The Great Outdoors

I recently went camping...in my backyard. Did you miss that post? Read it. Then come back here. We will wait. 

Welcome back. Well that back yard camping was an adventure in itself. It was super windy and despite George Graphos telling me that it would not rain...it rained. Thank goodness for nature calling to bring me to my senses and back inside to my warm bed. The next day as I waited for the tent to dry, I got the rest of my gear together for camping over Memorial Day. After 20 trips from the basement to the garage I finally had everything I needed:

• headlamp
• Freshette 
• sleeping equipment for myself and my mom
• cooking over the fire gear
• extra batteries for things
• fishing essentials
• camping chair with name stenciled on lovingly by staff members

Well fast foward to the actual trip. You know when you can do something perfectly when no one is watching but as soon as you have an audience you struggle to perform? Well that was me with the tent. All by myself in the backyard things went without a hitch- with my brother drinking a miller lite and judging me-I missed putting poles in, could not get the thing to stand up, set it up on an incline...sigh. I am the girl in the family. They think I am fancy and hate dirt and germs. Well dang it! I love dirt (in measured doses with soap and water nearby) and I can camp, fish and start fires with the best of them. I am one of those people that if I am going to do something, I am going to do it well. I will learn the right way to do it before I have to ask some dang man for help in doing it. So the tent pre-camp set up was also a reeducation in how to use my tent, it has been about three years since I have set it up. I did not want to be a fool in front of my brother. 

Anyway after the tent was up, the car air pump had inflated the mattresses and things were ready- my brother dared me to start a fire without an accelerant. I laughed at him. I start fires at my home in the driveway on a surface that is not flammable with a bucket of emergency water nearby almost weekly in the fall, spring and summer. He apparently always uses gas or some other flammable  liquid to start his fires and then cooks marshmallows over it consuming all of those nasties. Ewww. My mother had already gathered an appropriate amount of kindling on her walk when she first arrived at the site, so I needed the leaves or pine needles to use with the logs. I built my fire-starting pile with lots of air pockets, places to make sure the small twigs caught on fire and stayed lit, and with the logs. I lit that sucker and voila! Fire started and sustained through out the evening. 

After that first night my brother said he was proud of me for knowing how to do these things and I suppose, proving him wrong. I accepted that compliment because I think he meant it as such. Since I do not see them very often, I suppose it is acceptable for them to not know that I am the shit, the bee's knees, a bit of an overachiever. But maybe now he will believe me when I call and tell him of my accomplishments out here in the frozen tundra. Maybe.