Camping 101

What I learned from camping:

1. It's best to spoil yourself when camping: steak and salmon for dinners and the like. It helps if you pack a Master Chef with you for just such an occasion. This is why I take my husband with me.


2. Coffee tastes better percolated outside.


3. Full moons are just as bright as the dawn.


4. Also bring with you a pyro. They make the best campfires (um, my husband again).


5. Watching a lake shimmer in the sun is better than DVR.


6. Fires are hypnotic.


7. If lit on fire, marshmallows are excellent carriers of fire and can easily ignite other items such as sweatshirts and chairs.


8. The only time hot dogs taste good is cooked on an open fire.


9. You get a lot of exercise just doing everyday things, like walking up to the bathrooms, taking out the trash, and hiking, so packing things like chips, hot chocolate, and the makings for s'mores is okay.


10. I can get dressed laying down.


11. At night, that walk up to the bathrooms can't be bothered with. Squatting behind the tent is fine. Pack toilet paper and hand sanitizer.


12. No matter how clean the showers are and if they get hot water, nothing will feel so good as a steamy shower in your own bathroom when you get home (followed by a good night's sleep in your bed rather than an air mattress that you suspect is losing air).


13. The Creator God must really love us to give us these trees and water and deer nibbling by and yellow and blue and orange butterflies fluttering this way and that and grasshoppers playing along the path.


14. For the last one, you'll have to go to the Misfit blog. I will tell you this: it has to do with fire.

Share and Share Alike (and Other Platitudes I Dislike)

Camping Story #2—Another Pot Story
So the next morning a representative from Xena’s site comes over to ours.
“Hey, you guys got anything to boil eggs in?” he asks.
Chris jumps up. “Sure. Will a coffee pot work?”
What? My coffee pot? The one I just bought two days before? My first actual camping coffee pot? And let me reiterate—COFFEE pot! Coffee, people. Do you know how much I treasure this? But I smile.
“Uh, you guys smoke?”
We shake our heads no.
“Your friends?” He gestures to Patty and Charl.
Another no.
“Cuz we could do a trade.”
And become the next Wandering Lady of Turner Falls? I don’t think so.
“Don’t worry about it,” Chris says.
“I’ll have it back in an hour.”
It takes an hour to boil eggs? I set my mental stopwatch.
An hour passes.
“Babe, do you think we’ll see our coffee pot again?” I really like that coffee pot. Sentimental value. My first camping coffee pot.
Chris shrugs. “Probably. But if not, oh well.”
But we’re poor! Whadya mean, oh well? Still, I smile.
Another hour passes. I want my coffee pot.
Not too much longer after that, the guy from Xena’s campsite returns the coffee pot. “Thanks. Sorry about the mess. I didn’t have anything to clean it with.”
Still smiling, I wait until he leaves before examining said mess. I open the lid. A thick layer of red grease bubbles on the top. Since when do eggs have red grease? I remove the inside percolating devices. Black, burnt food sticks to the bottom. I take it over to the river, rinse it as best as I can, then grab a spoon and start scraping.
My new coffee pot. Chris isn’t worried. It’s still usable. Get off what we can. It'll still boil water.
But it’s my new coffee pot. I scrub, and I scrub, and I scrub.
If a man asks for your cloak, give him your tunic as well.
Man, sometimes I dislike being a Christian. I like my tunic. Chris seems to get this no problem, Bob. He’s the most generous man I know.
Clink-clink, goes the spoon against the bottom. More burnt food (who knows what food) gathers in the water swishing in the pot.
Me, I get sentimentality attached to things. So-and-so made this tunic for me, or I wore this tunic when I first met Chris. But share I must.
I examine my pot. About two-thirds gone.
Share and share alike.
Hey, the guy was willing to share with us too.
So back at home, some of the burnings remain after cleaning and cleaning, but maybe these burnings can be the scars that remind me to share my tunic.

Oh, what a beautiful morning

This weekend we went to O-O-O-O-Oklahoma where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain. We camped at Turner Falls, and for those of you who camp, I would suggest trying this area. The front area (more day trippers—I’m just full of songs today) was more commercialized, but the fall itself was magnificent. Swimming areas, a small stretch of sandy beach, and of course, a castle. Why not have a castle in O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A Oklahoma, yeah? Apparently, in the thirties an English professor at Oklahoma University built it modeled on middle ages English castles. It was his summer home. I guess profs made a bunch more back then. The tent camping area is more secluded. We found a spot right on the rushing river. You don’t really see the other campers. And you don’t see any lights except for the stars, which explode in the sky after the sun goes skinny dipping.
Saturday night, after dark, long after dark, a girl appears by our campfire. The guys were off to the side I think cleaning up something, maybe tying up the trash bags because of the raccoons. This girl, with eyes that didn’t focus anywhere just stands there until my friend Patty asks, “Are you okay?” with her South African accent.
“I’m looking for Xena. Is Xena here?” the girl draws in a breath of cancer from her cigarette.
As in the warrior princess?
“No,” Patty says, “Sorry.”
“I must be at the wrong campsite.”
Ya think?
She wanders away with a dim flashlight. The guys return, and we relate the story. Patty’s reaction: I hope she’s okay. If she’s lost, she’ll be lost all night.
My reaction: maybe she’s the Wandering Lady of Turner Falls searching for Xena’s campsite from the 1930s. The castle-professor had fallen in love with her, but she did not return the emotion, and now she’s doomed to search for Xena forever (because Xena saved her from his clutches in the 30s, or course).
My sweet, caring husband, upon seeing her flashlight again, goes out to help her.
Scenario number two: It’s a ploy. A trap. She lures away the men in the camp to torture them. Meanwhile, others come in and kidnap the women and children. I start praying. Please return my sweet, caring husband to me. And I don’t even watch sci-fi. (Although you should have seen my nightmare last night. Bruce Willis was my father, and he was not a good guy.)
Chris returns. What’s the story? we ask.
“She’s stoned,” he starts. We got that. “I asked her where she came from [cotton-eyed Joe, to keep up the songs]. ‘You know that area where you’re not supposed to drive?’ she said.”
We nod. We know.
Chris continues. “‘We drove there.’ I knew exactly where she was cause I saw that truck earlier. She said Xena—not the warrior princess—did you actually ask her that?” Chris asks me. I hadn’t. She must have come up with it all on her own in her drugged stupor. “Xena the Russian-” okay “-was with a group that jump started our car today and now we’re the best of friends and camping together.”
And they probably had a stash of something.
“When we got to this tiny stream, she turned her flashlight off, told me she knew where she was, and didn’t go any further until I had turned around,” Chris says.
I jump in. “So if it was scenario number one with the Wandering Lady of Turner Falls, she knew that anyone who crossed the tiny stream (River Styx?) with her would be doomed to Hades. If scenario number two, then she grew to like you because you were caring and didn’t try any hokey-pokey business and so she decided to let you go and return to the camp unharmed and in time to save us.” Of course, Patty’s husband, Charl, was still there to prevent aforementioned kidnappings.
Rolled eyes on all sides.
So back to the beautiful morning, Lisa Samson started it all, Mary DeMuth emailed me—along with several others—about it, fellow Misfit Michelle participated, and Robin participated then tagged me. Wshoo. That’s a lotta links, folks, especially considering the pic-in-a-post, too. Morning faces. Pure morning. And I took the picture. Second morning of our camping excursion. Pre-coffee. Unwashed hair. The whole business. But, I can’t bring myself to post it. It would take out the intrigue, and I need just a little mystery (for those of you who do know what I look like, just pretend). So here’s me enjoying the falls. Note: hair is unwashed and unfixed and in an awkward growing-out stage. And I rarely wear make-up anyways, so can this count? And pic was still taken pre-coffee.