Over the weekend I went camping with my friends. Thursday night was the teenagers graduation and by Friday afternoon I was in a car on my way to camp. This trip was never supposed to happen. My first camping experience was when I was 11 0r so. It was very last minute. One of my uncles was going up to the mountains with another couple and their daughters and he stopped by our house to borrow something, saw that I was one of only two kids at the house for the weekend (a rarity in our household, the rest were at an out of town wedding) and told me and my brother to pack up a bag each and come with him. There were four kids and all four of us stayed in this tiny camper, while the adults stayed in tents. We rode around on an ATV and fished and hiked and it didn't rock my world or anything. I went home on Sunday night and was exhausted but went on about my life. That same year, my school took their annual overnight mountain trip and we stayed in cabins and took the longest cold weather hike of my life. I've never been traditionally camping since. I went to Vail last year with my girlfriend and we stayed in a friend's cabin, but that's as close as I have come.
One of my best friends loves the mountains and always has. Since the day we met, she's been determined to get me to go camping with her. I always avoided it and then awhile back we were walking through Target and there was a nice little camping scene set up near the back of the store. This scene had the biggest tent I have ever seen, with like four "rooms" and a "moon roof" and set up alongside it was this portable shower thing and fire pit and so on. Believing that it would never happen, I jokingly told my shopping party that the only way I would go camping is if I had that entire set up. It's not that I dislike the outdoors, I love them. What I hate are bugs (and we're talking, like, passionate hate, here. I don't even kill spiders if their in my own house, I call on anyone else to do it..girly, I know). And camping in a tent on the ground just reminds me of bugs. If we were in a cabin or a trailer or anything else, I'd go in a second. But that was not what she wanted. So Thursday morning I wake up to find every single thing, down to the mosquito nets and repellent, from that Target display sitting in my living room. I was shocked. She said I had no excuse now and that we were going over the weekend, in part to celebrate one of our friends birthdays.
The drive was so much fun and the overall experience wasn't that bad. I'm not looking forward to doing it again anytime soon, but I have to admit I had fun. Today was a recovery day, mostly. Running errands and getting ready for the week ahead. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow because something went wrong with my knee yesterday out in the woods. I hope it's nothing serious, but I have a feeling it is. My leg isn't real stable anymore to begin with and now I go out and do God knows what to it. It was amazing being out there amongst the stars this weekend though. I mean, first off, I love s'mores and I haven't had one since I was about nine, so it was nice to bring that back. But I've always been big into space and astronomy too (my niece and I are hooked on 'The Universe' on the History Channel) and to just hang out there with no city sounds and no smog or bright lights. We all talked a lot and I got a chance to do a lot of thinking. I thought about the last seven years or so and how I got from point A to point B. And I got to thinking about how I'm in a really good place now. I'm happy and, on a good day, I'm in a stable relationship with a gorgeous little girl. And we're genuinely working on keeping it that way. And I decided that I've gotta be done with certain things and certain people. Both for the sake of my sanity and my relationship.
