(This post is coming to you live from the restaurant/bar/general store/post office with internet access.)

At the company appreciation luncheon, I found out the camp hosts at the campground where I started the season were getting laid off the day after Labor Day. I wondered what that would mean to me.

The week before Labor Day Weekend, my supervisor gave me a choice. She said I could stay at the campground where I’ve spent the majority of the summer, or I could move back to the campground where I got my start as a camp host. In either case, I’d still be working five days a week at the parking lot. If I moved, I’d have access to electricity in the garage/office, but I’d have to drive my van on a 25 mile round-trip commute to the parking lot. If I stayed put, the other camp host in my area and I would work out a patrol schedule, and I’d get to drive the company truck on the 25 miles round-trip to check on the farther campground. I opted to stay where I was so I’d only have to drive the van my routine 6 mile-a-day commute.

On the Friday of Labor Day Weekend, my supervisor said she had bad news. Because the campground farther from the parking lot has yurts that need to be guarded (against theft? against squatters? against vandalism?), I was going to have to move. The other camp host near the parking lot will do a patrol to my campground to collect payments and check-in folks with reservations.

I’m not upset about having to move, but I’m not happy about all the driving and the gas I’ll use. (That six-mile-a-day round-trip commute really spoiled me.) And I will miss my tiny, cute campground.

The bigger campground is lovely too, and it has a place in my heart as my first. It’s where I got my feet wet (literally, on more than one occasion) as a camp host. But I will miss the place I spent the majority of the days and night of the (cultural, if not literal) summer season.