Funny how I slept better in a tent in the woods than I can in my semi-air-conditioned apartment.
Perhaps the total cliche of leaving the city life [and all my unmentionable worries] behind?
No facebook or instagram for over 24 hours. Only one email check to anticipate any work disasters and a few brief texts to my guardian angels to confirm I was alive and not eaten by a hyena or crumpled at the bottom of a ravine, neither of which probably existed in this popular and populous redwood area of Northern California [though I was also prepared with a bright orange whistle should text service not be available]. Very few thoughts of the election, work or family dramas. A weekend of airplane mode.
Or it was the air mattress.
Despite my largely unbrushed hair, historical foray into the herbivorian arts, and an admittedly almost daily consumption of the ubiquitous bars, I've never thought of myself as particularly "granola". I don't get the smell of patchouli. I never liked birkenstocks [or open-toed shoes PERIOD] because I'm not chill like the Dude and I don't want my shoes slipping on and off willy-nilly. I wash and condition my hair almost every day lest it become a veritable birds' nest. I sometimes even wear a bra to bed [not intentionally a counter-women's-lib statement, but fear of gravity percolates...]. I grew up in a city suburb that liked to think of itself as a forest but was more Versailles than backwoods East Texas and my only "summer camp" experience was a seasonal daycare at an athletic club where we ate our packed lunches on indoor racquetball courts. To say I've never roughed it is an understatement.
I can count on one hand the camping experiences I've had. Never more than a night, never too far from the car or plumbing. The best was Camp Skeeter: an artificial and entirely indoor experience in elementary school, complete with microwave smores and flashlight ghost stories. The point of it all escapes me, but we made god's eyes from sticks and yarn. My-little-pony sleeping bags were more for sleepovers on friends floors [after a brief hazing with frozen underwear] than actual protection against the elements. The worst was in New Hampshire when the rock hard floor and the freezing cold despite my hoodie and sweatpants woke me up at 4 am and I bolted for the car for rapid rewarming.
So, even though I'd done extensive research on sleeping bag warmth, comfort and compressibility [a total win when I clamored dead-last aboard the third flight I'd been on standby for and there was no room for anything in the overhead bins and was forced to tetris both of my mid-sized bags below the seat in front of me], I wasn't going to turn down the exceedingly thoughtful air mattress. It fit perfectly in the tent, like the all-mattress-floor room in the dream house I'd imagined as a child [another room composed entirely of a trampoline floor]. We stayed two nights under the stars, with only a minor re-inflating. I think I saw the Big Dipper, but then again I always think that.
The redwoods of Northern California don't disappoint. If I wrote poetry it would reference the deep greens, dense rolling fogs, covens of gargantuan trees and the soft springy underfoot. Instead I'll just store the memory [and potentially a facebook photo essay] of a slightly over-ambitious day hike, chasing waterfalls amid throngs of equally ill-prepared glampers in baubles and jeans. With a celebratory snow cone at the end.
The drive up the PCH back toward San Francisco was equally surreal, open farmland expanding on either side until it tumbled over cliffs into the sea. Hard to imagine so much empty space in such a densely populated, highly-sought-after peninsula. Even harder to come back to the mega-sprawl, super fluorescent, smokey smoggy haze that is descending over LAX. Convinced myself I could see the Santa Clarita wildfire over the hills from the plane, an irregular orange glow in the dark, licking up acres and creeping toward the city. Or maybe the vilification of L.A. in my overactive imagination was just my cranky Sunday-night appeal to not have to return to work and adulthood in the morning.
Perhaps the total cliche of leaving the city life [and all my unmentionable worries] behind?
No facebook or instagram for over 24 hours. Only one email check to anticipate any work disasters and a few brief texts to my guardian angels to confirm I was alive and not eaten by a hyena or crumpled at the bottom of a ravine, neither of which probably existed in this popular and populous redwood area of Northern California [though I was also prepared with a bright orange whistle should text service not be available]. Very few thoughts of the election, work or family dramas. A weekend of airplane mode.
Or it was the air mattress.
Despite my largely unbrushed hair, historical foray into the herbivorian arts, and an admittedly almost daily consumption of the ubiquitous bars, I've never thought of myself as particularly "granola". I don't get the smell of patchouli. I never liked birkenstocks [or open-toed shoes PERIOD] because I'm not chill like the Dude and I don't want my shoes slipping on and off willy-nilly. I wash and condition my hair almost every day lest it become a veritable birds' nest. I sometimes even wear a bra to bed [not intentionally a counter-women's-lib statement, but fear of gravity percolates...]. I grew up in a city suburb that liked to think of itself as a forest but was more Versailles than backwoods East Texas and my only "summer camp" experience was a seasonal daycare at an athletic club where we ate our packed lunches on indoor racquetball courts. To say I've never roughed it is an understatement.
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| Sunset from the campsite |
I can count on one hand the camping experiences I've had. Never more than a night, never too far from the car or plumbing. The best was Camp Skeeter: an artificial and entirely indoor experience in elementary school, complete with microwave smores and flashlight ghost stories. The point of it all escapes me, but we made god's eyes from sticks and yarn. My-little-pony sleeping bags were more for sleepovers on friends floors [after a brief hazing with frozen underwear] than actual protection against the elements. The worst was in New Hampshire when the rock hard floor and the freezing cold despite my hoodie and sweatpants woke me up at 4 am and I bolted for the car for rapid rewarming.
So, even though I'd done extensive research on sleeping bag warmth, comfort and compressibility [a total win when I clamored dead-last aboard the third flight I'd been on standby for and there was no room for anything in the overhead bins and was forced to tetris both of my mid-sized bags below the seat in front of me], I wasn't going to turn down the exceedingly thoughtful air mattress. It fit perfectly in the tent, like the all-mattress-floor room in the dream house I'd imagined as a child [another room composed entirely of a trampoline floor]. We stayed two nights under the stars, with only a minor re-inflating. I think I saw the Big Dipper, but then again I always think that.
 |
| One of the waterfalls on the Berry Creek Falls Trail |
The drive up the PCH back toward San Francisco was equally surreal, open farmland expanding on either side until it tumbled over cliffs into the sea. Hard to imagine so much empty space in such a densely populated, highly-sought-after peninsula. Even harder to come back to the mega-sprawl, super fluorescent, smokey smoggy haze that is descending over LAX. Convinced myself I could see the Santa Clarita wildfire over the hills from the plane, an irregular orange glow in the dark, licking up acres and creeping toward the city. Or maybe the vilification of L.A. in my overactive imagination was just my cranky Sunday-night appeal to not have to return to work and adulthood in the morning.
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