Friday, May 1st, 6:50 AM. Max and I are standing in front of his school wearing nametags on green lanyards, and hoisting enormous bags on our shoulders. Our sack lunches have been labeled and placed in the box with the rest of Bus 1. Over the course of the next three days, we will go into the woods of Northern Tennessee with 75 of Max's fellow second graders, and perhaps 40 to 50 parents, teachers, and people with a loose grasp of authority. I can't go into a lot of detail that I'd like to, simply because it would require me putting people's names here that probably shouldn't be here. So I'll hit some highlights, and then invite you to peruse the new photo album over to the left, which I will painstakingly caption. With love.
The place where we went was called Land Between the Lakes, which I'm sure is a paradise when the grey and pregnant sky's not dropping rain for three days. We slept in bunk beds (there's something reassuring about having your kid asleep on a shelf above you) and ate institutional - but by no means bad - food out of mint green trays. We learned about outdoor survival, beavers, tree life cycles, frogs, fish, snakes, ponds, streams, hunting, hiking & various animals. The main lodge where the mess hall was had many taxidermied corpses, and a couple of live reptiles. We ate s'mores and campfired, we read by flashlight, we got along with people in rough situations, and we dismissed others as anchors to our woodsy progress. I got to see how Max is with his friends, and I patched wounds, fixed glasses, helped kids through mud and cold and muck and rain. We wrestled and sang and played and ran and made up superheroes in the rain, and one night - I told like six ghost stories. In short - it was awesome, I'm glad I went, and Max & I had a great time.
I particularly enjoyed the beaver hike through six inches of muck - seriously. I don't know why I had a good time, but I did. I liked the stream study, and the part that most of the parents hated - their kids flying by in a rushing rapid - I thought was the shit. Friday night, after the boys in my cabin were out - Buds & stogies and Wild Turkey were had by grown men in the dark on a damp porch. The trip did not end until about 5pm on Sunday, and re-entering our normal lives, when no one tells you when to eat, and your primary worries aren't about shelter and moving forward, was weird. I didn't see a computer all weekend. I didn't use a phone. I didn't know what time it was unless someone told me.
It's weird to be nostalgic for two days ago already.