Category Archives: Work Camping

Aug25

The Quietude of Nature

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qui·e·tude
ˈkwīəˌt(y)o͞od/
noun
noun: quietude
  1. a state of stillness, calmness, and quiet in a person or place.

It had been another busy Saturday in the parking lot. Not only had there been many people parking their cars with us, half of the people were cranky, and it seemed like the rest were needy. Either someone was trying to pick a fight or s/he had a million questions and practically wanted us to hold his/her hand through the entire parking process. It was exhausting. The weather wasn’t helping either. The sky was overcast, and we could feel the expectation of rain in the air, as if nature were holding her breath, letting the tension mount before releasing the wet. Maybe it was barometric pressure or negative ions, but the tourists had been acting weird (and annoying!) all afternoon.

My workday was drawing to a close, and I was seeing the light (in the form of dinner and peace) at the end of the tunnel, when I heard the constant mechanical buzz of a small engine coming from the road behind me and to my left. I turned around and saw a grown man and two teenage boys with a remote-controlled toy vehicle rolling at their feet. I didn’t notice which one of them had the controller and was “driving” the thing, but I noticed it was pretty big for a toy and had fat wheels.

I looked at the adult and said incredulously Are you bringing that on the trail?

He answered in a voice I’d expect to hear from a cartoon buffoon: not very bright. Uhhhhh, yeah.

Isn’t that kind of obnoxious? I asked.

He looked at me blankly. He had no idea why people walking in nature and looking at trees might find his noisy toy  obnoxious.

What about the quietude of nature? I pleaded.

The blank look never left his face. It’s battery powered, he said. There’s no gas.

Apparently he thought “quietude” was somehow related to pollution. Apparently he’d never considered pollution of the noise variety.

I can’t stop you from bringing it on the trail, I told him, but I think it’s obnoxious.

Well I think it’s pretty cool, he said in the same tone as schoolchildren say I’m rubber and you’re glue…

As the toy vehicle rolled and hummed across the street to the trail, I imagined it bumping someone’s abuela (grandmother) in the ankle; scaring dogs and making them bark; getting tangled in a Boy Scout leader’s feet; and startling birds and squirrels and causing them to leave the area, all the while destroying the quietude of nature with its irritating buzzing noise.

Aug15

Birth Control

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The family arrived first—Mom, Dad, and three kids, ages probably 11, 9, and 18 months. The little one was toddling, not talking. Mom and Dad spoke with accents I couldn’t place, but the kids sounded full-on American. The story I made up about the family was that Mom and Dad were immigrants, but the kids were born in the U.S.A. and learned to speak here.

I liked the family even though the parents had a lot of questions. The oldest child—a girl—was quiet and seemed shy, but the middle kid—a curly-haired blond boy—was friendly, with a ready smile. Mom was funny, while Dad was earnest. They all seemed to dote on the baby, who toddled around on his short, chunky legs all through the questioning and check-in.

The young couple arrived later. They’d made reservations in advance. They were both somewhere in their mid-20s to early 30s, and the man, thin with tattoos on his hands and forearms, was driving the car, a Lexus. The woman had short hair that was obviously bleached.

They immediately had needs. They’d hoped for a bit more privacy. Could they move to a different site? I did my best to accommodate them. I wanted to like them, but I really didn’t.

The arrivals were on Friday afternoon, after I’d finished working at the parking lot. After everyone was checked in, I ate my dinner and hunkered down in my van. As usual, I was asleep before 9pm.

Also as usual, I was awake and moving early the next morning. I’d already cleaned the restrooms and was cooking my breakfast when the young man with the tattoos strode into my campsite.

I said good morning and he said something along the lines of How ya doin’?

I said I was doing great, that I’d had a good night’s sleep…

He interrupted to say I was lucky, that he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep.

I ask him if the cold had kept him awake. (People from the hot lowlands aren’t always prepared for the chilly mountain nights.)

He said the baby had kept him up all night. He said the baby had cried for two hours straight. He said the baby had cried every half hour.

 

I hadn’t heard the baby cry even once, not even with the back and side windows of the van open all night.

The young man with the tattoos asked me if the family with the baby were staying another night. I told him they’d been undecided about how many nights they wanted to stay when they checked in, but I’d know their plans for the night later in the morning. He said if the baby were staying, he might find another place to sleep. I don‘t know if he was hoping I’d offer him a refund if he decided to leave or if he wanted me to tell him his reservation was transferable to another campground. (Reservations aren’t transferable between campgrounds, and I’m not authorized to give anyone a refund, EVER, so I didn’t make him either of those offers.) All I offered was to let him know if the family with the baby decided to stay another night.

After I’d eaten and cleaned up the breakfast dishes, I talked to the family with the baby about their plans. They had decided to stay another night. As soon as I left their campsite, I told the man with the tattoos of their decision.

When I got back from the parking lot around 3:30, the Lexus was parked on the campsite of the man with the tattoos, and the tent was still set up, two indications that they’d decided to stay.

I went about my life, did my paperwork, ate my dinner. There was a lot of activity in the campground, kids running around, music playing. It wasn’t dark out when I got in the van, and I was probably asleep before 9pm again.

Sometime later, I awoke to a light knock on my van. At first I thought I’d dreamed the knock, but when I said Yes? someone outside responded.

My solar lantern had run out of power before I fell asleep, so I had to grope around in the dark to find clothes to put on. When I opened my curtain, I saw the women with the short bleached hair standing outside my van.

She said they didn’t know what to do. The baby was crying again, and she and the man with the tattoos couldn’t sleep. (At no time during our conversation did I hear the baby cry.) She said the baby had kept them up the night before and was now keeping them awake again. She said they wanted to be polite, but didn’t know what to do.

I told her I wasn’t sure what to do either, as I’d never had a crying baby in my campground or in my personal life.

She said she and the man with the tattoos didn’t have kids either. As I suspected!

She suggested the parent(s) sit in the car with the crying baby.

I said I would speak to the parents, although I had no idea what I was going to say. I was fairly certain

  1. The parents knew the baby was crying
  2. The parents didn’t enjoy being kept awake by the baby’s crying
  3. The parents were doing everything in their power to stop the baby’s crying and get him to sleep

I had no idea if it were within my rights as a camp host to ask the parents to shut their crying baby in a car because he was keeping other campers awake. The whole situation reminded me of that episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye is on a packed bus and they’re in danger of the enemy finding them and one lady has a noisy chicken and Hawkeye pressures her to silence it so she smothers it, only it wasn’t a chicken, it was a baby, but Hawkeye represses the truth until the kindly psychiatrist gets Hawkeye to face the truth so his healing can begin. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye,_Farewell_and_Amen)

In any case, the woman with the short bleached hair left, and I put on my uniform. (I’m not big on uniforms, but nothing says official business like brown polyester blend pants.) When I looked at my watch, it was 12:40 in the morning. I dug around and found a flashlight so I could find my way in the dark. At no time during my preparations did I hear the baby make any noise.

astronomy, comet, constellationWhen I stepped out of m van, the sky was lovely. Within the frame made by the tops of the tall trees, I saw stars filling the heavens. As I looked up, a meteor shot across the sky. Wow! I don’t think I’d been outside late at night since I got to my campground, so it was a real blessing to be there at precisely the right moment to witness the shooting star.

 

I didn’t hear the baby crying, and I thought it would be silly to go onto the family’s campsite to ask them to quiet their silent baby. What if the baby had just passed out for the night, and I woke him? What if the young couple were crazy and hallucinating a baby crying? I didn’t think I should say anything unless I heard the baby cry with my own ears.

 

I sat down near the restrooms and listened while enjoying the starry sky. I didn’t hear a single sound coming from a human of any age. I sat there for fifteen minutes and listened to the silence of the night. Then I decided to go back to my van and go to bed.

I closed the door of the van as quietly as I could because I didn’t want to wake the (hopefully) sleeping baby. I got out of my uniform and back into my bed. Of course, I was wide awake, but I just lay there, waiting for the baby to cry.

It was so quiet, I could hear a car pass on the road on the other side of the trees surrounding the campground. affection, baby, birthThe baby must have heard it too, because he let out one long wail. Then he fell silent, and that was the last I heard of him until morning.

The baby did start howling, screaming, wailing, crying around seven in the morning. It wasn’t continual, but it was consistent. I thought I heard the young man with the tattoos shout his disbelief and frustration with the kid, but I could have misinterpreted what I heard, if it was actually the young man with the tattoos I heard shouting. I was supersensitive, afraid he was going to march over to me and accuse me of not having done anything the night before or demand I do something to stop the current baby noise. He didn’t come over, and he didn’t pack up and leave, so things must not have been too bad for him.

I went to the parking lot as early as I could, eager to escape any conflict that might be brewing. When I returned to the campground around three o’clock, I was met with blissful silence. Everyone had cleared out (check-out time is noon), except for the folks on site #1 who were staying over one more night.

As I was eating my dinner, the woman from site #1 came over to ask some questions about the route they should take to their next destination. I asked her if she’d heard the baby cry, and she said yes. She told me she is a nanny in Berkley, and while she loves the kids she works with, she had been looking forward to time away from children. She seemed to be taking a just my luck attitude to the inclusion of a crying baby during the first leg of her vacation. She wondered if she’d have to deal with kids during her whole trip.

I told her I didn’t think the crying baby had any sort of karmic retribution aimed at her. I told her I thought the universe had sent the crying baby as a means of birth control for the tattooed man and the short haired women, as they were obviously not ready to deal with being up all night with a child of their own. The nanny laughed, but I hope the crying baby did his job and kept those two from reproducing. They just didn’t seem ready for the annoyances of parenthood.

Images courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/astronomy-comet-constellation-cosmos-631477/ and https://www.pexels.com/photo/affection-baby-birth-black-and-white-266055/.

 

Jul27

Fire Restrictions

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On the 6th of July, very strict fire restrictions went into effect. Up until that time, fires were allowed in fire rings in campgrounds; folks doing dispersed/primitive camping could not have fires. On July 6th, fires were banned even in campgrounds. Any smoking became restricted to inside cars with doors and windows closed. Use of camp stoves with an on/off switch was not banned, but a fire permit is needed to legally use them.

Signs were posted on the sides of roads throughout the forest, as well as on the information board in campgrounds, including mine.

For almost two weeks, no one tried to have a campfire in my campground. Whenever I checked people in, I immediately told them the most important thing they needed to know was NO CAMPFIRES. At my supervisor’s request, I started writing “no fire, wood or charcoal” on camping permits, near where the camper signs his/her name. On the copy of the permit that hangs on the pole at the front of the campsite, I was instructed to write “NF” (No Fire) so that if a ranger or company employee comes through my campground and sees a camper with a fire, the permit shows that I’ve informed the camper of the fire restrictions.

Of course, I don’t sit in my campground all day long waiting to tell campers about fire restrictions and watching for unsanctioned fires. I work at the parking lot three, four, sometimes five hours a day. That’s a lot of time for people to be in the campground with no one to make sure they don’t build a fire.

Before the restrictions, I would climb into my van between 7pm and dark and hang my curtain and take off my uniform. If campers came in after that, I’d write their permit and get them to sign it the next morning. Now, if I hear people come in early enough to possibly build a campfire, I get out of the van and talk to them about the fire ban and get them to sign their permit so they can’t say they didn’t know they couldn’t have a campfire.

Almost two weeks after the ban on campfires, I left the parking lot precisely at 3pm. As I pulled into my campground, I saw I had new campers on sites #1, #2, and #3. After parking the van, I grabbed permits and car passes and walked over to that side of the campground. The tent on site #1 was zipped, and although there was a car parked on the site, I didn’t see any people moving about, so I went to site #2.

As I walked up, I saw the folks on site #2 were preparing food to cook.  After getting their basic information, I informed them of the no campfire rule. As I looked over to their fire ring, I saw large shish kabobs sitting on the attached grill. I also noticed several pieces of purchased firewood near the fire pit.

What I didn’t notice until I took a couple of steps up higher into the campsite so I could see the license plate on their vehicle was the fire already burning in the ring. I’d just told them absolutely no campfires, but they somehow thought it would be ok to have a campfire until their meaty kabobs were cooked.

I told them I was sorry but we were going to have to put the fire out. They wanted me to wait until their dinner was cooked, but I said no. No way was I going to allow campers to have a fire for five minutes while the whole forest is under a strict fire ban. I apologized again and said I’d get a bucket of water.

When I got back with the bucket of water, I apologized so many times while I extinguished the fire that the woman told me to quit being sorry because I was only doing my job. The man never raised his voice at me or got rude, but I could tell he was angry. He said he’d made the reservation two months ago, and there had been no information about fire restrictions. I told him the fire ban had only gone into effect on July 6th, and it was the Forest Service that called for the ban, not the company I work for. I also told them there was a sign announcing the restrictions at the front of the campground. (Of course, they said they hadn’t seen the sign.)

The man thought he should have been sent an email when the ban went into effect. He was upset that he’d bought firewood he couldn’t use and that his barbecue plans had been thwarted. I was sympathetic and told him I would get him a comment card if he wanted one. He said he did want one, so I got that for him as well as the phone number to the local office and a fire permit to make the use of their camp stove legal.

Upon thinking on the situation further, I think the reservation company would have to contact campers to alert them of such changes as a fire ban, as it is the reservation company who has contact info for people who have reserved campsites. In any case, if the unhappy man pursues his complaint, someone higher than I in the chain of command can explain all that to him.

By the time I got back to site #2 with the second bucket of water needed to extinguish the fire completely, it had started raining. There was never a torrential downpour, but over the next several hours there were varying degrees of precipitation from drizzle to steady rain. Maybe Mother Nature would have accomplished the dousing of the campfire, but I wasn’t about to take any chances.

To read more stories of campers and fire restrictions, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/11/15/what-do-people-do/, here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/11/13/but-were-cold/, and here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/09/18/where-theres-smoke/.

Jul26

Tan Man

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The parking lot was still pretty full, so I was telling folks to find a place to park before they paid the fee.

I was contemplating the trees when Tan Man walked up to pay me. He was at least 60 years old and was not wearing a shirt. His skin was darkly tanned and beginning to look leathery. I didn’t really want to look at his saggy nipples, so I tried to avert my eyes while taking his money and writing his day pass.

There was a guy with Tan Man. The second guy was tall, with a belly so large it held his orange t-shirt away from his body. I was sitting in my chair, and from my vantage point, I could see the expanse of his belly exposed between his t-shirt and his shorts. I didn’t really want to look at that either, so I was glad when they went off toward the trail.

Some time passed, but I’m not sure how much. I’d been reading my book, writing day passes, collecting parking fees, not really paying attention to the time. I looked up, and Tan Man was standing in front of me again.

He asked me if I’d seen the guy he’d been with earlier. He said they’d been separated.

I said I hadn’t seen him, not adding that I’d had my nose in my book and hadn’t really been watching the pedestrian activity.

Tan Man got very animated. He told me he’d lost the other guy. He told me that he’d left the trail and hadn’t been able to find the other guy when he returned to it. He told me the other guy was from New York City and really stupid. (Tan Man had some sort of East Coast accent himself, but I didn’t really want to talk with him, so I didn’t ask him where he was from.)

He said he’s been back to the car and the other guy wasn’t in the car. He asked me if he should drive off and leave the other guy. It seemed like a weird question, but I thought he was just joking or being melodramatic.

I said, NO! That would be really mean.

He said he thought maybe the other guy had hitched a ride out of there. He said he thought he (Tan Man) should maybe just leave without him.

I told him I doubted the other guy had hitched out. I told him if the other guy had come to the parking lot, gone to the car, and found no one there, he probably would have asked me if I had seen his friend. I also said that if he’d hitched out, he probably would have asked me to tell his friend that he was leaving.

Tan Man seemed reassured and calmed by my thoughts on the matter. He thanked me for the advice.

He told me that he’d made friends on the trail, that he makes friends wherever he goes. He told me that someone had filmed him on the trail.

About that time, a young man walked up to put trash in the garbage can. Tan Man told me this was the guy who’d filmed him. Tan Man greeted the young man, and when the young man responded, I heard that he had an accent. I couldn’t tell where he was from by his accent, but I guessed that he was from somewhere in Europe.

Tan Man asked the young European man where he was going next. The young man named some places, ending with Las Vegas. Tan Man told the young man how much he was going to like Vegas, then asked the young man how old he was. The young man said he was almost 16. Tan Man was concerned that the young man might not be allowed in casinos. Then Tan Man started telling the young man about some amusement park ride in Vegas that he would really like. The young man was grinning, but I couldn’t tell if his expression was one of amusement, discomfort, or confusion. Finally, Tan Man ended the conversation (which was more like a monologue) by telling the young man If you like women, you’ll like Vegas.

Tan Man told me he was going back out on the trail to look for his friend, to tell him to wait at the car if I saw him.

More time passed. I heard yelling but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I identified the yelling voice as Tan Man’s. He was yelling the words, Stay right there! Stay right there!

Tan Man came running into the parking lot. He said he’d found the other guy on the road. He thanked me for my help. The last I saw of Tan Man, he was zooming out of the parking lot in his car, racing to pick up the other guy.

The next day I was telling my co-worker about Tan Man. I wasn’t far into the story when I realized Tan Man was chemically altered! I don’t know if he was jittery on coffee or tweakin’ on crank, but in retrospect, I don’t think he was in his natural state. The main indication that he was not in a rational state of mind was his quickness to decide to leave the person riding in his car 40 miles from the nearest town just because they’d been separated on the trail. That’s not a reasonable decision within the time frame involved.

I’m glad I was there to talk some sense into Tan Man. The guy with the big belly probably doesn’t even realize how lucky he is that I was there. It’s not like he could have hailed a cab to take him back to his hotel. If I hadn’t been there, Tan Man might have left him stranded in the forest.

Jul24

Marijuana in the Workplace

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Most folks who pull their cars into the parking lot have had their windows up during their journey. When I step up to the car, the driver typically rolls down his/her window to hear what I’ve got to say. (Sometimes in an unintentional slapstick moment, the driver accidentally rolls down the window of the passenger behind him/her, and confusion briefly reigns.)

Shallow Focus Photography of Cannabis PlantOccasionally, when the window goes down, my nose is invaded by the strong aroma of marijuana. I want to say, It smells goooooooooood in here! However, I try to maintain a professional demeanor and pretend I don’t know that everyone in the car has been toking all the way up the mountain and is higher than the trees they’ve come to see.

The other day when the window came down, the smell of pot hit me right between the eyes. It wasn’t just the smell of pot. I was hit by the feeling of pot. I felt my brain bounce. This was a high grade medical contact high.

I couldn’t even talk! I tried to say There may not be room in the parking lot for your car. What I actually stammered was closer to There may not be room in your car. I walked away feeling like an idiot, but the people in the vehicle were probably too stoned to notice any weirdness on my part.

I don’t smoke weed, but I sure enjoy the smell of that secondhand smoke.

Image courtesty of https://www.pexels.com/photo/shallow-focus-photography-of-cannabis-plant-606506/.

 

 

Jul23

Cows in the Meadow

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Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn.
The sheep’s cow’s in the meadow…

For my day off on Tuesday, I went halfway to civilization where I pick up my mail. The post office is in a building with a restaurant, bar, general store, and gift shop. The building has internet access, so on my days off when I don’t want to deal with the heat and people in Babylon, I go twenty-five miles, buy a cup of coffee and a meal, and spend eight or nine hours using the internet. The food is decent (not great, but decent), and there’s one booth with an electrical outlet next to it. I’ve gotten friendly with the woman who’s the waitress and the cook all morning, and we chitchat a little when she comes by to see if I need anything. There’s never been a crowd any day I’ve been in there, so no one seems to mind if I take up a whole table for a whole day.

It was after five o’clock when I packed up and headed out on Tuesday afternoon, so it was close to 6pm when I got to my campground.

The first thing I noticed upon arrival was that the half of the gate still standing at the entrance to the campground was blocking half of the road. I stopped the van and got out to investigate.

Sometime back (I don’t know when exactly), a huge tree fell and smashed half of the gate, which is meant to block the access road when the campground is closed in the winter.

IMG_3247

This photo shows the tree that fell and destroyed half of the gate into my campground. The brown metal pieces are the remains of the gate. The gate seems to have been made of strong and sturdy metal, and the tree just SMASHED it when it fell onto it.

IMG_3245

This photo shows the side of the gate that’s still standing and is tied to a thin-branched bush with yellow plastic “caution” tape.

To hold open the half of the gate that’s still standing, someone had tied yellow plastic “caution” tape to the gate and to a thin-branched bush.

What I found when I surveyed the scene was that the “caution” tape had broken and allowed the gate to swing across the road. I swung the gate out of the roadway and managed to tie the remainder of the tape to the gate, holding it out of the way.

I’d only driven a little ways down the road when I looked to my left and in the meadow saw faces–cow faces! By cows I mean cattle. I’m guessing they were females because I don’t think bulls usually run around with the ladies, but I did not check bovine genitalia.

There seemed to be a lot of faces staring at me, but I didn’t get a head count.

I had an idea that if cows were in the meadow, their people must be in the campground, but when I got to the campground, I found it deserted.

I wasn’t sure what to do. Bovine invasion had not been covered in our training. Was it ok for them to be in my meadow? Did I need to report their presence, and if so, to whom? I figured my best course of action was to drive the three miles back to the neighboring campground and ask the other camp hosts what I should do.

The other camp hosts didn’t seem worried about the cows and said I didn’t need to report them to anyone. The man half of the camp host couple said he’d worked on a ranch. He told me these were half wild mountain cows who don’t see people much. It seems like they’re turned out to fend tor themselves during the dry summer months, then are probably rounded up for the winter. These are probably some of the same cows I’ve seen on the road on my way to and from the hot springs.

The camp host man said I shouldn’t let myself get between a mamma cow and her calf. He said a mamma cow separated from her calf could be as dangerous as a mamma bear separated from her cub.

He also said if the cows were bothering me, he’d come and chase them away.

The cows were not bothering me. I just needed to know if I should report their location. And I’m not scared of cows! My uncle raised cows when I was a kid, and I’ve been around cows, petted them above the nose and between their eyes. I’ve even been licked by big sloppy cow tongue. And while I wasn’t going to trek into the meadow to try to pet a half-wild mountain cow, I think I could make enough noise to scare them away if they came up to my van and bothered me.

The cows are actually rather shy. I wanted some photos of them to include with this post, so I grabbed my camera. Like reclusive Hollywood stars, they turned their faces, then shuffled into the trees on the perimeter of the meadow. Like a paparazza destined for failure, I gave up after a few blurry shots.

IMG_3202

One of my blurry shots of shy cows.

On Friday evening, a couple of young women (who were perhaps a couple) checked into the campground. I told them about the cows (which I had seen over the ensuing days but had failed to photograph). As the women headed to the meadow on a late afternoon walk, I heard noise from the area. The noise was too loud to have been caused by two skinny humans, so I figured I must be hearing the cows. Sure enough, when I looked that way, several shy bovines were hustling into the trees, but one bold black one stood out in the open and stared at the two young women.

IMG_3220

A bold black cow. (I took this photo a few days after the events written about in this post.)

As we all stood still, an amazing thing happened. Cow after cow came out of the trees. They strode away in single file. The cows in the line walked away slowly but purposefully. Where they were going, I don’t know, but they seemed to have a destination in mind.

I didn’t dash to get my camera. I was afraid sudden movement on my part would cause cow consternation, and I didn’t want to upset anyone. Maybe I’ll get another chance at photos. Or maybe we’ll only have a couple of blurry cow photos to look at.

IMG_3236

I took this photo of cows in the meadow a few days after the events written about in this post occurred. There were about twenty cows in the meadow when I took this photo. I had to  use the zoom on my camera to get this shot. I could not get close enough to the cows to get better photos. Whenever they heard my footsteps, they looked up at me. If I got too close, the cows moved farther away.

 

IMG_3221

Two bold cows. While most of the cows in the meadow were black, there were a couple of light brown ones. Some of the black cows had white faces.

 

IMG_3226

I saw a lot of cow butts much like this one while I was trying to take these photos.

 

All photos in this post were taken by me.

All photos in this post were taken by me.

Jul22

I Know You Understand

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Around 7:30 on the Wednesday night before Independence Day Weekend, I got two sets of campers within ten minutes. I’d thought I’d have an empty campground again, but suddenly I had company.

The second camper pulled in before the first group had settled on a site, before I could collect money from them or write a permit.

I walked up to the car parked by the sign board where the driver was probably looking for the amount of the camping fee. I said hello and asked if she (for the the driver–the lone person in the car–was a woman who appeared to be in her 50s) was looking for a place to camp for the night.

She said she didn’t want to camp–she didn’t have a tent–she wanted to park–she slept in her car.

I was confused for a moment, but then I realized we don’t have rules against car camping. It doesn’t matter to me if a camper sleeps in a tent or in a car or on the picnic table as long as s/he is quiet and doesn’t burn the place down or cause other trouble.

I told her it was fine if she slept in her car, that the campsite fee was $20. She told me she was happy to pay it.

Then she told me she was here to be with the sequoias. She said she’d had open heart surgery six weeks earlier to repair a birth defect. She said she was recovering from the surgery and had decided that the most important thing she could do for her health was to be with the sequoias. She was planning to go to the trail the next morning and spend the day with the trees.

Then she looked directly at me and said, I know you understand.

Yes, I told her, I do.

I believe these trees are deeply nurturing and deeply healing. I know they are ancient, and I believe they are wise, in a tree way, although perhaps not in a way that humans can truly understand. I believe these trees can heal mentally and emotionally, so why not physically? Our mental, emotional, and physical states are all connected, so healing one state should help heal the others.

If I’d had open heart surgery recently, I’d probably want to sit with the sequoias too, and let their healing powers flow through me.

I did understand, but how did she know I did? I’m kind of undercover here in my camp host uniform, not exactly letting my freak flag fly. Somehow she took one look at me and knew I’d understand her. Being recognized that way was a wonderful feeling; it’s such a comfort to be known.

I saw her at the parking lot the next day. I arrived at work just as she was preparing to leave. She remembered my name. She said she’d been with the sequoias all day.

As she was about to pull her car out of the parking lot, she called me over and offered me one of her (delicious!) breakfast cookies.

I said, Hang on! I have something for you too!

I intended to grab a piece of rose quartz that’s been bouncing around on the floor of the van since before I left the city. Instead, remembering a lesson I learned about giving the best I’ve got, I grabbed my really lovely chunk of rose quartz from the console in the front of the van.

I took this photo of the piece of rose quartz I gave away.

I took this photo of the piece of rose quartz I gave away.

I handed it to her through her driver’s side window and told her it was rose quartz, the stone of unconditional love and infinite and peace.

She said, I know what it is.

She said she was going to sleep with it on her heart. I told her I’d done exactly the same thing with it. I told her it has really good energy, that sometimes I’d put it on my forehead to calm me down when I was too agitated to sleep.

She was crying and she said, You gave me this to heal my heart!

I hadn’t thought it out and decided I’ll give this woman a piece of rose quartz to heal her heart, but rose quartz is healing, and it is all about the heart, so I guess she was right.

Sometimes I’m blessed with understanding I don’t even know I have.

IMG_3082

I took this photo of a giant sequoia.

To find out how I came into possession of that piece of rose quartz, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/08/22/give-the-best-youve-got-a-lesson-in-giving-from-neotribal-the-gathering/.

Jul19

Nice Campers

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The nice campers stayed in my campground several weeks ago, but I’m just getting this piece edited and posted.

I had some nice campers this weekend.

One little family was Mom, Dad, and a young daughter, maybe five or six years old. When I went over to write their permit, the little girl immediately handed me a drawing she’d done of the trees. Sweet!

The whole family was nice, and I talked to the parents about what they might want to see in the area. Later, after they’d visited a nearby trail, I asked them now they’d liked it, and they said they’d had a really good time.

On Saturday evening, I saw the dad walking up to my campsite with a saucepan covered in foil.

He asked if I had eaten yet, and I lied and said no. I wanted whatever food he was offering, just to eat something different from the things I always cook for myself. Turns out he was offering me homemade cauliflower-spinach-leek soup. I grabbed a bowl and had him pour it all in as I thanked him profusely. As he was walking off, I took a bite and called out after him, This is amazing! It was so good! I haven’t been eating many vegetables out here, so my body was so happy to get some really delicious ones in that soup.

Before the soup, when I returned to the campground after working at the parking lot for four hours, there was a tent set up and a car parked on site #9, the site right next to mine. There is nothing separating my site and site #9. Since I’ve been on site #10, three times people have chosen site #9 when there were other sites available. I don’t understand why campers would want to be right next to the camp host if they could avoid it. Maybe they like the flatness of site #9. Maybe they expect the camp host to observe quiet hours. Maybe they think I am going to protect them from bears or other campers. In any case, I had next door neighbors.

Before I could even get out of my van, a middle-age Asian man was standing next to it looking at me. When I got out of the van, I greeted him and said I’d be right back with the paperwork to check him in.

Turns out he is a linguistics professor from Seoul, Korea who taught at UCLA fifteen years ago. Currently, he and his young wife and her mother are traveling in the United States. We had a pleasant exchange. I checked them in, then I went to my campsite and went about my life.

On Sunday morning, I was sitting at my picnic table, writing. I looked up and saw the grandma-age Korean woman (the mother/mother-in-law) standing next to my van. Then I saw her looking in the open passenger side door and thought, What the fuck! But I smiled and said hello and she said good morning and I said good morning.

I said, Do you need some help?

She said, I don’t know, which I figured meant no or (more accurately) I don’t know what the hell you’re saying.

She moved closer to the van’s open side door, but then she turned her attention to me and made a gesture that said May I look?

I nodded and said yes. I don’t really mind people looking, but asking my permission to look is very important to me.

So she looked into my van and said, Your house very nice.

I thanked her.

She wandered off, but soon came back with her son-in-law. He said she wanted him to tell me my home was very nice.

I thanked her again.

The woman kept pressing the palms of her hands against her cheeks and looking at me. I wondered if she were trying to tell me my face was dirty.

But the son-in-law translated that she thought I was glowing because  of this beautiful place where I was living and working. It was a lovely sentiment, although I suspect my face is more likely to be dirty than glowing.

Then the mother-in-law saw the eleven little beaded stretchy bracelets I’ve been wearing since Madame Chile sent them to me. She took my arm and pushed up my sleeve so she could see them all, ooohing and ahhhing the whole time. Then she pushed up her sleeve and showed me the chunky silver bracelet she was wearing.

The linguist started asking me about hiking trails, so I pulled out a map and spread it on the picnic table, and his mother-in-law wandered away.

After the professor left, I decided I wanted to give the mother-in-law one of the hemp bracelets I made. After a few tries, I found a bracelet with a carnelian stone that fit her. I fastened it around her wrist. Her fat little arm with soft, delicate old lady skin made me think of my grandmother whose skin had the same qualities in her later life.

Once I gave her the bracelet, the woman was definitely my friend. First she came over because she’d gotten a splinter in her hand. I grabbed my tweezers and pulled it out, all the while wondering if camp hosts are officially allowed to perform first aid on campers. Then she came over to my campsite to get water from the jug on my picnic table to clean whatever she’d just spilled on her jacket. When the water alone didn’t clean the spill to her satisfaction, she poured some of my Dr. Bronner’s soap onto the paper towel she was using to scrub up. In a little while, she came back to pour water from my jug into her bottle. When she came over the last time, I think she put some Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap on her toothbrush. (I wonder how that worked out for her.)

The whole time she was coming over to use my supplies, I was trying to cook pancakes. While it was very sweet of her to want to interact with me, it was also awkward because we couldn’t talk to each other. She tried to communicate, asking me You middle age? and You single? I had to answer yes to both of those questions.

I got the feeling her daughter and  son-in-law were ignoring her, so she was coming over to me for attention.

Before they left, the daughter came and told me that her mom said my house was cozy, and I told her that he mom was a nice lady.

I felt lucky to have two sets of friendly campers in one weekend.

Jul16

The Fourth of July (Part 2)

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To read the first part of the story of my Fourth of July experiences, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/07/15/the-fourth-of-july/.

After thinking on site #4, I knew the only option I really had was to drive to the other campground and get the refund form from the other host. I wasn’t happy about that idea for several reasons.

#1 I was exhausted and didn’t want to drive again that day.

#2 I was exhausted and hungry and wanted to eat dinner and go to bed.

#3 I was exhausted and I didn’t want the other camp host to hold me hostage and talk my ear off (figuratively speaking on both counts).

#4 It was late in the evening, and I didn’t want to drive back to my campground in the dark.

#5 The rest of the party had arrived on site #9, and if I left, I’d have two cars to contend with when I returned and had to back my van into my campsite in front of God and everyone.

But I did my duty and drove down to the other campground.

The other host did not have the form I needed.

She dug through folders and boxes and bags, but didn’t find the form. She had what I had, a single page photocopy of the form with the sections to be filled out by someone other than the camp host crossed out. She decided what I needed to do was fill out both forms with the same information and have the camper write the reason for seeking the refund on the back of both sheets.

I took the page she had and drove back to my campground. It wasn’t dark yet, and for that I was grateful.

When I got to my campsite, I began maneuvering the van so I could back into my site. I could have pulled in nose first, but then I would have had to back out in the morning or—Heaven forbid—in the middle of the night if there had been an emergency.

There’s a stump on one edge of my campsite, and I didn’t want to hit it. I’m well aware that the stump is there, as I maneuver next to it several times a week. I knew I was close to it, but suddenly one guy from site #9 was on the side of my van “directing” me (and making sure I didn’t hit his car, I suppose), and the Eastern Block (or German or Russian or whatever) authoritarian was standing between my van and the water tank, waving his arms around. I was not amused.

However, when I got out of the van, I thanked them.

Before I could walk away, the authoritarian asswipe gestured at my van and said with contempt dripping from his words, What is this? A bus?

I wanted to kick him in his nuts and tell him to go fuck his mother, but instead I said very calmly, This is my home. Then I walked away.

Before I ate dinner, I went back to site #4 and completed the request for refund paperwork.

As I cooked my dinner, the children from site #9 crossed into and out of the meadow at the back of my site. I hate it when people cross my site—it’s so rude!—but since we all own the forest, I have no right to expect people to polite and take ten extra steps.

It was dark and late by the time I finished cleaning up from dinner. I was entirely exhausted by that time, but still had to listen to the children camped next to my site squeal and shriek and generally make noise until we all passed out.

I was up around 6am on the 4th, cleaning the restrooms and making sure nothing terrible had happened in the night. (I found no evidence of terribleness.)

I arrived at the parking lot at 9am, as instructed. I don’t remember anything noteworthy happening. The day is a blur in my memory–a lot of people and a lot of cars with nothing and no one standing out.

I did ask my supervisor about the folks on site #6 who were given a discount on a card the company I work for doesn’t honor. She told me I was going to have to ask them to pay the balance. She said anybody could enter any numbers and get a discount, so if people get a discount they don’t qualify for, I have to ask them to pay the difference.

So I did it. I explained the situation and asked them to pay the $22 they hadn’t been charged. And they very nicely paid the money. While I wrote the permit for the additional payment, I regaled them with stories of working at the parking lot. They laughed in all the right places, and I wished I could hang out with them for the rest of the evening.

There was one sad event of note on Sunday morning before I left for the parking lot. I heard the sounds of angry voices and some kind of scuffle coming from site #9. I looked up to see the authoritarian asswipe smacking the older boy on his head and upper body. The boy tried to run away, and the man chased him, grabbed him, and smacked him a few more times. Neither of them was speaking English, so I don’t know what words were passing between them. I don’t know if either of them knew I’d seen what happened.

I didn’t know what to do. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to yell at the asswipe and beat him with a stick. But I knew that would get me fired and probably thrown in jail, and it wouldn’t have helped the kid at all. I didn’t know how to intervene in a way that would have diffused the situation. It’s not like the asswipe and I had some sort of rapport. Even if I had been able to speak calmly, I don’t know what I would have said. I worried that if I intervened, the man would just take it out on  the kid later. I wondered if I should say something directly to the kid, but what? You dad is a mean idiot, but you won’t be little forever. Would that have been helpful in any way?

I didn’t know what to do, and I haven’t had any good ideas in the ensuing days. I’m haunted by the whole experience, and I think I really failed that kid.

The weekend did end on a (literal and figurative) sweet note. As I was about to pull out of my campsite and head to the parking lot, the two gay Australian guys walked up and offered me their leftover pink and white marshmallows. They told me thy had a “lovely” time, told me I’d been just “lovely.” They said they hoped to come back to the campground next summer, and they hoped they’d see me again.

If the 4th of July is the midpoint of summer, my time on the mountain is half over.

Jul15

The Fourth of July (Part 1)

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The Fourth of July turned out to be pretty low key after all. It was actually the third of July that stressed me out.

I arrived at the parking lot at nine in the morning, as instructed. The parking lot was mostly empty, and I got a spot for the van right in front. The lot was normal weekend busy, not absolute chaos busy.

I was expecting nine groups of campers, and when I returned to the campground, five groups had arrived. I started going from site to site, filling out permits and handing out car passes and the glossy pages on which the rules were printed.

The people at the first site were friendly and gave me no problems.

The group at the second site was a bunch of dudes, and their leader immediately began questioning me when I said they needed to pay $7 per night for the extra vehicle on their site. Here’s how it works: One car is included in the basic campsite fee, but each additional vehicle on the site costs an extra $7 for every day it’s there. The extra vehicle fee is explained on the reservations website, but I think most people don’t bother to read the details. They’re not pleased when I drop what they see as a surprise charge on them.

In any case, I collected the $14 for the extra vehicle on site #7, and I moved on, feeling a little flustered.

About that time, the people staying next to me on site #9 arrived. The universe has yet to send anyone I really want to hang out with to be my next door camping neighbor. These neighbors were a mother, a father, and two young sons. The father, a man in his mid-30s with an accent (German? Russian? Eastern European?) and a stern demeanor was their spokesman. I greeted him, and he immediately wanted to know if he could put his tent here, if he could park his car there. He tried to park his car right up on my van, but I told him it had to be on the other side of the wooden block separating site #9 from site #10. He said their friends would be arriving soon to share the campsite and where would they be able to park?

When I untangled myself from Mr. Authoritarian Father Figure, I went to check in the campers on site #6. They were a group of young, attractive gay men. (Especially attractive was one of the Australians who was J. Crew model gorgeous. Every time I looked at him, I thought, Put your eyes back in your head, bi girl!) As I filled out their permit, I realized they’d been given a 50% discount on their camping fee using a pas the company I work for doesn’t honor. When I went back to the van, I double checked my information, and sure enough, we don’t give discounts on that card. I had to go back over there and tell them I’d present their case to my supervisor, but they might end up owning an additional $22. Awkward! They were cool about it, which made me like them, AND they knew they owed for the extra vehicle, earning them bonus good camper points.

While I was checking in the guys on site #6, I saw the folks arrive on site #4 and set up their tent. I checked in the family on site #5 (mom, dad, and vocally bored preteen boy) with no problems, then went back to the van to drop off paperwork and pick up blank permits.

Before I could gather the blank permits and get out of the van, the woman from site #4 (young, pretty, wearing glasses and a light blue dress which would have made me think she was Amish if it hadn’t ended above her knees) was standing right outside my door. She said she’d seen the sign on the information board near the restrooms that says campsites cost $20 a night…I told her campsites are $2 a night more on holidays.

She said, Oh. Is this a holiday?

I blinked my eyes rapidly, trying to figure out if she was from a country other than the United States of America. She had no discernable accent.

I said, Yes. It’s the 4th of July weekend.

She said, Oh. That’s a holiday?

I told her it is. I did not tell her it’s the biggest holiday of the summer season, the biggest holiday (ok, maybe second to Christmas) in the country in which we were standing. How could she not know that the 4th of July is a holiday? (Maybe she was Amish. Or a space alien.)

She said she’d been charged $57 for two nights on her campsite. I grabbed my reservation list and showed her that she (or more accurately the fellow she was with, in whose name the reservation had been made) had been charged $44 for two nights of camping. I suggested the additional charges might have been reservation fees. She asked if she’d been charged $13 in reservations fees. I explained I had no idea, since I don’t work for the company that makes reservations, and I don’t know their fee schedule. I suggested she look at her confirmation letter (which she had not printed) or call the reservation company when she had cell phone service.

The she told me something had come up, and she and the guy wouldn’t stay the second night of their reservation. She asked if they could get a refund on the night they wouldn’t be staying and if there was a cancellation fee involved. I told her I didn’t know, since I don’t work for the reservation company. I told her again she should look to her confirmation letter for that information.

I told her I’d be at her campsite soon to check her in, and I’d bring with me the form she needed to fill out to request a refund on a reservation. Of course, when I looked through my paperwork, I saw that I didn’t actually have that form. I wanted to get the form from the camp host in the campground next to the parking lot when I went to work down there the next morning, but the woman said they’d be leaving early the next day. I mulled over the situation while I checked in in the folks on sites #2 and #3.

Those two sites were taken by one party of three older Asian couples. One of the sites had only paid 50% of the normal camping fee because the reservation had been made using a Golden Age card. When a Golden Age or Golden Access (GA) card is used on a reservation to get a discount, the camper has to show the card to me. Since the card only provides a discount to a person actually camping on the site, I have to be sure the cardholder (and the card s/he is holding) are indeed on the site. I had a moment of worry when the man half of the couple couldn’t find his GA card in his wallet. I knew if he couldn’t produce the card, I was going to have to ask him to pay the other half of the camping fee, and I knew that was going to be a pain in the ass. His wife saved the day by producing her GA card, so all was well, especially since the man half of one of the other couples paid their extra vehicle fee with no complaint.

(To be continued…here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/07/16/fourth-of-july-part-2/.)