I visited the inspiring mountains of North Carolina and I found happiness. I lost my toothpaste and several pairs of socks.

So some amount of time more than a month ago and less than a lot more than a month ago, I went on a beautiful and amazing life adventure into a state park in western North Carolina where I saw many beautiful things and ate beautiful food and made (mostly) beautiful fires and climbed on beautiful structures of nature and had a beautiful and joyous time exploring the beautiful world with my beautiful friends.

Accompanying friends: Laura, Alex, Katherine, Sarah, Sheena, in descending order by height. I think.

So we planned a camping trip to Stone Mountain State Park. We had a pretty even mix of camping experience. For some of us, the closest we had ever been to sleeping outside in a tent less than a foot off the cold wet ground was making a fort out of pillows in the living room as a kid and then spreading a quilt on the carpet inside it, peeing on it, and slipping and falling and spending about 35 minutes unconscious before a sibling got curious about the smell of urine and blood coming from behind the couch. (presumably unintentionally (peeing I mean (well the passing out part too))) I realize that isn’t very close to sleeping in a tent outside in the cold.

(At some point in the future I will attempt to make a humongous string of adverbs that actually makes sense in context. (like presumably unintentionally, but more so.) You won’t know what hit you–it will come that unexpectedly quickly frighteningly absurd(ly), albeitly magically sensically.) (Failure.)

Some of us had years of experience camping with our families every summer or every weekend for six months until our father decided to quit bear-hunting.

(Mother wanted us to spend as much time with him as possible; she figured his days were numbered. He bearly escaped that hobby unharmed! Hahahahaha. Ha.)

And then the rest of us had a weird middle ground amount of camping experience. We had briefly participated in cub scouts as a child, which meant that we had gone camping two or three times with our entire family and two cars full of conveniences.  We learned how to pee outdoors and make s’mores. The rest of the time we would pretend to sell fruit roll-ups through a zipper window in the tent.  We may or may not have ended up sleeping in the car and/or on top of a cushy parent. (We’re not sure how we got the fruit roll-ups through the tent screen.) (Impressive, really)

(We’ve decided that we’ve been using personal pronouns in a very odd and uncomfortable way.) WHY ON EARTH IS THERE AN APOSTROPHE IN S’MORE? I suppose it’s for “some more,” but I want it to be something funnier than that. “send more”? “Sam Smore”? “Scouts have eaten all of our marshmallows, graham crackers and crappy chocolate; we need to recruit someone to send for some more”? I believe those are equally feasible options.

A fourth group of us (or potentially a subgroup or identical group to one of the previous groups named) also had camping experience at camp. This meant that we had spent lots of time escorting small children into the woods so that they could pee. We were also experts at telling kids what kind of sticks to gather for a fire. Not to mention we were pros at watching fires being built. (This skill was not as useful as hoped.)

So some of us had a fair amount of camping experience. The only problem, however, was that none of us had ever gone camping without a parent, veteran camp counselor, or creepy scoutmaster to help make fires and make sure food is made and prevent bear attacks.  So it was a fairly interesting experience. 

We had a fantastic road trip experience driving there in the early afternoon, and only a reasonable amount of trouble setting up the tent and such. It mostly involved angrily hammering in stakes, sticking in the tent pieces, then pulling out the tent pieces, pulling out the stakes, moving the tent, hammering in the stakes, sticking in the tent extendable pieces the other way this time, figuring out it's backwards, trying it the way it was before, realizing that’s wrong too, taking them out, pulling out the stakes, moving the tent again and repeating the entire process over. More than a few good stakes were lost that day. Also the tent instructions and some shoes may have disappeared in the process.

We had tentatively planned on going hiking that afternoon, but that did not work out as planned. The fire was started haphazardly with little long-range planning and then we needed to make supper.  The rest of the evening was spent pouring time and energy and effort into food and fire. The level of morale required for regular twig hunts and thus proper fire upkeep had crashed by dusk, and so our fire’s fortunes disappeared along with the setting sun.

The rest of the night involved lots of eating and struggling to keep the fire moderately warm.   Then around 8 we started getting tired and it felt like bed time, but then we realized it was 8.

Preparing for jump from chronological story-telling to purely anecdotal: I feel like I need an onomatopoeia here.  LAUNCH!   Err…  Blast off?   Swoosh?

That night we went for a long walk around the many campsites. There were sooooooo many stars.  At one point a squirrel made a noise in the woods and we froze for ten minutes waiting for a bear to jump out at us.  Then while we were walking farther away from the camp site we heard a solitary owl hoot. We immediately flipped out and abandoned our current direction.  We were a little bit jumpy.

We were a little worried about the temperature and for good reason. It got mind-numbingly cold late at night. As well as feet-numbingly, hands-numbingly, head-numbingly and just general rest-of-me-numbingly cold.  We filled the tent with all of our sleeping pads, sleeping bags, and full-blown humongous air mattresses.  Then we covered ourselves with extravagant amounts of blankets and jackets and other sleeping bags.  I was in a sleeping bag with another sleeping bag and two blankets and a jacket on top of me.  As my head was outside of the sleeping bag I had another blanket just for my face. I usually sleep with my hands around my pillow but this was impossible because although it wouldn’t feel cold when I took them out of the sleeping bag, I lost the ability to feel or properly move them after 30 seconds or so. I had to keep as much of my body in the sleeping bag as possible.  I just had to get tired enough and somehow will myself into a semi-comfortable position so that I could fall asleep. It was like I was wrapped in a giant cocoon but for some reason my magical caterpillar instinct hadn't yet put me into hibernation or whatever caterpillars do while their bodies are changing. Great question.

We became master fire-makers by the time the 2 days were over.  Now we are like cavemen but less hairy and with more variety in our diets.

We brought our guitars but all they did was let us stress over where to put them and the chances of people stealing them and the chances of it being too cold for them or too humid for them or too warm for them or too dry for them.  We were like mothers who brought our infants rock-climbing with us. As a totally hypothetical uninformed idea it seemed like a great idea, but rock-climbing tends to leave little time for babies. The time you do end up devoting to the babies is solely spent on worrying about the weather, their diapers, and whether or not they have enough cushion left to survive the next fall.

Also all of the time we imagined would be spent guitarring was instead spent poking a fire, collecting sticks, cooking food for hours on end (which makes it amazingly beautiful delicious at the end of all that effort (mostly because you’re starving)), hikinghikinghiking, and various other campy things.

We also went on a twig hunt the second night that turned into a Troll-Hunter-esque adventure.  It was dark and grainy like an old video camera and there was an old shed and it was dark and there were huge sticks we found to burn and it was dark and creepy. Thus: Troll Hunter.

My linear story-telling abilities will now degenerate further.

BEAUTIFUL PICTURES!!!!

YAY! firefirefirefirefirefirefirefirefire. This is our camp site. Was. Our campsite.

THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN. We had picked up walking sticks by this point. I think others were using theirs to make hiking easier. Mine was mostly for pointing menacingly and looking cool and wizardish.

YAY COOL LIGHTING!  For a Stone Mountain, there sure were a lot of just plain rock faces all over the mountain. Oh wait.

Everything was crazy topsy turvy. Also this is awesome.

treestreestreestreestreestreestreestrees  colorcolorcolorcolorcolorcolorcolor. Also I discovered that sometimes I'm not seeing all of the amazing colors in beautiful trees in the distance because of my colorblindness. It's comforting to know that no matter how beautiful or cool things may look from a distance, I'm probably not getting the whole picture and I never will. Wait no what?

This is me pretending to struggle with some trees. ('Nuff said (the Norwegian pig))  (Try not to be confused)

ACK. It's like a wonderful sunny pathway to a new world. Is this Narnia? I remember having a discussion about what crazy fictional world we'd want to live in if given the choice. I'd choose this one because this doesn't seem like real life and it reminds me of Lord of the Rings. (I know that whole exchange didn't completely make sense. Don't think too hard.)

WATERFALLWATERFALLWATERFALLWATERFALLWATERFALLWATERFALL

Here it is.

And again.

Here's me being excited about nature.

SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN AT SUNSET asdfjklf;lkd;lksjcfjaewoicpjewiphfkdsjhfkdshfkshf;lkadsj;lkjdsfjdslfjldsaf  Now let me explain. If you'll pay close attention, you'll realize that not all keyboard garble is created equal. Quality mashed keyboard gibberish will begin with the classic home row or a close variation "asdfghjkl;jk." Once you start paying attention you'll note that beginning gibberish with a sound other than "asdfj," seems slightly off. "yoiuvpoiubv" "swuyiuyviucyvhjk "mvmdoivoidsjv" What does this gibberish mean to you? Well to me they mean absolutely nothing. They are gibberish. "asdfjk" however, has effectively become a sound, a word, a quasi-fixture of internet speech. Beginning a line of gibberish, it attaches the feelings of shock and awe to an otherwise senseless line of nonsense. After the beginning "asdfjkl;jlk" your options become more flexible, although when I look at the middle of a line like "asdlkfjlkdjfoijboibjomoivvbvewyb,"  sections including very strongly repeated intense consonants like m or b or v or q or y or w are kind of distracting and take me away from looking at the gibberish as a whole, which was of course predicated solely on the surprise and speechlessness expressed by "asdfjkl;." Thank you for your time. I hope that was interesting and informative.

This tree looked like it was made of old trolls mashed together. It was really gross but at the same time really quirky and endearing in a fractured mythologically anatomical sort of way. Having quieted the endearingly nauseous feelings evoked by this tree, we proceeded to sit on it.

Hey everybody I found this hole! And I climbed through it and there was cool water and rocks on the other side and then everyone climbed through it! Yay!

Yay artsiness!

What makes you remember dreams more often and more clearly? Is it the timing of your awake and return to sleep? Is it the comfort of the place you're sleeping and the depth of the sleep? Or is it the inherent ridiculousness of the dreams themselves?

So I just returned from Thanksgiving break at home in Raleigh, where I feasted, slept, watched Modern Family, ate, considered doing homework, slept and consumed food.  It was glorious. But now I’m back.

One of the weirdest things about going home though? I tend to dream a lot, and it gets pretty weird.

So there I was, in a traditional school classroom with what must’ve been at least 20 members of my extended family, being taught Spanish by what appeared to be Gloria from Modern Family with the teaching style of Jane Lynch from Glee. (For those who are hopelessly behind on their TV viewing plans, Gloria is a young and sassy Colombian mother with a fantastic accent. Jane Lynch plays a cheerleading coach who abhors happiness and individuality.)

For some reason Gloria Lynch takes our class outside to a field.   I sit down on a picnic bench with a large quantity of classmates who do not appear to be related to me, and Gloria Lynch leads some of my other classmates to another picnic bench across the field and over a fence for some reason.  There they begin to play some minute-to-win-it-esque game involving balloons and possibly marshmallows.

I suffer through an internal dilemma. My classmates are by definition my peers. They must be my age and worthy of my respect as equals. However they seem like they are young campers and I am their counselor. I treat them as such. I am overly-friendly and I get them excited for whatever silly Spanish game we’re playing. One of the campers is my nephew Cyrus but he is 6 years older than he should be.

Gloria Lynch is yelling at my fellow students/campers/relatives, cursing in incomprehensible Spanish. She is a horrible teacher. I’m pretty sure she is making severely inappropriate sexual advances towards multiple campers/relatives (I’m not sure which makes it more disturbing to me.). Apparently she is being fairly graphic and including farm animals in her verbal assaults. 

We go back to the classroom. I have a long discussion on the walk back with a reasonable, intelligent, Spanish-speaking friend from high school. I have zero clue about who he is or whether or not he was actually reasonable, intelligent, Spanish-speaking, or my friend in high school. When we get back, it is obvious that something must be done about Gloria Lynch’s horrible totalitarian and wholly inappropriate teaching style.

Before I can begin to waffle about starting an initiative of my own, my brother Stephen bravely steps up to speak to her.  He reasonably and politely stakes his claim, telling her that she is being a little bit too severe and harsh with us. She slaps him across the face.

He tells her that she is probably being really inappropriate with her advances and that she is a nice lady but everyone would like it a lot if she would chill out.  She slaps him hard with the back of her hand.

I wake up, curious about why my subconscious is directing so much violence towards Stephen and concerned about the frequency with which Gloria plays commanding authoritarian roles in my dreams.

P-P-PROCRASTINATING!!!

So it is currently 9 pm, and I have some math to do.  I have exactly 18 hours before 20 edited and stapled versions of my fully written short story need to be delivered to my creative writing class. X will be the amount of time it will take me to write a middle and an end for the meager beginning of my story. Y will be the amount of time it will take to learn to sing the chords and melodies I need for my music test in 13 hours. Of course I'll need to subtract the hours for the other 3 classes I have tomorrow as well.

The variables "F" and "C," "food" and "coffee" respectively, will also be subtracted from my time. For now we will assume the variable "S," or "sleep," to be a non-necessity which will absorb any remainder of this equation.

So that means that I've got approximately...um...well...some hours left.  I'm not really a math person, I just like the idea of variables.

I should also probably read some British literature for class in 12 hours. Hmm... as long as S is content to be a marginal non-necessary variable, it would be epic to go sit in Kenan Stadium and watch the sunrise while meditating on some of John Donne's elaborate metaphysical analogies about life and love and religion. I will ponder this option when I take another break later. (I plan my work around my study breaks)

Oh yeah, addendum: "R" is my journal assignment for my Religion class, which will be done 20-40 minutes before class starts.

So Halloween was yesterday!  I create Halloween costumes like I write blog posts. If I find the time to brainstorm and plan in advance I can come up with a really cool cohesive idea with a strong foundational concept and execute it very well. If I don't then I end up with unorganized nonsense, albeit entertaining and well thought out nonsense.

So, using my recent track record of blog-writing procrastination as a guidepost, how likely do you think it is that I actually found time to brainstorm and plan in advance for my costume? Nope, not very.
 (oh wow, I've been going about this all wrong. I never write on my blog if I make it a goal because then I just procrastinate the crap [out of it]? [away from it]? [into it]?  I never write on my blog if I make it a goal because then I just procrastinate the crap preposition it. I have to start using my habits against myself and use the blog as a tool for procrastination! Myself won't know what hit me. I'll reverse psychology the crap preposition me.)

BACK TO THE SUBJECT!

So I did not put any real effort into coming up with a real costume until the weekend before Halloween. Then I just found an assortment of odd clothing pieces that I figured would both look cool and keep me warm. (My favorite thing to do is to throw together a costume without aiming for anything in specific and then let other people tell me what I am.) (I'm like a living Rorschach ink blot test but with more plaid.) (I try put more creativity into the costume making process than the average costum(er?) [Pablo Picasso never set up an easel and said "I'm going to paint Batman today."  I imagine he was more like "Oh this color is cool. Let's draw a line -- oh that was cool! Let's draw some shapes here, I think that'd be awesome -- wait it needs a nose!"])


I thought about providing more set-up for that analogy.  But I decided not to.

So what I ended up as on Halloween, according to the consensus, was a Scandinavian troll hunter. (Which, incidentally, is the only kind of troll hunter which is in any way legitimate.) I wore jeans and a thermal undershirt, and then I put on an awesome Norwegian sweater and a cheesy american-y guitar-y sleeveless shirt. Then naturally I put very plaid shorts on over my jeans, (John) Donned my plaid shoes, (That was a high-brow joke of the comedic variety. Feel free to feel entertained.) and put on a viking hat.  I also put some plastic vines on my wrist and then someone tied a flashlight to my pants. (Flashlight=essential troll hunting equipment; it turns them to stone)(Er...sunlight does. I imagine flashlights just piss them off.)

I was also wearing fingerless hobo gloves.

It's like the Blair Witch Project but with bigger, sillier monsters, more hair and smell descriptions and infinitely more fjords. So essentially it's the Blair Witch Project but Norwegian.  It also features professional bear hunters, a rich heritage filled with vikings and storm gods, and universal health care. I'm not certain that I'm still talking about the movie.

Sometimes I wish I put enough time in to make the kind of costumes that make people go "oh, I get it, that's clever!" or "nice! I love Buzz Lightyear!"

But for now I'm okay with "what is that and why are you wearing it?" or "You don't put very much thought into this do you?" or "I thought vikings had more fashion sense."


TO WORK!