All night the owls hooted and I enjoyed the sound. The loons were silent though.
I avoid summer camping and one reason is mosquitoes. Sure enough a few found their way into my tent. I have a bug zapper flashlight and I clicked it on. I was fixin’ to be pissed off but I fell asleep so I guess it wasn’t that bad.
I woke up later to cool air. I’d left the bug zapper on and probably wasted some battery but I didn’t particularly care. The air smelled sweet. A new front must have snuck in. Looking up through the screen roof of my tent I could no longer see the stars.
This ain’t my first rodeo. I got up and put on the rain tarp.
Then the rain hit. Just a gentle misting downfall but I felt rather smug to have deployed the tarp with precise timing.
Getting into and out of the tent let in a new herd of mosquitoes. As before I turned on the zapper. I expected to be pissed off by the mosquitoes but once again drifted off.
Dawn was humid and slow. I like to camp in the wilderness or at least alone but I was in a Park. Dispersed camping is free but entails more uncertainty. For a holiday weekend I just didn’t feel like screwing around. I did reservations on-line and was spared any potential bullshit.
The thing with Parks is they’re infested with humans and I don’t like humans at dawn. The birds begin with their pre-dawn song. I can live with birdsong… barely. After the birds the humans start moving about. Humans being humans start talking the moment they’re ambulant. I don’t know why, they just gotta’ talk. I can sit with a cup of coffee and say not a fucking word. Most people babble like a damn word factory. Once they start talking it sounds like a penguin rookery to me. The indistinct chatter of human critters isn’t loud but they’ll keep talking until they go to bed and it vexes me.
I’d wind up crawling from my soft and inviting sleeping bag just because the bastards drown out the birds.
I felt like I was losing time; that I should get up. There were plans for the day. I was burning daylight. I had shit to do!
Mankind is split between morning people and not-morning people. I am of the latter. If you’re a not-morning person you’ve drawn a short straw in life. You’ll get no end of shit from the majority of society that are morning risers. Society from birth through death is calibrated to haul your sleepy ass out of bed… every day… until you die. When I die, they’ll probably schedule my funeral early in the morning.
The training regimen starts when you’re a kid. Mom drags you out of bed to catch a bus to your school (indoctrination center). From then on it’s a life sentence. There’s no reason any bus should run at any particular time and there’s no reason a kid needs to learn fractions at any particular time but schools always run in the morning. Why? Because if you sleep late you’re lazy. This has been beaten into my not-morning skull every fucking day of my life.
Oh and while I’m bitching about it… morning people need to shut the fuck up when they conflate arriving early with working hard. Someone who shows up at the office at 7:00 am will flounce about like they’re God’s gift to the timeclock but if they they stampede out the door at 3:30 that’s 8 hours and a lunchbreak. Who’s impressed by that?!?
I once had a boss that went beyond morning person and into morning asshole. We theoretically had flexible hours but he figured I ought to plan my life like I’m milking cows or some shit. I’d amble in at 9:00 am but work like a mule until 7:30 pm. If you can count using both hands that’s 10 hours and a lunchbreak. He’d preen and look at the clock all morning and then unass the area 4 hours earlier than me; every fucking day. Dude never worked 8 hours and a spare minute but was forever giving me shit that my 10 hours started later than him… every fucking day.
Old school bosses never figure this out. Lucky for me, most of ’em are dead now. Also lucky for me, timesheets (even back then) are run by computers. Dude couldn’t count but computers can.
But I digress.
I rolled out of my cot feeling like maybe I should growl at things, swear randomly, and maybe just generally be an asshole. You must get by now that I hate mornings.
Then everyone shut up. Why? It had started raining again. Everyone had fled back to their tents.
Ha!
I flopped back into my sleeping bag and was instantly lulled into sleep by the gentle rain.
I don’t know how long I slept but it was delicious. It was the first night in years I hadn’t set an alarm. I didn’t have a cell phone or clock handy. I slept until I’d slept enough. I need more of that!
By then the rain had stopped again and the kids were up. I don’t like the sound of adults doing their penguin thing, but happy kids is a whole different matter. They were laughing and riding bikes and wallowing in every mud puddle and it was glorious. Kids are great.
I tested my new stove. Before departure I did a sweep of my garage and found four cans partially filled with “Coleman” white gas; three of which were impossibly old. As far as I can tell, white gas that’s at least 10 years old is still fine. There might have been a bit of flickering of the flame but that could have been just a gust of wind. I decided the lifespan of white gas is “long enough that it doesn’t matter”.
I percolated coffee nice and slow… like a guy who has zero fucks to give. Then I whipped out the little iron frying pan. I cooked bacon from my own pigs and saved a little of the grease to keep the eggs from sticking. (Plus I threw in some grape tomatoes I’d brought.)
A meal fit for a king!
I’ve been camping a good long time in the comfort zone of freeze dried mountain house. The thing about comfort zones is you must test that it’s a pleasant groove and not a limiting rut. For the whole campout I cooked canned goods and groceries. It worked fine.
The area might have black bears but no grizzlies so I happily disposed of the extra grease in the fire. That kept my Neanderthal brain entertained and smelled glorious.
My dirtbike was poised for action but I just didn’t feel like hard work. I broke out a paperback and brewed another pot of coffee.
Sometimes you have a day that starts just right. Enjoy those simple moments.
(To be continued.)
AC, As a long time production manager and 10 year business owner, I have to say that arriving on time is probably the best measure of a solid employee. Men (and others) that can’t be there at starting time cost money, every time. I get that it is hard for some folks, but for production, on-time is very important. I’ve fired more than a few for tardiness. With some regrets, but gone none the less. First rule, be on time!
Oh I get the value of punctuality. I’m a big fan of shit starting on time. If a thing has to happen at time Z and I’ve been scheduled to be there at time Z and it’s my job to be there at time Z then by God I’ll be there at time Z. I’m also a fan of hard target deadlines. I hate when something has a deadline and I work hard to do my part only to find some other part of the system has crapped out and things get delayed. I think we’d get along fine in a workplace.
In my example I had flexible hours as part of my job. I could start whenever I wanted and stop whenever I wanted (provided it added up to the require number of hours). My work was piece work, not “work with a group” stuff. My boss-ish fellow (such things were ill defined) felt that cranking out X components starting at the ass crack of dawn was somehow morally superior to the same X components cranked out on time and to high quality but not at the ass crack of dawn. Maybe I didn’t articulate it well.
I’ve had days like that, when the other 99.999999999 percent of the population seems to be intentionally annoying. Glad the rain and a good breakfast made the morning worthwhile.