Next Monday I’ll be leaving and won’t be back until June 17. I got into an off-campus study science program in a real remote part of northern Minnesota. We’re going to spend something like 10 days at the base camp and 20 days canoeing in some national park. I know a lot of you must be cringing by now, but I think it’s cool.
Originally, I signed up for a biology class in the hope that I’m not as much of a science dumbass as I thought. The class got cancelled, and since I already sent in a non-refundable deposit, I had to pick something else. The only class I could get into was… wait for it… nature writing. And the other day I found out I’m one of four girls in the entire class. We are going to get so made fun of by the science students.
So… yah. I also found out that the base camp doesn’t have showers or phone lines, and if you need clothes washed you do it with a ringer washing machine and some laundry lines. I didn’t even bother to ask about internet connection.
don’t forget your Deet!
I can’t remember which book it was, but Edward Abbey did a piece on rafting in the Yukon or Alaska (or both) and I had to chuckle everytime he described his race against time as he struggled to take a dump before every mosquito for miles around was on his ass feeding away.
So in a month when you’ve turned into an unshaven woman of the apocolypse, surviving only on granola and various herbs of the forest (not those kinds, you wankers!) shall I have to send a withdrawl package of soothing herbal tea and Enya cds?
Hey enjoy. It will be great. The thing about no showers is that after a few days, it ceases to matter. Of course, when you finally end up somewhere where you can take a shower, then anyone standing in between you and the shower should expect to be run over.
I’m jealous. it has been many years since I’ve been able to get off the beaten track and into some serious nature.
Great, now I’ll have Enya running through my head the whole time I’m there, even though I barely know any of the songs.
…oh yeah, I didn’t mention that I’ve taken week-long trips from my old high school before. I know all about the showers and the deet.
Speaking of herbs of the forest… storytime!
The first time I went on a canoe trip, my dad told me about the time he and his dirtbag hippie buddies (I mean real late-60s hippies here, not Jeep-driving liberal arts college girls) found cannabis growing wild next to a portage in northern Minnesota, and they didn’t know how to dry it and roll it, so they threw the whole plant on the campfire and sat downwind with a blanket over their heads and just inhaled really deeply. When I asked him if it worked, he said “No. In fact, I think it was a pine tree.”
