I am delighted that I was able to spend all of last weekend in the woods of Pennsylvania. I have a group of friends who I know from graduate school, and about once a year we get together camp. This spring we calculated the location most accessible to Washington DC, New York City, and Columbus, Ohio, which turned out to be cabins in Cowen's Gap State Park in Pennsylvania.
We were four families, comprised of seven adults and three kids. (I'm grateful that we still outnumber the kids.) We share some strong interests: six of the adults are physicists and all were part of the Star Trek group at one time or another. We also differ: the New Yorkers are the only ones wrapping duct tape around their ankles to keep out the ticks and I'm the only one wearing makeup while camping.
We went on short, kid-friendly hikes and ate a lot of delicious meals. We worked on communal crosswords, where we discovered that we need to meet friends who have more knowledge of literature and film. We sang songs in harmony and we sat around campfires. We discuss the pitfalls of academia, how to raise kids, and why humans and primates evolved menstruation. We saw a beaver and watched one of the children fall into a muddy stream. (She was fine.) It was terrifically relaxing.
Because I moved so much as a kid, I didn't have many friends who I had known for more than three or four years. I'm grateful to have these friends, most of whom I've known for a decade. I'm doubly grateful now. Andrew's death impressed on me the importance of enjoying things *right now* and these are also some of the friends who stepped up to do all of the work associated with a funeral - contacting friends and acquaintances, hosting a meal after the funeral, and helping me deal with paperwork and errands.
I can't thank all of my friends and acquaintances for what they've done for me in the past eight months, so I thank them the only way I know how. I cooked two good dinners, brought them some home-roasted coffee, and try to be a good friend in return.
P.S. To E&K, who couldn't join us because E is about to give birth to baby number two - we missed you!
3 comments:
Very sweet post. I am so glad that the camping trip was relaxing after all of your travels.
Seeing your totally fatigued face just after you got home and now knowing how you got that way, it was a lovely expenditure of energy.
We missed you all SO MUCH, too! I thought about you guys and what you must be doing every few hours... but I have to say that when I got up for the third time to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night - I was not particularly sad that I wasn't where you all were. Sounds like another wildly successful weekend in the woods.
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