camping: preparation

When artname heard I was thinking about going camping, he did three very helpful things:

1. Let me borrow his tent.
2. Found and mailed me tent assembly instructions.
3. Advised me repeatedly to make sure it was light out the first time I tried to put the tent together.

So I carefully determined what time sunset would be last night, and left early enough to get to Butano State Park with plenty of daylight left.

Here are some things I didn't realize before I made the trip:

1. Sunset, calculated astronomically, happens long after it's gotten dark in "a secluded redwood-filled canyon".
2. The instructions Barry had sent me described a tent tantalizingly similar in construction to Barry's tent, but not actually the same.

After nearly an hour in the dark with a flashlight, I had enough of the pieces attached in one way or another to feel like I could stop.

camping: observations

1. The flashlight I keep in the car for emergencies is, it turns out, good only for very short emergencies.
2. At home, at night, I am well insulated from the world. I have walls around me, and I usually have sensory distractions as well--a book to read, music to listen to, until I drop off. Last night, after I shut out the lights and turned off the iPod, all I had around me was some plastic sheeting that breathed in and out, swaying slightly in the wind, and sounds of unknown motion inches away from my head. The world was too much with me.
3. I dreamed fitfully of a large reunion at (surprise) a campground. At the reunion I saw one of the women in my life I've not so much admired from afar as admired from nearby but never quite admitted to admiring. In my dream I didn't waste the chance to talk to her.
4. Whatever's wrong with my chest--my current guess is a pulled muscle--sleeping on the ground without a lot of pillows around to support my arms sure wasn't good for it.
5. Birds are really loud in the morning.

camping: conclusions

So the reason I went out with a tent last night was, I was thinking about this cross-country trip that's coming up awfully fast now. I've got friends with couches at a lot of my stops, but, you know, not all of them, and lodging can be expensive. So I thought it might be cheaper to buy a tent of my own and sleep in campgrounds when possible.

(When I was younger, my parents drove us around most of the United States with a tent trailer. I remember a lot of cool places we visited, but my memories of camping itself range from hazy to uncomfortable to mortifying. So I went into the camping experiment with some doubts, too.)

The experiment had its fun moments, but I'm thinking for reasons of health, hygiene, and happiness, I couldn't camp out very much. I need to finalize my trip plan (it's about time!) and figure out if it would be worth camping out a little.