I've just stayed here for so long almost every day of my life since then, whether it be to play games, watch videos, talk to my friends on Discord, etc. But, it's pretty much taken over me. Usually after school, when I return home I'd go straight upstairs to this room and stay here probably until the end of the day, except for when I go to the bathroom or if I'm called by my parents to come downstairs for a bit. What I need to give myself is a break from all of this. If my mom and sister are going to the mall, or New York, I just don't come along, I just stay at my desk, doing what I do almost every day. I'm usually not able to give that to myself, but on the 6th, my parents give us a break for a few days from all of this, and let's just say, I enjoyed it.
A couple weeks before it started, my parents told my sister and I about it, a camping trip in Maine, but we never really prepared and packed up until the day before, I didn't think it would mean much to me. The day later, early in the morning, we left. It took a long time, though we did stop at Connecticut for a while for breakfast, as well as the Pez Visitor Center. But then we kept going. It took a long time and got exhausting, but eventually we got there. Thing is though, we didn't start as a forest as I expected since I was told it was a camping trip, we started at a hotel. But that's fine, we explored downtown and visited a really nice place along the shore. The day later though, we left the hotel and got to the forest, as I was expecting. A forest area owned and set up with campsites.
We set up the outdoor chairs, set up the outdoor table, and just sat there for a bit. The rest of my family just sat there playing Uno while I just sat there, looking around, taking in my view, the sounds, the colors, the other campers around us, just all that was there. Later we set up the tent, then started our campfire. Our first one wasn't the best, we had our Firestarter and new what to do with it, but weren't really able to start the fire, so my dad just used his lighter to start it off. We heated up some food and ate, set up the air bed, and still had a lot of time to ourselves. My sister later started a campfire, and she actually did really well. For the rest of the camping trip, she'd be the one setting up the fires at our campsite. Throughout all of that, I often found myself wandering off near the campsite, I had no limits, my parents didn't give me any. They wanted me to enjoy this place, and I did as much as I could. I remember there being a tree stump very close to our tent, and I'd spend a lot of time just standing on it, looking around, "playing" around with twigs and pinecones. I enjoyed it, and for some reason never found it boring, there was always something to do.
The next day started off really early. My mom woke us up and started being super annoying, acting like she's the main character and that she's the only one who actually cares about the trip. We went to a spot on this bridge above a road and watched the sun rise. It was fascinating, and I took one picture of it that just looked amazing.
Later in the day, we continued on and while my mom and sister stayed in the tent to rest, I stayed outside, looking around. At one point I was literally by myself, until my dad came back. We decided to walk around the whole camp, and I kind of enjoyed it. We even stopped by a big amphitheater in the camp area. Later we returned and I rested a lot in the tent. It's like there was something new every day.
The next day, it was done. We packed up, waited in the car for a bit, then went off. I relistened to Blonde, watched Cowboy Bebop, watched some Dunkey, just anything to shave off some time. Eventually we got home, resetting back to a different life, adjusting back to how things were before. But after switching things back, I will still never forget this experience.
I have never enjoyed being outside as much as I have with that experience, it really opened up a new world for me. I experienced so many new things that just felt special to me. Probably the only reason why I don't usually show an interest in the outdoors is because it just isn't as interesting as this experience, because it was finally something new.
That's it, apparently we're going to be going on another camping trip in August. The topic for this blog post is probably irrelevant now to me since I started it after the camping trip but often got distracted, but I finally got it done now, I'm relieved.
-Anthony "Salteh" S. • • •
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