That just-washed feeling
So I was on vacation last week (This is how I know I am grown-up: I go on vacation) and I went to two fabulous places: San Diego and Yosemite.
San Diego is the place I'd be living if I weren't married. However, I would also be a pot-smoking, jobless, beach bum mooching off my friends who work at Red Lobster, so I guess it's better this way. My cousin lives there, and I experienced a few days of her lifestyle and I realllllllly liked it. I liked it too much, I think, because I almost cried on the plane ride back home. Amber is the person I would be if I was born with a social gene. We have equal parts craftiness and mathematicalness, and we have the same nose and chin. She, though, knows how to talk to people and is energized by social interaction, whereas too many conversations drain my spirit. She is exactly where she wants to be in life, and it was exhilarating to be around her, even when we were just laying on the beach, drooling into the sand. There wasn't enough structure for me there, however, which is why I've determined that I'd be some sort of aimless layabout within weeks of settling in. That's how I would settle. In the sand.
So after mellowing out for a few days in SoCal, David and I went on the yearly Big Bob/Little Bob camping trip, courtesy of David's boss and his cohort at CalTech. Actually it was courtesy of David, who organized the Stanford side of the extravaganza. This year it was held in Yosemite, where I have been but once and that was just around the valley floor like countless other tourists. This time we had a gang of eager young chemists yearning to scale every mountain peak they saw! We hiked ten miles a day, up misting slippery waterfalls, across bald granite domes, down dusty steep hillsides-all over the place. Every night we had gourmet dinners of Korean barbecue, tri-tip and grilled veggies, and the ever popular foil dinners. The first night, when I looked around the campfire and saw a ring of people not quite sure what to do with themselves, I immediately racked my brain for a quick, energetic song to get everyone's mood up. I miss camp. I miss songs. I miss being goofy and having everyone go along with it. I haven't thought about how much camp was a part of my life until I was talking to one of the people we gave a ride to who also went to camp every summer of her formative years. I like being useful to society in my small way, helping "girls grow strong" or whatever. But I also feel like my time at camp has passed, and I can't go back again, like it's Narnia. Or if I do go back, I would have to be old, and have kids of my own...every time you go up a level of responsibility, the magic fades a bit. When you are in charge of adults, there is a separation between you and the raw heart of camp. Perhaps you appreciate camp in a different way when you are mature. Clearly I am not mature and I don't know if I ever will be.
I didn't even set out to wax nostalgic about camp. I wanted to say that I didn't wash myself for four days, and I'm still appreciating the shower I took last night after getting home from camping.
San Diego is the place I'd be living if I weren't married. However, I would also be a pot-smoking, jobless, beach bum mooching off my friends who work at Red Lobster, so I guess it's better this way. My cousin lives there, and I experienced a few days of her lifestyle and I realllllllly liked it. I liked it too much, I think, because I almost cried on the plane ride back home. Amber is the person I would be if I was born with a social gene. We have equal parts craftiness and mathematicalness, and we have the same nose and chin. She, though, knows how to talk to people and is energized by social interaction, whereas too many conversations drain my spirit. She is exactly where she wants to be in life, and it was exhilarating to be around her, even when we were just laying on the beach, drooling into the sand. There wasn't enough structure for me there, however, which is why I've determined that I'd be some sort of aimless layabout within weeks of settling in. That's how I would settle. In the sand.
So after mellowing out for a few days in SoCal, David and I went on the yearly Big Bob/Little Bob camping trip, courtesy of David's boss and his cohort at CalTech. Actually it was courtesy of David, who organized the Stanford side of the extravaganza. This year it was held in Yosemite, where I have been but once and that was just around the valley floor like countless other tourists. This time we had a gang of eager young chemists yearning to scale every mountain peak they saw! We hiked ten miles a day, up misting slippery waterfalls, across bald granite domes, down dusty steep hillsides-all over the place. Every night we had gourmet dinners of Korean barbecue, tri-tip and grilled veggies, and the ever popular foil dinners. The first night, when I looked around the campfire and saw a ring of people not quite sure what to do with themselves, I immediately racked my brain for a quick, energetic song to get everyone's mood up. I miss camp. I miss songs. I miss being goofy and having everyone go along with it. I haven't thought about how much camp was a part of my life until I was talking to one of the people we gave a ride to who also went to camp every summer of her formative years. I like being useful to society in my small way, helping "girls grow strong" or whatever. But I also feel like my time at camp has passed, and I can't go back again, like it's Narnia. Or if I do go back, I would have to be old, and have kids of my own...every time you go up a level of responsibility, the magic fades a bit. When you are in charge of adults, there is a separation between you and the raw heart of camp. Perhaps you appreciate camp in a different way when you are mature. Clearly I am not mature and I don't know if I ever will be.
I didn't even set out to wax nostalgic about camp. I wanted to say that I didn't wash myself for four days, and I'm still appreciating the shower I took last night after getting home from camping.