Monday, May 08, 2006

So, a confession: I have been looking for friends on the internet. This is most certainly a horrible idea. But the internet has helped me in so many other ways--keeping in touch with home friends, finding an apartment and a roommate, filling the long, tedious hours of the work day--that I thought it at least deserved a crack at filling my San Diego life with people to hang out with.

I found an ad on Craigslist posted by a couple of girls who like to go camping. I don't really like to go camping, but amongst the ads for mommy and me meet-ups and call me I'm bored hook-ups, the camping girls seemed like a viable option. I met them for coffee, and they seemed alright--Kate is my age, and her cousin Mae is a few years older. Their banter reminded me of myself and my home friends. I liked them. They like to go camping, and think that more than two girls in the woods is better than two girls in the woods. I would tend to agree. A few weeks later, I went to dinner with Kate and Mae and several other girls that they camp with. They're an eclectic mix: a Navy nurse, a biochem PhD candidate, an engineer who is quitting her job and moving to Seattle to study massage therapy.

This past weekend we went camping. Bridget (the engineer/massuese) and Mae piled us into their jeeps and we rode up to Palomar Mountain, which is east and north and up from here. The ride up was really beautiful--the foothills in southern California are covered with dense green brush at this time of year, though there are already signs that the green is fleeting. By the summer, green will have faded to yellow, and with the onset of the Santa Ana winds and the fires they carry, to black. But for now, they are emerald, and lovely. Once we got to the mountain, it was round and round and round--one-thousand feet up, then two-thousand, then three-thousand, then four. We drove above the cloud line just as the sun was setting, and if I didn't know better, I would have thought I was looking down at the ocean. It was beautiful.

It was dark when we pulled into the campsite. There were about twenty plots, and most of them were filled. We unloaded the wood and our gear, set up our two tents, and got to cooking. Well, someone did, I didn't. I went off in search of a place to pee. There were bathrooms down the hill, but spider-infested bathrooms with plague warnings on the door are somehow less appealing than a clear spot behind a tree, slightly on an incline. I'm not sure why peeing outside is so satisfying--we had a talk about it over dinner, and the girls find it overwhelming so, a few outliers aside. One theory is that being able to pop a squat is our equivalent to whipping it out--and unlike our biological counterparts, it's something we can only acceptably do when in the primitive environment of the woods. Granted, urinating in public is an offense for both sexes, legally, but socially, a woman squatting in the park seems a greater misdeed than a man writing his name in the snow.

We ate hot dogs, turkey and tofu. We were ravenous, and they were delicious. At ten o'clock, some of the girls decided to go on a night hike. I decided to go to bed. It was cold, it was dark, and it was taking enough of my extrovert energy reserve to be on this trip in the first place--the night hike would have to wait for another night. I dozed off, but was soon awoken by some guys--football or fratty, take your pick--yelling and laughing nearby--"This is the best idea we've ever had"--more yelling--"Oh, man, actually, like, stand IN the fire this time, here, I'll pour some more lighter fluid on your legs." WHAT. I was awake now, and I listened to more yelling, more laughing--then some painful yelps and a thump, thud, whomp that could only be stop, drop, and roll.

The idiots were setting each other on fire.

In my tent, I had a dilemma. These guys were obviously drunk, but furthermore, they were obviously idiots of the highest pedigree. As a sober, non-idiot aware of their state, did I have an obligation to intervene and keep them from killing themselves? I couldn't decide. On one hand, I kept envisioning the scene playing out as an opening sequence of Law & Order--Benson and Stabler, or Goren and Eames, lifting the corner of a tarp to check out a kid's charred body. On the other hand, it was really warm inside my sleeping bag, and idiocy was as good a reason as any for Darwin to nail you.

The yelling stopped, and a radio blared. "I love this song!" I'd never heard it, a country song, sadly typical. I like the genre, but man, its fans don't give it a good name. Much like Christianity now, I suppose. "God! You shot me!" I didn't hear a gun. Maybe it had a silencer. "Man, stopping slinging rocks at me! I mean it!" One of them was shooting rocks with a slingshot--they could put an eye out, but not a life. I wasn't concerned. I went back to bed. In the tent, I heard two of the girls go over there. They shotgunned some beers with the guys, and advised them against setting themselves on fire. They agreed that they shouldn't do it anymore. But, man, it was sweet while it lasted.

The next day after a breakfast of PBJ and a, "I hope we didn't keep you up" quasi apology from the idiot boys in flannels and scorched fatigues, we went hiking. Hiking is an okay thing. I like to think about how the whole world used to be like this--trees and brush, no roads, no cars, no buildings. Wild and pure. A lot of the state and national parks are so crowded that the effect is lost. Yosemite is more like Disney World than a virgin forest. For whatever reason, we were mostly alone on the trails that day, and I was thankful for it.

The girls were talking with each other as we made our way up the trail. I listened but didn't add anything really. Maybe I was feeling reverent. Or maybe I was out of breath because I was booking it to get out of the woods so that I could say, "I went for a hike. It was an okay thing." I feel the same way about woods and other natural habitats as I do museums. I like to know they're there, that their halls are filled with antiquities and great art and the milestones of humanity--or with ancient trees and perfectly cooperating species. But I don't need to spend hours there--I can get that assurance, that peace, from a short visit. It's why I spent an hour in the Louvre and another three eating soup and chocolate cake and watching people in the cafe. The latter is more interesting.

After the hike, we down the mountain to get some supplies--the marshmallows for s'mores had been left at home, and this would not stand. While there, we decided that Mother's Kitchen sounded tastier than Leftover Tofu Dogs, so we stopped for lunch. Everything was vegetarian--there's California for you. Bikers and bikers--mountain and motor--were the majority of the clientele. The Boca Burger will really put hair on your chest, I hear.

After lunch, it was nap time, and then home time. The drive down the mountain made we want to puke, but I didn't. Though I'm sure that if I had, it would have been fine. Friends don't care about stuff like that.