October 15, 2020

We went camping with friends, my best friend and her then-boyfriend who was always stoned, Eileen and Ken. And so we went up to this lake our group of friends knew about. It was a very small lake, and very few people knew about it. So, we arrived late mid-afternoon, late afternoon. And Michael and I had packed the car in the morning. And we got up there and we were trying to set up our tent before dusk.

And so we got out the tent, or he got out the tent and looked around, and I said, “Where are the poles?” And he said … this is an intelligent man, very intelligent. He said, “The poles? You only said to get out the tent.” And I hit my head, and the couple hit their heads, you know, “Duh. What’s he doing?” We didn’t have the poles. He had literally only gotten the tent out, and it’s coming on dusk.

And you know, these years in California are cold at night, no matter what the daytime temperature is. Well, Michael was a bit of an adventurer at heart, and he loved the outdoors. I not so much. As I’ve said, I was a princess and I like indoors and I now like indoors.

So, he got excited about figuring out how to tie the tent to the trees. And I don’t know how I let go of my resentment, but I just got into the adventure. And just like a really wonderful partnership, we hung that damn tent from the trees all around, and it worked. And I remember Ken saying, “Just astonished that we could do that without bitching at each other,” that we were really a team doing, you know. And we talked like a team, and we got that tent up and we slept in it for two nights. And that was just a wonderful time of teamwork, as husband and wife, and friends. We’re drinking their wine, and watching us with mouths open, a bit.

We were innovative. And we had good mattresses because I was in charge of the mattresses. And it helped hold the tent own a little bit too. Absolutely. Well, I think we used twigs as stakes or something like that. Put branches into the ground and tied the corners of the tent to the branches. We had a bag with the poles and the stakes. I just couldn’t believe that he would that excuse that I only said to bring the tent as if it were up to me to say, “Poles.” But I did it. And I guess I had a little bit of a campfire girl in me that was also … I love solving problems. So I got into that, you know? It’s what it is. You accept and you move on and do something.