I haven't written in quite some time. I had grand aspirations to blog weekly about my fourth summer of camp life, but that clearly didn't work out. I feel like I will have plenty to say about all that later. The last few days, however, have been phenomenal, and there ought to be a written record of it somewhere. Besides, it gave me an excuse to use Lord of the Rings chapter names as my post's title, which makes my soul inexplicably happy.
So, a few weeks ago I was asked by a friend to be an usher at his wedding this summer, which gave me an in to his bachelor party as well. Usually these are fun but predictable and fairly forgettable: a few rounds of laser tag, a few drinks at someone's house, a short game of golf turned into a longer game of golf-cart polo. (Well, that last one was pretty cool.) Mostly they are a time to cut loose, have fun, "be guys" (whatever that actually means), but not commit to anything too extreme or time-consuming.
But my friend Kellan is a bit more, well, extreme than that. I met him my second year at summer camp, when we were both counselors together. At the time, he had a mountain-man beard that scared the crud out of me. He was training to be a police officer, and he had the build and stature to prove it. He carried around weights in his backpack everywhere he went, simply because it was a challenge. (Rumors varied between 40 and 60 pounds of additional weight, put there for no good reason but to be heavy.) This man was not about to simply play laser tag for his bachelor party.
So we decided to go backpacking--because carrying everything needed to survive with you for three days is decidedly more manly than a game of golf--and we settled on a trail in a national forest about an hour's drive from home. Even though he was the groom, Kellan ended up doing most of the planning and the packing, just because that's who he is. (He would have paid for the whole thing if we'd let him, and he probably paid for most of it anyway, bless his heart.) He'd hiked the trail a few times before, so he was our guide more often than not as well.
We left home around 8 p.m., which didn't put us on the trail until almost dark. We hiked for an hour or so before it was too dark to go any farther and then set up camp. (My hiking and camping experience is pretty small, and my backpacking experience prior to this trip has consisted of nothing more than day hikes, so this was a bit of a challenge.) After s'mores over the fire, we went to bed, just before midnight.
It's an interesting thing to go hiking with people you know well; it's a stranger thing to go hiking with people you hardly know at all. The groom himself was the only guy I knew with any intimacy; one other I had met a handful of times, another I had seen but never talked to, and another I didn't see until we met up to head out. Now on an extended hike, there is nothing to do but walk and talk. When you know your fellow hikers well, conversation comes pretty naturally. When you only know one out of four half-way decently, it's a heck of a lot more difficult. Even though I hit it off pretty well with a couple of them, there was a lot of silence--not necessarily because conversation had been exhausted, but because we didn't really know how to have it in the first place. The first night was awkward and wieldy, and it felt like it was strained and shallow.
But you learn interesting things about people when you spend three days together without showers or electricity or, you know, any kind of building to speak of. I learned that Blair liked to stare at cool views and take photos; I learned that Alex sings all the time, whether real songs or not; I learned that Jason likes to run up hills, which is actually kind of helpful and not just lunacy like I thought at first. And over time, we got past the awkward "So, what's your major?" questions to the more interesting "Where would you go if you could visit any country in the world?" questions, and even the stupid poop questions that for whatever reason guys tend to ask each other when they feel comfortable. (Why the discussion of bowel movements is an indicator of male bonding, I may never know.) It was when we started making up alternative greetings ("Why do we tell each other that it's a beautiful day? Let's tell people we pass that there's a bear ahead instead...") that I knew we'd gotten somewhere as a group.
But I think the best part of the trip for me was simply getting away from the craziness of life and slowing down. The beauty and frustration of backpacking is that, for the vast majority of the time, there is simply nothing to do besides hike and talk. Even when you set up camp, you don't have anything to occupy yourself with besides conversation and exploring. I spent a lot of time just looking, sitting, being, which was marvelously refreshing. No papers, no planning, no organizing or scheduling or anything. Simply being. It is good once in a while to take time to be.
And even I was surprised at some of the views we found an hour away from home. I went hiking in Kentucky a year ago and saw some of the most incredible landscapes I've ever seen, but there were bluffs and waterfalls and valleys on this Michigan trail that could take your breath away. I didn't bring a camera, half on purpose--I wanted to enjoy without feeling the need to document--but part of me wishes I had. I spent a few minutes every morning taking in the view apart from the others, watching the river wind around the trees from 100 feet above, the other side of the valley rising, forested, in the distance. There's something beautiful and wild about a forest, something that is only augmented by the smell of campfire smoke and the hard ground underneath. I didn't even bring a sleeping pad, and I think I'm almost glad of it.
This afternoon we left the forest, celebratory. We hiked about 15 miles yesterday, which was long for our out-of-shape legs, and it was relieving to get back to pavement and motors and speeds above 3 miles-an-hour. But there's something downheartening about leaving these four guys, and something even more depressing about knowing I'm going back to work tomorrow, even if "work" is running activities at camp. Still, I suppose life can't be lived in solitude, and there are things to be done, and I am always surrounded by the beauty of earth if I only look for it. I'll see these guys again at Kellan's wedding, and I'll have the grandeur of Michigan in the summertime until then.
