’d get my first choice.
I filled out the starting negotiation paperwork:
Day 1 – in at Mowich Lake, camping at Golden Lakes. 9.8 miles
Day 2 – Golden Lakes to Klapatchee Park. 7.8 miles
Day 3 – Klapatchee Park to South Puyallup. 3.8 miles
Day 4 – South Puyallup to Longmire. 11.5 miles
The Ranger took my paperwork and I settled in for the long negotiation.
“Golden Lakes … ok, Klapatchee Park … ok, South Puyallup … ok. Yup. It looks like that will work!”
You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. I felt like I’d won the lottery. I *HAD* won the lottery. Three nights at the best campsites on the West Side — barring Summerland the best in the park?!? On my first try?! I was giddy and fairly floated over the trail to find my parents and tell them the fantastic news.
It was 3 pm. By the next morning, we had to have bought everything we needed (note: all the stores are over an hour away), packed it in our backpacks, driven to Mowich Lake and gotten ourselves on the trail.
Thus began … the epic buying spree of no self-control.
We went to REI, Target, Walgreens and Fred Meyer.
We bought freeze-dried dinners, sock liners, a water filter insert, iodine pills, mosquito head nets, a new backpacking tent, knee braces (3), sunscreen, candy bars, waterproof matches, caffeine pills and squirty cheese. Among other things. It was 11:30 pm before we got home, our bags lying flaccid and empty on the living room floor.
The next morning we rose really, really early and started stripping out packaging, stuffing food and gear into our packs. After the most hurried packing ever for a backpacking trip (and in retrospect, a few key omissions and unnecessary items), we piled ourselves and our boys into the car for the long trip to Mowich. I savored my Maple Bar as we drove through scenic Ohop Valley, the mountain peeking periodically around corners. It was a gorgeous hot, clear day.
We hit the trail head. It took us a while — lots of adjusting of shoes and packs. We poured an exhausted Thane into a baby-backpack on my mom’s back and took a patient but also tired Grey with us a bit down the trail. We swatted flies, not knowing just how much of a prelude to our vacation this would be. We arranged our platypi and tightened our knee-braces.
We were on the trail.
To be continued…. Grey and Thane among the hiking gear
It’s always hard to get back on that digital horse when you come back from vacation. Usually I make regular posts about very minute things that happen in my life. And then I made rice in the rice-cooker; can you believe it?!?! But when you’re on vacation you spend like days and days doing actually interesting things and not blogging about them at all. Heck, not even checking your email or facebook or blogroll for DAYS AT A TIME. (Swoons)
And then you come back with all these things to talk about. And 2000 emails in your personal inbox (950 of which claim that you need more excitement in your nights while offering a solution to said problem). And another 2000 in your work inbox. And several hundred nearly-identical pictures of Mt. Rainier on your camera. And a pile of dirty laundry. And everything on your unwritten “to do” list that you thought “I’ll do do that after vacation; it’s too early now”.*
So if you’re lucky you end up doing one big spill-over post that ends up reading like your bad 9th grade journal: We went on a four-day backpacking trip on the West Side of Mt. Rainier. It was awesome. The weather was great. The bugs were terrible. It was generally fantastic. After that, there were hijinks involving an expired passport, but we made it to Victoria anyway.
So instead, let me give you a picture of Mt. Rainier and the (probably vain) hope that I’ll write smaller bits about what I did. Aurora Lake at sunset Aurora Lake in the morning
*I would like to apologize for this paragraph. I think that so far every single sentence breaks at least one rule of grammar. I am obviously unafraid of sentence fragments, and of starting my sentences with “and”. It’s not because I don’t know better; it’s because I’m a bad person.
Last night was a perfect night for baseball. It had been hot during the day, but cooled as the sun touched down over the Coke sign as we arrived at Fenway Park. There was a sultry, warm-beer-and-humidity haze to the air, as is appropriate in July. A half moon went through shimmering colors as it rose just above the horizon and fell again. And I was in the bleacher seats, hands sticky with Cracker Jacks, watching the action unfold between attempts at the wave, the constant “I believe you’re in my seat” refrain, and Adventures With Beach Balls.
Fenway Girl
For 8 innings I thoroughly enjoyed myself, with my husband by my side keeping me company. Then, the 9th inning, a blown save, a bunch of errors, and a game suddenly tied at 10:30 at night. We stayed through the 10th, but as the night got later and the algorithm for getting home got worse, I had to weigh my conviction that Thou Shalt Not Leave A Game Until It Is Over with the reality that somewhere between 5:30 and 7 am, one or both my husband and I would need to get up to tend to small people. We left after the bottom of the 10th, missing nothing I wanted to watch.
For the record, small people opted for 5:30.
Watching the game was mostly awesome. I really enjoy baseball. I really like getting to watch it live. We even had a babysitter in the person of my brother. My text-message-baseball-buddy was accommodating in making sure I knew why ‘Tek wasn’t playing and that Buehrle was setting a record for consecutive batters retired.
It also made me wistful. When you add another child to your life, for sure, something has to go away. The difference between having one son and having two has pushed a lot of the things I enjoyed off the cliff – my fingers sore from clinging to them so hard. One of those was baseball. In 2003 or 2004, on your average day I could tell you what time the game was, against which team, where we were in the standings, who the starting pitcher was and what the starting lineup was likely to be. I’d be able to handicap our chances against that night’s opponents and I’d have a strong opinion on the most recent trade.
Right now I catch headlines on what’s going on: Diasuke is taking the mantle of team snob from Manny, ‘Tek is beaten up and blaming Beckett, Papelbon is no longer automatic, shortstop is a problem position … but I can’t tell you how the Rays are doing without looking it up. Some of the names in the lineup are unfamiliar. I’m not quite sure where we are in the standings.
I just haven’t had the time or attention to pay to something I have loved. There is a wistfulness that comes from briefly touching on an activity that once consumed you to a greater degree. It’s like going out for a friendly “how ya doing?” cup of coffee with an ex-boyfriend you once loved passionately.
I can hope that this is just a breather in a long and ardent baseball relationship. I can hope to use my wiles to convince one or more of my sons that they really really love baseball and that we should listen to it on the radio alla time. I can hope that this, and other beloved pasttimes pushed off the same cliff of need, will return to me renewed for their fallow time. But right now? I miss my hobbies. OK, I miss my hobbies more when they're not breaking my heart
I was lying in the summer-warmed water of a small New Hampshire lake. The sun was gently warm on my upturned face. Pines surrounded the lake with taller peaks framing the tableau. The air was full of the sound of happy children playing — the yells and shouts and laughter. My ears were stopped by the water, where it was blessedly blissfully quiet. I noticed I was far more buoyant than normal, with my nursing-large breasts and Tevas dragging the rest of me towards the surface. And for that glinting moment in the sun, I just WAS and it was good.
Later that afternoon — after a long leisurely tent-nap — I noticed my watch had stopped keeping time on that swim.
Every once in a while, the symbolism just comes down and smacks you.
We had a fantastic three-day weekend camping. We spent two nights at White Lake State Park, this time. The water was the best. When I was playing with my sons in the water, I had the rare sensation of being completely engaged. I was entirely present in the play, and not thinking ahead or behind or calculating or listening to something else or wishing that I was anywhere but where I was. I threw my laughing children into the air and caught them as they splashed in the water. I watched them discover what they could do in this unusual medium — sand squishing between small toes and eyes squinting against bright sun. I watched my husband, strong and lithe, play with the boys who look so much like him.
The camping parts were great too. We made a vast improvement by putting Thane to sleep in his car seat inside the tent. He was far more comfortable AND we had more room for important things like stomp rockets, rope for practicing making knots and marshmallows. My husband delighted in knot tying (really delighted — he was nearly illuminated with the joy of learning this new skill — and our tarp only took about 4 hours to get up!) Grey poked things with sticks and stayed up too late and ate his bodyweight in marshmallows and made his brother laugh. Thane? Well, Thane probably got the short end of the deal. He really liked the water (a lot!) but spent most of his time hanging out in his stroller, which is probably not as much fun as getting to eat dirt and rub pine needles into his hair.
There were, of course, tribulations. Notably, the first night was an absolute deluge. The rain was phenomenal. On the plus side, we had a drum-tight tarp to keep us dry, which it did. On the negative side, we therefore had a snare drummer playing above our head all night long. Also, Thane woke up inconsolable, which is really hard when we’re all in such a short space. I’m not sure what was wrong with him, and therefore I couldn’t fix it quickly and that woke up Grey and that meant, well, let’s just say we were sleepy by the time the weekend was over.
Also, let us discuss for a moment the word cheap. Cheap can mean inexpensive — a bargain. Cheap can also mean low-quality. When one encounters “cheap” firewood, perhaps one should not be surprised when it turns out to have been cut last week in a bog, where it has been stored since. It took me two and a half hours to get a fire going with said “cheap” firewood. I can usually get a fire going with one match using no man-made materials in about 15 minutes. (We used to heat with wood. I’m really pretty good at fire-building.) The tinder would go up, the fire would appear started and then in 5 minutes it would be dead. The cheap firewood didn’t just smoke, it steamed.
There was also a plague of frogs. If I had to pick a plague, I think the plague of frogs was probably the one I’d mind least. They were pretty cute little buggers, but TINY. There were so many of them that on a walk with Grey we could hardly step without imperiling the little froggy bodies below us. The forest floor twitched with the movement of perfectly camouflaged frogs.
Tiny little frogs everywhere!
I think we will go camping again SOON. I keep wishing we could go with friends or another grownup so that my husband and I could go witness the miracle of stars, or listen to the loon sing a night-song on the lonely lake. But even if my husband didn’t like camping (which he does), I think he would go just to watch the petals of the flower that is me uncurl and turn to the new-shining sun. The wilderness is manna to me. It is sunshine. It opens me up and drops my defenses. It makes me remember what I like about myself and forget my mantras of doubt, gloom and distraction. I like who I am in the woods.
Driving home, I couldn’t help but be excited by what we were doing, and had done. Already, a grand two trips in, we have traditions. There’s the “Miss Wakefield Diner” and their chocolate chip pancakes. There’s the spooooooky stories (not so spooky) around the fire. There’s rough-housing in the tent. There’s swimming in the lake. There are memories saved up against cold February days and the creeping sense of dismal sameness.
I had an awesome weekend. It started Thursday night — we took Friday off. We stayed up late late late making lists and going shopping and packing stuff into the car for our first camping trip with the boys.
Hanging out in our vast tent
I love camping. I’ve loved camping for as long as I remember. I love exploring, and the fire. I love the sound of a zipper in the morning. I love pine needles in my breakfast and clear morning sunlight on the mountains. However, here in New England I haven’t known WHERE to go camping, we haven’t had all the gear we needed out here, and since Grey was born I’ve been too chicken to bring him out. Life is too short to not do things you love because you’re chicken, so I put a trip on the calendar this spring.
We went to White Lake State Park in New Hampshire. It was an excellent combination of facilities (nice bathrooms, a playground, a great beach with a lifeguard, an onsite canteen, etc).
On Friday morning, when the boys woke up at 6 am, we shoveled ourselves into the car and headed North. It was a beautiful drive, on one of the first warm days of the summer. We stopped at the Miss Wakefield Diner for second breakfasts, and were still at the campground by like 10 am.
We had a ball. I’d bought a new tent, which turned out to be absolutely enormous. It was more than big enough for a Pack-and-play, two grownups, and a cuddly three year old. The lake was really quite warm for this early in the spring. Grey had a wonderful time swimming. I got floaters for both boys, and Thane seemed to really enjoy swimming too. After we were done with water play, there was sand to be dug into. Naps didn’t really happen, sadly, so our nature walk around the lake was a little more contentious than I’d have hoped. (Grey was tired. Adam and I were TIRED. Thane was sleeping on my back.)
That night we had a great campfire (bragging alert: I got the fire started with one piece of newspaper, with the same match I used to light the mosquito lantern). We roasted hot dogs and made s’mores. We sat and stared at the coals of the fire. It was everything a night in the woods should be.
Around midnight the rain started. This would usually be a sign that camping was about to stop being fun, but we’d put away pretty much all of our gear before retiring, we’d put a tarp over the tent, and the tent proved to be far more water-tight than our old tents were. So the several hours of rain ended up being pretty much a non-entity.
To sum up: camping was really really fun and I want to go again SOON!
But we had to get back home because Grey’s final dance recital was 5 pm on Friday. Grey has been going to dance classes all year. He’s been good about going, although he doesn’t talk about it much. I think he did it and was ok with it, but definitely didn’t love it. The recital kept getting more and more complex. We had to pony up $55 in OCTOBER for a costume that turned out to be a very crappy, Halloween-style tuxedo. There was the Sunday morning lineup to buy tickets to the rehearsal. The tickets were pricey ($20), and they said we’d need to buy them even for Grey if we wanted him to watch any of the recital. Group pictures were $15. A dvd of the performance was $45. They sold bouquets, including bouquets of lollipops which made Grey feel like dancing = entitled to sweets. Then there was a dress rehearsal at 4 pm on a Wednesday, which required massive coordination to make happen. The upside was that Grey did a great job. He looked really cute. He worked hard and paid attention. I’m sure he learned some important things in the classes. But he didn’t love it. Thank heavens. I hated the whole circumstances of the recital, and I’m relieved never to be doing THAT again.
Not that he wasn't adorable
I loved camping. I didn’t love the dance class. Perhaps it’s just as well I’m a mother of boys!
In a week and a half, A. and I will be winging our way across the Pond to regions Tuetonic. 10 days and several hours from now, we will be listening to the tale of the Flying Dutchman and the woman who loved him, against all odds. We will travel to see medieval arms and armour. We will hike in the Alps, and I will think not a little of Heidi. We will travel by rail over high, historic mountains to a city founded on Friday, March 25 at noon in the year 421 on marshy islands. I will stand inside St. Marks and if God has truly blessed me, I might even hear the polypony I so often imagined. I’ll see too the poryphory statues of the tetrarchs, the mosaics, the four mysterious horses of St. Marks. I’ll see the winged-lion of the Most Serene Republic. And I’ll pay way too much to sit in a cafe and drink coffee — perhaps the same cafe frequented by Lord Byron and Dickens.
It seems more than a thousand miles distant from where I sit now. It is a world distant. It is a place I visited often in fancy, but where I have rarely travelled at all lately, even in the realm of the mind. I have become too focused — to concentrated on a small and arcane realm of the world. Granted it pays well, but I yearn for vistas again. And I shall see them. And that, friends, makes me a very lucky woman.
My Truant Pen 