Polyamory Camp - Day 1
Polyamory camp took place August 19th to August 22nd, a Friday through a Monday. It was similar to the polyamory gathering it was modeled after - a four day weekend with fifty polyamorous people sharing activities, meals, and spaces together.
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The difference between the gatherings I had been to before and this one, was that this one took place on a camp ground. Instead of a mansion full of musical instruments, we had cabins, a lake and kayaks. Instead of a luxurious living room full of couches, carpets and antique furniture, we had a huge recreational hall as a dance floor.
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This was the first year of polyamory camp, but it was expected to be a yearly event that took place in August. This placed it well between the polyamory gatherings that happened in April and October in the mansion.
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Hibiscus was paying for all three of us to go.
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Friday, August 19th 2016
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It was a trying morning. Hibiscus was grouchy. Paladin was exhausted and bleary-eyed. I was worrying about packing my four days worth of food into my cooler.
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It wasn't straight-forward. I didn't expect to have any access to a refridgertor or freezer while I was there, so I was carefully putting Monday's food into a small cooler bag and then putting that bag inside a cooler bag that also held Sunday's food, and then putting that cooler bag into the cooler which also held Saturday's food. Friday's food went into a cooler bag outside of the cooler. The cooler was not to be opened until Saturday morning for breakfast.
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To make this possible, most of my food was frozen. Over the past week I had been putting berries and raw goat milk into pint-and-half mason jars and freezing them. This made for satisfying, delicious meals that would keep the entire cooler operation possible by providing so much frozen mass. I also packed grapefruits, home-made salsa, home-made crackers (to pair with the salsa), a yellow watermelon, home-made ginger-oat cookies, peaches, and a half-gallon mason jar of plain frozen milk (to pair with the peaches).
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Besides all of this, Paladin and Hibiscus hadn't made many preparations for themselves for the eight-hour drive there, and the eight-hour drive back. So I had made them raw oat cookies. I also packed dulse (a dried sea vegetable) for them and Paladin's lentils and hard-boiled eggs (which he had prepared). (The eggs came from next door, from Otter's chickens.)
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Paladin was rather tired, as he was not used to getting up so early. So, for a change, I was the one who loaded and packed Hibiscus's hybrid car. I felt okay about carrying things, but resentful about having to organize food and luggage both. I didn't like feeling responsible for all of our things. I'm so not cut out to ever be a mother, I thought. I'd be constantly resentful.
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We started the drive an hour later than planned. We all talked some, but Paladin slept most of it. Hibiscus was grouchy up until I took a turn at driving at he got a nap. His spirits were so much improved that he later asked me to tell him what had changed.
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"You napped," I said.
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"Was that all?" he asked.
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"Yes," I said.
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"So maybe I was just really tired," he said.
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I agreed, and silently promised myself to take over driving at future times when he was grouchy.
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We pulled onto the gravel road of the camp ground. Signs led us to the cabin where check-in was taking place. We were assigned our cabin. We drove up to our cabin. We unloaded our things and rearranged the beds. Then I came outside and a man was smoking right beside our car. He had a lawn chair set up between his RV and our car. In his lap was a book.
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"My wife has a severe smoke sensitivity," Paladin explained to him. He put out his cigarette. He began to talk about how he had rights as a smoker that were always being trampled on. He spoke fairly softly, seemingly untroubled. Hibiscus stayed in the cabin, wanting to avoid conflict.
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"I've been looking forward to being away from all the smoke of usual life, out here in nature where it would be safe.," I said, feeling frantic and defensive. "I just got out of the car after eight hours of dealing with traffic fumes. And here you are polluting the air right outside my cabin. You've got an RV. Can't you just move it somewhere else?"
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"I just spent an hour setting it up in the hot sun," he explained, a little defensiveness creeping into his voice. He went on more softly, "I'm very sensitive to sun, and I want to take a rest - and smoke a cigarette. Moving this thing is hard work."
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"Yes, but your RV moves. Our cabin doesn't move," I said.
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"I understand that," he said, "But I'm a very conscious smoker. If the wind is blowing toward your cabin, I won't smoke."
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I pinched the bridge of my nose. A conscious smoker, I thought, what an oxymoron. Or maybe, just a moron. How couldn't the organizers have thought about this? I'd specifically requested the furthest cabin so that I would be far, far away from any fumes or chemicals. And here there was a smoker parked less than twenty feet away from the cabin's front door.
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"I'll just talk to the organizers. I don't see any way I can work this out with you," I said.
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"Okay, talk to the organizers then," he said.
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So I walked the walk to the lobby, resentful that I wasn't changing into a bathing suit and taking a dip in the lake. The whole reason I'd wanted to get up so early and get to the camp by mid-afternoon was so that I could spend the afternoon kayaking or swimming. I didn't want to deal with a pesky smoker.
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I got to the lobby just as my parents were arriving. They had come all the way from Snowland, making their drive even longer than ours - except that Snowland was a major enough city to connect directly to the main highway, and my dad sped a lot, so their drive had also been about eight hours. It was nice to see them there.
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The organizers had decided to put my parents with me and my husbands in the same cabin. My mother was talking to them now about a possible transfer to a closer cabin due to pain in her hips that had been worse recently. Both of her hips had been replaced during my lifetime, and they still gave her trouble (of course).
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I brought up the issue of the smoker.
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"I will talk to him," Laren promised. "Have you guys already unloaded everything?"
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"Yeah," I said, remorseful.
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Laren frowned. "I'm sorry, but it seems like the best option is to trade cabins with the closest cabin. That will resolve your mom's issue and put your further away from the RV."
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I sighed, feeling sorry for myself. I checked out the location of the kitchen and where the bonfire was going to be. They seemed far enough away from the closest cabin. I would be alright there - I hoped. I agreed to the transfer. Good thing we got here before the people who were in the first cabin arrived.
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Hibiscus, Paladin and I moved everything over and spent time moving around the beds. The cabin wasn't as nice, but there was nothing I could do about that. I ran into the pesky smoker along the path during the process and stopped to talk to him.
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"I'm sorry," I said. "I got really defensive. You were trying to explain to me how you felt, and I just cut you off. I did the same thing to you that I hate others doing to me. People are often dismissive about my needs, and that isn't fair. I shouldn't be dismissive of your needs. I'm sorry for that."
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"Well, thank you," he said. He began to go on about how things had changed over the last thirty years. I took note of his long, starkly white hair and long white beard. Yeah, he'd been around a while. I listened politely, smiling, and then excused myself as quickly as I could.
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It was around five o'clock before we made it to the lake. Hibiscus and I went out in kayaks. He'd never tried one before and was rather delighted.
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"I definitely want to use a kayak for my river trip," he declared. He had a long-time dream of going down a very long river in a canoe and camping alongside the river at night. He expected that doing the entire river would take around a month. As much as I hated camping, and as complicated as my food needs made such adventures, I found myself drawn to the idea of doing it with him.
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"They're pretty nice, huh?" I agreed. We went up to a rock that was painted with a flag on it and paddled ourselves back to the beach.
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On the dock sat a couple. My dad had sat down with them and was talking to them. I called out a "hello" from my kayak. They introduced themselves. I forgot their names that evening, but later I looked back and realized that was when I first met Mahks.
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That evening there were many introductions and an orientation. Rooster arrived during the orientation and gave me a hug before going over to sit with one of his long-distance partners, Rosanne, that he spent time with at these sorts of poly events. Rosanne came roughly five-times the distance that we had come in order to be there. (Oryx, Rooster's other partner, didn't come. Neither did Hare, Oryx's long-time friend.)
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After orientation, a man gave a talk about polyamory and where it was heading as a movement. I hadn't really thought about it as a "movement" very much, and was rather surprised by what he had to say.
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"We made a lot of progress in the sixties and seventies. Free love and responsible drug use was a growing trend, but as it reached the masses, the message became distorted," the speaker explained. He illustrated how a good movement had tumbled down into a mess and was met with a huge backlash that crushed the movement.
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"Let's not let that happen with polyamory," he declared. "Polyamory is about loving multiple people. It is a responsible, ethical, consensual, compassionate practice. While polyamory can include wild orgies, that isn't what it is about. It is up to us, the forerunners of this lifestyle, to present to the world what it means to be polyamorous. Especially those of us who are publicly 'out' about it."
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Suddenly I felt a great desire to be so much more out with my own polyamory. I wanted to be that positive representation of polyamory.
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"The supply of attractive, articulate polyamorous people willing to go on television to talk about it is much smaller than the demand," he said a little later on. I'm attractive and articulate, I thought. Hibiscus squeezed my hand and looked at me. He was having the same thought.
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But in order for me to go on television, Paladin would have to be okay with it. It would mean Paladin coming out to his family. That old frustration. I had unfriended all of his family on facebook and changed my facebook to "friends only" so that I could be 'out' on facebook that summer. It was too painful to feel like I was hiding something.
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The evening was to conclude with a bonfire. Paladin went. Hibiscus stayed with me. I was very thankful that Hibiscus came back to the cabin with me. I didn't want to be alone while everyone else took part in an activity that I couldn't. It felt good to have an ally.
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We were too tired to have sex that night, but we talking for a little while. I put in my ear-plugs and pulled a large portion of my black sheet over my face. I had also set up a fan blowing at the wall to create white-noise. With these sleep-aids in place, I drifted to sleep and slept like a rock through the night.