Melodramatic Camping Log, Day 1:


Hour 0: Ben brought two fudgecicles for our road trip, packed in ice in his cooler. They have melted. We have not yet left the driveway.


Hour 3: We stop to buy alcohol. This is integral to The Camping.


Hour 4: A mosquito has flown in the car window and landed on Ben's hat. Upon hearing this news, he has begun to shout and swerve the car. I strike him a number of times, although the mosquito departed some minutes ago.


Hour 5: We have arrived at The Camping, which is a dirt path so heavily forested, the sun is blotted out by trees.


Hour 5: Correction, it is actually a cloud of mosquitoes.


Hour 6: We have fled The Camping covered in welts. Ben's legs have doubled in thickness from the bites. Our fellow campers looked on as we set up half a tent, shrieking and smacking one another, cursing wildly. Ben thinks we should sleep in the car, while I say we've seen enough nature and can now go home.


Hour 8: We marinate in deet.


Hour 10: We return to The Camping and spend over an hour searching for the toilet in the dead of night. The campground is a labyrinth. I pass the same cottage seven times in the dark. In abject desperation, I relieve myself behind the car, and stumble back to the tent with a bare foot and a broken spirit.


Hour 11: We return to the half-tent. The mosquitoes have departed, and we finish putting the tent together.


Hour 12: We take the tent apart and rebuild it, but this time not on top of the fire pit.


Hour 14: Signing off.




Melodramatic Camping Log, Day 2.




Hour 18: The tent is not ventilated, and throughout the night I must periodically wring out my bedding and pajamas outside the flap, lest Ben or I drown face-down in a reservoir of human sweat.


Hour 20: It is morning. Although it is early, it is so hot the tent is a sun oven and even the mosquitoes have given up.


Hour 21: Correction, they have all relocated to the interior of the car.


Hour 21: We traipse into town for breakfast at the local eatery. There is something on the menu called "The Duckstomp", which appears to be a skillet-scramble with a cinnamon bun on top.


Hour 22: I stop counting my welts after forty-five.


Hour 23: Ben takes the car to visit the locals. I spread myself out on a picnic table under the skies and wait for God to take me as a sacrifice. He doesn't, and this is a disappointment. I roll over and nap face-down in the middle of The Camping.


Hour 26: Ben returns. He decrees I have sun stroke, and passes me water. One of the wet fudgecicles has burst inside the cooler. All of our provisions now float in a milky brown slurry of ice and crushed dreams.


Hour 31: Ben is an addict. It has been barely a half hour and he must re-apply his deet. He claims he can feel the mosquitoes on his skin and in his clothes. I tell him he can fight it, but he is not strong enough. He empties our second can of deet.


Hour 32: We produce a camp fire, and immediately realize we are much too tired to tend it. We douse it and retire for the night.


Hour 37: Ben bolts upright in the night, and says to me "Meg, get up, it's time to go. Oh, wait, it's five AM. Nevermind". Within a minute and a half he falls back to sleep. I lie awake for two hours.


Hour 40: Ben is a mosquito bite.


Hour 43: We wait until the morning is at its absolute hottest point before choosing to crawl inside the tentoven to pack up our belongings. I change my clothes three times. When I emerge, it is 110% like that scene from Ace Ventura.


Hour 44: We did it! We did camping and now we can go home! The Camping is complete.