I went camping in the white mountains over the weekend. My dad and I drove up together, however we didn't camp in the same place; I camped by the river (1/2 a mile through the forest) and he stayed in the hut. I camped in the same area near the river almost exactly two years earlier with Thea and Ravi. The weekend forecast called for rain, so I made sure I came prepared. I love roughing it as much as possible, so I used birch bark to start my fire instead of newspaper. It's amazing how well it burns, even when wet. Even though I brought my laptop with me, I decided to leave it in the car instead of risking getting it wet. I did, however, manage to respond to email questions about my eBay auctions using my Blackberry -- reception wasn't great, but I was able to do what I needed every time I got a 2 minute window of reception.
Due to the Nor'easter we had a few weeks ago, there were lots of trees that were blown over. It was pretty wild -- seeing huge trees toppled over in the middle of the forest, as if a giant came by an pushed them over. The trees certainly helped with finding my way back to the hut, as they were very easy spot landmarks! My dad found a really weird foam donut created by the water in the stream. I posted a video of it on YouTube.
It felt so good to walk around barefoot on the rocks and in the mud. For Saturday night, I decided to carry four logs down from my Dad's dry wood stash. Everything was so wet that I had to constantly be feeding the fire to keep it going. I figured the effort I put into carrying the logs down canceled out the hard work required to constantly feed the fire, so technically I was still roughing it. 🙂 That night, I heard a big splash in the river, like someone throwing a softball size stone into the water. After staring into the darkness for several minutes at the shape of a big animal moving through the water, I finally concluded it was a beaver and I had no reason to worry. The following morning the beaver was still out there, swimming around and cleaning himself off. I'm still not entirely sure how the hell he could make such a loud splashing sound... it didn't sound like his tail!
Sunday morning, I managed to hit myself in the knee with my hatchet while cutting down the trunk of a birch tree to use for a morning fire. Luckily it was nothing serious, but it made me realize I need to be more careful with my body. I have a long life to live and the more damage I do to my body now, the lower my quality of life will be as I get older. If I did some serious damage to my knee(s) now, it would effect me for the rest of my life.
It drizzled on and off the whole weekend, however it was mostly warm and cloudy on Saturday (I even saw a hint of blue sky!). Sunday morning it started to rain consistently, which wasn't so bad since we left by noon. Overall, I had an awesome time. Each time I go camping, I seem to realize more and more how much I miss nature. The air smells to clean and life feels so natural. I made the decision to try and sell two of my three rental properties. I'm also going to try to make the time to go camping once a month, April - September.
