ok, i want to keep going at this--too much stuff is happening these days, and I want to get this wilderness camp stuff out of the way, so i can post pictures of halloween and projects and stuff! So:

Stress Camp
Day 2:

We'd been up until midnight the night before, so I felt ok about letting everyone sleep in until 8am, and nobody seemed to mind! this being the first morning, however, everyone was really sluggish, and even though we didn't eat breakfast until we'd been hiking for a bit, it still took us until about 9:30 to break camp.

The kids in the lead that day were having a hard time...well, leading, really. eventually i talked to the whole group about it. they were good about waiting for the slowest person to catch up (they never really picked up on the whole "slowest person first" thing, though), and then they would wait for the slowest people to be ready to go. the slow ones, though, were just fine sitting around as long as they were allowed to, not really realizing that the leaders were waiting for the ok from them. this meant that we'd take breaks every 30 minutes, and some of the breaks were 15 or 20 minutes long. not great progress.

every year, i end up taking the hardest, or one of the hardest, routes, totally by accident. in fact, every year i think to myself, "ok, last year was just too hard and too long. let's make things a little more enjoyable this year." when i say that to myself every year, there's a problem. i think, somehow, the group just ends up hiking far, far slower than i think is even possible; i mean, i plan the route assuming we'll be going really, really slow. maybe i just forget? anyways, this year was shaping up to be pretty much exactly the same. we would trail markers with distances on them, and the kids would exclaim, "we've gone 2 kilometers already!" and i would inwardly echo them, but with less "excitement" and more "chagrin". it was shaping up to be another long hike into the night. The kids didn't know it, but i was actually hoping to be in another hut for the second night. i know, i know, totally sissy, blah blah. in my defense, when i was making these plans, the weather was supposed to be really rainy, so it seemed like a good idea.

anyways, back to the "present", the kids leading, also the only kids with a watch, kept stopping for breaks, but not stopping for lunch, which i thought was strange. we were eating snacks like crazy (another thing i have a problem with is passing out snacks--it's just sort of a hassle usually. i bought a new pack this summer, and it has an "easy access" zipper on the side, and, as nelle pointed out, the more snacks i pass out the less i carry. so, we finally stopped for lunch at about 3pm, right next to a road; pretty much the least picturesque spot on our hike so far. as the kids munched on costco bagels and nutella, my co-leader beatrice and i wandered off for a conversation.

the problem is, in the woods, it gets dim at 4, and totally dark by 5. it was now 3, and we still had to do our activity for the day--a blindfold walk/follow hike-thing. because of slow guy #1 and #2, we were 50% of the way to the second hut, which meant at least 5 more hours of hiking. if we didn't want to hike to the hut, though, and chose to stay outside, the best spot for staying outside, according to the map, was ironically about 5 minutes away. conundrum: do we do the activity well and call it a day, or do we rush the activity and hike long and hard? the weather was pretty good, not too wet or anything... my gut desire was to hike all the way to the hut. after all, we really hadn't gone that far, or hiked that hard, but in the back of my mind, i remembered the surveys last years' group filled out. when asked if they would ever do something like this ever again, all but one of my kids circled "under no circumstances". and even though i knew the kids could make it to the hut, eventually, i just didn't want them to hate wilderness camp. besides, i realized, if we stopped now, we would get to the hut about lunch the next day, and we had a solo planned, and the hut would be a great spot to base the solo out of.

so that's what we did. bea (co-leader) and i ran ahead, and found a clearing just like the map said. interestingly, it was a chestnut grove, full of those little spiky things. the thought of being beaned in the head with one was on everyone's mind.

The activity went really well, and we still had time afterwards to hang out in the grove and learn how to put up flysheets and everything. Bea and i had some fun with a can of bug spray and a lighter--she discovered that literally exactly where she'd been planning on putting her head to sleep was a slightly buried bees' nest. BEES! it wasn't too big, but there were probably 50+ insects in there. so we did what any responsible hikers would have done: we toasted them! in my defense, some of the gals in the team were paralyzingly afraid of bees, and i didn't like the idea of pissing off the bugs and having them, you know, swarm and kill and eat us. because this is what happens in the woods.

I did laugh harder that night than i have ever laughed on wilderness camp in my life, but unfortunately it's a story that doesn't transfer very well to text. briefly, though, the important parts of the story are that most of the guys on the team were very easily scared of the dark, and i was very good at sneaking off the second they stopped watching me. my moment of glory was when i "disappeared" by hiding behind a tree, and the guys looked back and screamed, "OH MY GOSH!!!! MR. POTTER'S GONE!!!!!" and the whole group of guys, having just finished a pee-trip a ways down the trail, sprinted for camp in such a panic that they actually ran across the trail and down into the woods on the other side. THEN not only was i "coming to get them" (by laughing silently behind a tree), but they were "lost" to boot.

It was interesting to me that they really were terrified to be out in the woods alone. they were absolutely floored when i told them that i could, and would love to, spend the night in the woods alone, or hike for a few days on my own. they sort of have this "us or them" mentality about nature, rather than seeing themselves as a part of nature. probably has something to do with technology. stupid computers.

we got a raging fire going that night, using only soggy wood and the power of teamwork (and the skills of an amazing fire builder). our mac and cheese actually boiled over! and it was so, so delicious. as we were bedding down, some of the gals sharing a flysheet began laughing hysterically about absolutely nothing, and showed no signs of stopping. they were keeping everyone awake, and i thought, "if they have this kind of energy, we really didn't hike hard enough today." other than that, though, i really don't regret the choice to stay. like i said, it means they had a much more positive time!