Campfires
I added another log to the fire. Fuck, my intricate pyramid of half burned logs, embers, and fresh wood collapsed under the weight of one of the legs. Sitting there alone, I didn’t feel any dire need to immediately rearrange the logs. It’s past midnight and everyone had already gone to sleep… Pussies. “This fire will burn till morning”, I said to myself as I took another sip of Sprite Zero. Why not, right…we had all this extra wood that we bought, and it was our last night camping.
“What the hell are you going to be doing out there?”, I was asked on many an occasion. It’s not something that can easily be explained: the attraction of sleeping in a tent on uneven ground in the middle of nowhere. But why explain myself, or try to rationalize to others the appeal, as I looked down the road and saw an entire line of tents.
It was time away from home, away from the office. I’d say away from the family, but they were right here with me. I took two days off from work and as a spur of the moment decision, made a reservation for a campground spot just days before I left.
What does one do…beside eat, drink, go to the beach, play volleyball, and sit around a campfire….sometimes most of the above at once? This is the life…away from everything and everyone that pisses you off on a daily basis, away from the business of day-in and day-out monotony; Away from the mundane repertoire that is repeated every day for no real rhyme or reason other than maintaining the status quo of the appearance of normality. Out here, I don’t need to think, I don’t need to care, I don’t need to worry or stress. I will have plenty of time for that when I return, so I might as well enjoy a few days away from it all.
I haven’t taken a real vacation in a while. Most vacations that one takes, require another week of rest after returning because one does not ever “relax” on vacations. No, typical vacations involve going somewhere and doing stuff. Last year, I went on a cruise to Canada. A cruise, one might expect, to be full of laziness and booze, but in reality, I was busy for every minute aboard the ship, and even moreso off it. With shows and swimming, between boat rides, walks, shops, and other typical touristy shit, I came back more exhausted than when I left. At least I didn’t have to be at work….but fuck it if they STILL didn’t find a way to get in touch with me because of some mess that they made that nobody else could fix.
I need a vacation…
