Easter Camping

We are well packed for our camping trips!

A week ago today, I was sitting in the Gila National Forest on the most beautiful of days. No wind. Slightly cloudy skies. No homework. No people or noise or distractions. Just me, my dad, my mom and my two pups Emmy and Murphy.

Fast forward one week... I am sitting in my room avoiding doing homework. It's a disgustingly nasty spring day. Winds up to 40ish mph. Dust blowing in through the windows. And too many noises and distractions around.

Amazing how so much changes in a week. A week ago was Easter. As you know, I am not religious but we have been celebrating the traditions of Easter since I was a wee little girl and I love it. One of my favorite things is that we go camping on Easter.

We are a camping family. And we do it well.

We can sleep in tents... but we don't because we have a much more comfortable way to hide from the cold and the rain. When I was young we bought this pretty awesome pop-up tent camper thing from a family friend. It has seen us through many trips. Though, we spend a good 80% of our time camping outside, it is nice to not lay on an uneven rocky surface.

I think we eat better camping then we do even at home. Everything made in the woods on a fire is just incredibly more tasty. Take a hot dog. A hot dog is pretty tasty at home on your grill... but in the woods it's like a 5 star meal that obviously had to have been made with the finest ingredients in all the land. It's kind of magical how the forest seems to have that power over you.

Easter is more special in the forest. My parents used to hide the eggs filled with candy all around the forest and my sister and I would wake to freezing cold mornings to find the colored gifts scattered high in the trees. It's so much more rewarding that way.

We had freezing years where the candy would literally freeze in the eggs. We had years where the droughts prohibited fires throughout the forest in an effort to prevent all the trees going up in a burning blaze. We had windy years where you couldn't sleep because you felt like you may just be lifted right out of your sleeping bag and thrown into the air.

But this year was perfect. It was cool but not cold. It was breezy but not windy. It didn't rain. We had fires all weekend long. We played games, hiked, flew kites. It was perfect. Well, almost perfect. Almost perfect because this was the first year my sister wasn't there to spend it with us seeing as how she is in grad school in Pennsylvania. And almost perfect because it is more than likely the last Easter camping trip I will ever get to go on.

I'm starting to get a little sappy and a little nervous and a little bitter-sweet about everything. I have exactly 28 days until I graduate and 32 days until I leave New Mexico for good. Well, almost for good. I come back 1 day after a very short science related trip to Maryland, just so I can pack and fly out to Boston the next day. Then in August I am back for a total of 3.5 days so I can pack up my whole life in to my tiny new car and drive off to Michigan.

It's all getting very real and I am not preparing for it at all. I'm one of those last minute packers/preparers and right now I am more concerned with the my food list. You know, the list of food I have to eat before I leave. Oh... the amount of green chili being consumed in 1 month is going to be a new record. I am sure of it.

I hope you all had a wonderfully amazing Easter whether you're religious or not. Enjoy the moments... life never stays the same for long.