I’m not very good at camping. I haven’t gone that many times in my life. At this point the majority (in a simple numerical sense) of my camping experiences have been with Burning Man people mostly when I was dating Daddy J and he took care of me. I’m not very good at the mechanics of the process. I have no early experiences to lean on.

Over the past few years I’ve tried to go a few times. The first time I tried to go on a group trip it resulted in being told at the end of the trip, “I am never going camping with you again.” Totally fair. I was difficult in a variety of ways. I’m not really eager to have everyone I know repeat the same line so I have to figure out how to be less difficult.

I now am of the opinion that I should just always set up camp and take it down alone. At some point I am going to walk away to a place I can hide for a while and sob. I feel incompetent, I feel stupid, I feel like I am doing everything wrong, I feel like I am about to break ALL THE THINGS. So if I’m alone I can walk away and cry for a while and no one will be mad at me.

I liked that most of the home school families set up their own hearths and mostly stayed there. The kids ran back and forth but other than one three-family hearth everyone else mostly stayed in their own space. I took advantage of this and never set up a hearth. I spent my time going between campsites. I’d spend half an hour or so with each family then wander away again. This way I never pick a team.

If I limit how much time I spend around any given person then I am unlikely to say something rude or offensive. I am much better at censoring what I say if I keep the contact for short duration.

There are a lot of eddies of tension in the group. Luckily none of them involve me near as I can tell. I am working very hard to make sure I am never a central figure in the group. I don’t want to be an organizer. I don’t want to be a figurehead person because all of them end up being treated kind of shitty. That’s universal in every group. So I do my best to be very grateful and helpful when I show up and I walk away frequently with my hands up. I have no responsibility here.

The group didn’t stay together during the day. I went with the “no need to drive” hiking group because I’m a big whiny baby about having to drive. Man I hate driving. The trail we picked was rather steep. It was only a few miles round trip (maybe three or four miles round trip?) but it was straight fucking up a mountain. So I had to carry Calli piggy-back and she won’t sit in a fucking carrier. Heck, at this point I don’t even own one because I gave away the Ergo and that was my last hold out. (She started refusing carriers as soon as she could walk.)

So I had some internal moments of whining when the group took off at the speed of the 6-9 year olds who could all walk by themselves. Waaa. S’ok. We kept up well enough.

Shanna was pretty good about following the boundaries we set for her. This whole “I want to meet everyone in the world” thing is serious for her though. We have to watch her because she wanders off to meet all the neighbors. I’m having a hard time getting it through her head, “It is ok that you want to go meet new people. You need to bring an adult with you when you wander off without your friends.” We were letting them run mostly at-will as long as there were three or more kids from our group together. That was nerve wracking but awesome.

No one told me I wasn’t welcome back. That’s progress for me. I’ll take it.

I also saw these breathtakingly cool tents that have a self-contained pop-up top thing. So one person can put together a six person tent without a problem. I covet. The 3-4 person tent we have at this point was especially picked because I need to be able to put it up and take it down by myself. We managed to sleep ok this weekend (I just brought the cushions from the couch for the sleeping mat–that was awesome) but I don’t think this tent will work for all four of us for more than another two years. The kids will be just too big. It will work just fine for three of us forever-ish… Hrm. REI has a generous return policy. I may be returning the small tent and getting one that I can still put up but will actually hold all of us for a few years.

We live in the future.