Camping!

Leah, Daniel, and I are camping! If Jess is reading this, I still need to go camping with you, and I haven't forgotten. This is a last minute sort of decision thrown out there by Daniel when we realized we couldn't spend the three day weekend in Atlanta.

Now, usually, by camping I mean that me, my brother, and maybe ten others from our youth group friend group are on an island in the middle of the intercoastal waterway with nothing but firewood, food stuffs, some clothes, tents, sleeping bags, chairs, and a few other nifty supplies. How did we get to this island? We canoed. Two people to a canoe, with all of our stuff in the middle of the canoes, and maybe one small boat bringing some larger supplies. Dustin, my brother, led us down a dead end canal and we had to actually stand in the two foot deep water at this point to turn our canoes around, since it's a good hour canoe ride from the boat dock to our island. In the midst of changing the paddle from side to side, we have dripped water on all of our stuff, which is now miserably wet, except that I packed lazily and threw my bedding in a plastic bag, which kept it dry. Or, another scenario is that we couldn't borrow the canoes so we used Dustin and Brandon's boats to make three half hour trips per boat to get everyone ferried across, which would be much easier if the shear pin on Dustin's boat didn't have to be replaced every forty minutes and if Brandon's boat was reliably working and didn't have something wrong with the sparkplug. Eventually we all get to the island, though, and it's well past sunset and dinner time. Luckily, I was in the first batch of people dropped off before the boats acted up, and while Shane, Jared, and I waited for everyone else to arrive, I killed time by creating a fire from a lighter that one of us had and the sticks and wood that was already on the island (it's a large wooded island. Quite nice. A cat lives on it, too.) Eventually (four hours later) everything arrives, and then we set up tents in the little light we have and we proceed to "rough it" on our island with only nature and the few things we could bring with us. Just us and nature, on an island wiht only what we could bring, and a half hour unreliable boat ride and a fifteen minute drive past that from civilazation.

Daniel, Leah, and I, however, camp slightly different...for cost and conveneince reasons, and because this was very last minute. So, we rented a cabin--Kabin--from KOA camp--kampgrounds. (KOA thinks it's clever to replace all the usual C words with Ks, like KOA. Ha.) Now this lovely little Kabin has everything necessary. Electricity? Real lights? Oh my! We have a bathroom within walking distance! We have running water! We are a short drive--we have a car here!--from food places and caramel iced coffee. We have mattresses! We have heating! I recall one morning waking up on the island with everyone complaining about having shivered all night. I, having checked the weather before we left, packed long underwear and flannel pants, and remained quite warm the entire night. This was the same trip where only my bedding remained dry. I lucked out and was quite more cheerful than anyone else.

However, Daniel, Leah, and I are not concerned with the fact that the interstate is visible from the Kabin window and sounds quite like a tornado at times when attempting to sleep. We still attempted to create a fire on the ground that had been rained on all day with the damp firewood. We even made some killer smores. We stayed outside and sang in wonderful harmonies for a good hour on the small front porch on our Kabin, not using any of the electricity or water, just us and the stars and our voices. That proved to be miraculous, as it healed us from our grouchy moods, caused by seeing too much of each other in the past week. Then, back in the Kabin, we used the wireless network less than we might have had we not been camping...

However, as much as I laugh at some of the KOA kamping, it's still wonderful. I love camping, in all shapes and forms. More than anything, I love the trip and the bonding time with friends. I love going on adventures with any friends. I love being away from school, just out and doing something different than usual, familiar life. And we may not be compeltely isolated from the world, but we are alone enough that I'm afraid that we'll become characters in some terrifying horror movie, where we realize that some crazed killer is after us. I personally believe that they'd be after Daniel in particular. Leah and I would just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'd probably be the first to go, just because I'd be the minor character that was of little importance. Daniel would nearly escape, but his death would be the worst. Maybe he'd go jogging the next morning near a lake, and then a truck would try to run him over, and it'd be named Good Day. Maybe my afformentioned dream was a premonition to KOA Kamping.

Well, back to roughing it in the wild, by watching movies on the computer and eating Oreos inside of our Kabin. I will post again one day if it turns out that my dreams do not predict outcomes of our excursions into the wild.