The Camping Itch

I'm an outdoors girl.

More like an adventure girl.

I always felt that by saying "I'm an outdoorsman", one would get the vision of a person dressed in camouflage, sporting a rifle in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. But if you say, "I'm all about adventure", you see a person paddling hard on the whitewater rapids, galloping quickly through fields and forest, swimming and splashing in a river with friends, and sleeping under that stars on a hammock at night.

Thus, I'm the adventure girl.

This past weekend I was driving to Ames, IA. It was the first time I was driving a long distance during the day. I watched Iowa pass by me; I saw the blend of the agriculture and the prairie, and I once again experienced a magnificent sunset.

If there is one thing I have had more exposure to in my life than any other place, it's the sunsets.

So anyway, I was getting a feeling of deja vu. Whenever close friends and I from Coe or anywhere else would pile in the car and go on another camping adventure, there's always the 'road trip'. Even if the 'road trip' is only a half an hour, you never miss out on the tingling anticipation on the way there, or the pull of nature and everlasting memories as you leave. It's almost as if the 'road trip' is longer than the camping experience itself.

Here's a pic of my friend Erin and Ted prepping for the 'road trip'. 

I was getting that 'road trip' feeling as I was driving into Iowa. It made me think of the greatest moments in life being on the camping trips:

Jumping in the Wapsipinicon river and losing glasses, eating homemade trail mix, staying up until 4 am to have the most silly and most meaningful conversations, mistaking boulders for bears, actually stumbling across bears (!!!), running through the campground shouting "giggity!" at the top of their lungs, splunking, kayacking, snorkeling Devil's Lake, having breakfast pancake mix wars, forgetting firewood- twice,  cheating by throwing futon mattresses in the tent for "luxury camping", "roughing it" and having to clear the land with a weed whacker and getting firewood with a chainsaw, shooting cans, making s'mores, ... the list goes on and on.

 

Pancake Wars.

It's the little things in life that make it worth it, especially when things are tough. These moments took only minutes, seconds, hours... but they have made me feel like my life is one of the greatest in the world. 

It's probably because camping is such a connection with the world. We can only be engaged with society for so long- with the classrooms, studying, socializing, studying, shopping, studying, research, studying, networking... did i mention studying? We can only take so much before we need to escape. Escape to relax, make ourselves center, actually think without everything going too fast around us. It's as if nature is taking us in the palm of its hand, and just cradling us while we remember who we are and why we live.

Damn...I miss camping. 

One of the best camping trips--ever.