Into the Woods
Friday
It's the always the best laid plans, innit? We all of us did our level best to leave out early enough so's to avoid making our camp in the dark of night. We did, and yet the sun was setting as we drove away - and it's 333 miles to the hunting ranch that crann_ull's friend owns from Orion Rising. Ah well, eh? Last year, when typsygypsy, myself, and her friend Krystle drove to the ranch, we made our camp at 4 in the morning. I suppose it's become tradition.
Our trek was further slowed by the most idiotic example of fast food hell that I've thus encountered. It took us easily half an hour to order and be server our meagre, rather lacklustre...well, I hesitate to call it _food_, yet we did eat it. At any rate, I think the ungodly amount of time was the universe's way of reminding us that these sorts of places aren't worthy of our custom. Truly it was a circumstance rather than a destination.
We also stopped at another bastion of retail hell to buy tarpaulins (alright--alright, two of us also bought barrettes, but what's it all to you? We were bonding) as we'd left ours home. That was actually a worthy endeavour - we really needed them, and now shaddowshoes and I have got one that better fits beneath our tent.
There weren't as many deer about as there were last year. Last year, they appeared to be sprouting out of the ground. This year, they were shy. We did notice a few poor devils who couldn't get out of the way in time - so it's best to be mindful of them, especially in the dark of night.
We arrived in Hunt (the ranch is in a town called Hunt) at round half-two in the morning, and we realised that we didn't exactly know how to get to the ranch from the town. Nobody had copied down that bit, and sure it isn't on a map. So we relied on typsygypsy's mental maps. And no, a chara, I didn't panic when we turned into the rocky, unlit road that seemed to lead Directly to Hell (not really). I was...erm...cautious, but not panicky. I'm far more entertaining when I panic. When I saw the river that one has got to ford in order to reach the campsite, I knew we'd actually found the ranch. We rumbled across the river (last year, it seemed more likely to break an axle - I think the rocks have settled a bit) and were met by a couple of fellows who'd not done with drinking for the night - they assured us that we'd not taken a wrong road and that our mates crann_ull and her man were two tents back and asleep.
We made our camp beneath a brilliant, sprawlling pecan tree at three o-clock in the morning (so we were an hour early), and somehow managed to avoid waking everybody - well, but for one fellow - but he assures us that we didn't bother him, so.
It was after our tents had been pitched - when we should have been crawlling into them to sleep - you know, like the rest of the humans there had done - when we noticed the stars. And stars. And stars. And Oh! A satellite! And is that galactic dust?! We dragged our chairs away from the tree, slumped back in them, and stared up at the dark. I counted four shooting stars, but I was mostly drawn to the galactic dust. I studied astronomy for a while at uni. I spent many hours at the missile range in the dark with the telescopes, and yet I'd never seen the dust that gives our quaint, rustic little galaxy its name. I'd even begun to suspect that the people who claimed to have seen it were mistaken. No, it's there, and it's visible under the right conditions. Amazing. We stayed there till exhaustion and the chill chased us into our tents.
Saturday
I think camping forces an early rise. Despite it being nigh unto four o-clock in the morning when the three of us wriggled into our tents, we emerged from them at round half-eight. typsygypsy had spotted, and fetched them back to our campsite. We walked to the kitchen cabin (there are cabins, but most of us slept in tents) for coffee and then down to a lanai that some of the core group had erected. crann_ull and her man introduced us round as the core group battled their hangovers with bloody marys. En garde, hangover! I shall smite thee with celery. Yeh, sort of thing.
Alright, so we’ll skip past brekkie...right, we had a seisiun back at our campsite till somebody took a thought that it was time to commune with the river. The river had, after all, been waiting so very patiently. shaddowshoes and I inflated our kayaks and paddled down to the Falls where everybody else was gathering.
The Falls, I should mention, aren’t waterfalls at all, but rather shallow, slow-moving rapids. There are many hollows in the rocks that are wide and deep enough for several people to climb into (much like a jacuzzi). Beer and fajitas appeared, courtesy of our host (who is absolutely killer - few people would be willing to entertain so many on the scale that this fellow does), so lunch occurred in the river. We floated in the water for...oh, I don’t know how long we lingered - and frankly it doesn’t matter. When crann_ull decided it was time to paddle back to camp, she borrowed shaddowshoes’s kayak. typsygypsy and I followed. It was girl time, we’d decided. We swam about in the river near to our campsite for...a while longer. Afterwards, it was nap time.
That night, we swopped rebel songs with a boy who holds a firm belief that Wolfstone and the Clancy Brothers are the only true Irish musicians. Here’s a poke at you, a chuisle mo chroi, Wolfstone are Scottish (you’ve heard of Scotland, haven’t you? It’s the country that’s stuck (for good or for ill) to the top of England - a bit like a large hat. Still, he was entertaining. Then we played for a while with our delightful host. Somewhere in the midst of all the merriment, we hurried back to our campsite to keep the tradition of stashing under cover anything that could be destroyed by wind and water. The first storm came whilst we were playing. We ignored it, but for the times when the lightning was interesting.
The second storm came after we’d all of us decided that it was time to go to our beds. Lightning is very bright in a tent, and thunder is very loud. Flash. Boom. It’s a bit like being at war - only without the fifes and drums (although, our bowls could have served as tin hats). Needless to say, I spent most of the night listening to the storm. I’m proud of my tent; however, as it weathered the storm brilliantly. The rain fly (which we’ve at last worked out how to attach) stopped water from creeping into my ventilation opening.
Sunday
The rain had gone by morning. We staggered out of our tents at half-eight and went for coffee and brekkie. The people at the party lanai were reasonably chipper considering they’d stayed up all night again. During the storm, I used the noise they were making as a storm gauge - if their raucous laughter should turn to shrieks of terror, I would know that it was time to leave my tent and run.
We hung about for a while. I decided that half-eleven was a respectable enough time to break my sobriety, so I fetched a Boddington’s from the cooller, and the bloody thing erupted and blew foam over me and anybody near to me when I tried to open it. I blame the English. It was still drinkable, so I put it away. Slan agus beannacht. Ha. crann_ull’s man heard the Call of the River shortly thereafter, and it was determined that we should heed it - and quickly. So it was back to the campsite and into the kayaks with typsygypsy and myself. crann_ull and her man followed in the canoe...or perhaps they shoved off first - it doesn’t matter really. shaddowshoes swam up (well, he swam for most of the way, and hitched a lift for the rest), and it was a party. I spent most of the afternoon nattering about Weird Shite In Which Supposedly I No Longer Believe with crann_ull’s man (the others had wandered back to camp). You know (and I’ve come to this conclusion before, but perhaps this is the first time I’ve articulated it - well, the first time here, at any rate), I realise it may be foolish and I realise that it’s likely yet another crutch that I (and the world, come to that) could do without, but I think I was far more at ease when I believed in the Weird Shite.
Don’t worry, I’ll keep my forays into Things Unlikely to myself. I’ll never be the annoying little quasi-witch that I was before (if for no other reason than I’ve got more amusing ways to embarrass myself).
Sure, so that entire paragraph could have gone without saying, and only time will tell whether it makes it into the entry proper.
At any rate, Sunday moved at a bit of a slower pace than Saturday. We’d thought to have another seisiun after dark, only it wasn’t to be. shaddowshoes and I had thought, also, that we would join typsygypsy, crann_ull, and her man for a bit of stargazing. That didn’t occur either. The two of us fell into our tent, and that was that. We awoke the next day at dawn, hoping to watch the sun rise over the bluff. The clouds had beat us to it, thus there was no sun to behold. But the campsite was quiet, and there were stones to be flung at the river (it must happen - the river will have its sacrificial stones). We decamped, tidied up the grounds a bit, and were on our way. typsygypsy had thought to meet a friend in Austin, so we drove there before heading towards home. As it worked out, the meeting wasn’t to be, but we amused ourselves by teasing feeding the grackles that were hovering about the Magnolia Cafe.
Thus ended our latest camping excursion.
Oh, right...so I forgot about the goats. Saturday morning...before the seisiun, the three of us drove to an offy for more spirits. As we were driving back down the rocky road to the ranch (ah, alliteration) we saw a herd (flock? troupe? calamity? I’m fond of ‘calamity’ - a calamity of wild goats) of wild goats foraging. Goats! With goaty faces and goaty feet - nothing about them was anything other that pure, unadulterated Goat. We snapped photos. The head goat eyed us suspiciously as if to say ‘Eh. Eff off. We’re goats’. Gnaaah.