Firsts of the year

Friday, after an exhausting day of teaching, meetings, a Parents' Weekend reception, and a friend's small party to celebrate that she had passed her doctoral comprehensive exams, my husband treated me to our first chimney fire of the year. The warmth of the burning logs was so inviting that I actually napped on the carpet in front of the fireplace for a few minutes, like Rusty would have (Lizzy, being pickier than he was, prefers the sofa).

Today is another first because my husband packed himself up and took off for West Virginia on his first (and likely last) camping trip of the year. He loves to camp and always tries to do so at least once a year (I remember one year how he went in late November to Valley Forge and how, before leaving, he tested his brand new sleeping bag in our backyard on a very chilly night to make sure it did, as it advertised, protect him against 20-degree overnight temperatures).

This time he's off to the camp ground were we camped (yes, I did camp ONCE and will never do so again, hopefully) as a recently married couple, which is on a gorgeous state park in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia.

During that camping trip, on which I embarked with all the goodwill and bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed enthusiasm of a newlywed, I remember how we drove by the camp's lodge on our way to the camping grounds, and how I eyed it longingly, probably foreseeing what was to come.

We eventually settled in front of an unpromising spot among some trees where my husband set up his inordinately small tent (similar to the triangular ones I was used to seeing in cartoons on TV in Puerto Rico, where the only camping I'd ever done was at the beach in a huge RV that belonged to my best friend). My mother-in-law, ever prepared, had packed up everything she could think of that we would need, and everything she packed up came in handy, including a rain poncho because when it started to pour on us, as night began to fall, the tent started leaking inside until my husband threw the poncho over it.

The not-very-auspicious beginning to our marriage continued after something slithered over the tent in the middle of the night, startling us awake, and, not long afterwards, some creature came sniffing and grunting loudly around the tent. We had heard stories of a possible bear sighting in the vicinity of the camp ground and I was pretty scared (I'm not into close encounters of the third kind with nature) but my husband bolted out of the tent to see if he could actually see the putative bear, which was probably a dog, although that was never factually settled.

After a night of no sleep, not just because of said interruptions but also because who the heck can sleep in a sleepingbag settled on hard, cold and wet ground? we woke up early in the morning and I walked what seemed like half a mile to the public bathroom facilities to take what turned out to be a very cold shower. Worse than the frigid water was my terror at the thought that I'd have to take my glasses off to take the shower because there was a veritable convention of spiders and spiderwebs gathered on the ceiling of the wooden shower stall. I don't mind spiders as long as they're far from me when I'm at my most vulnerable: not just stark naked but also blind.

At any rate, that was the first and probably the last of our camping trips in our many years together. As my husband likes to point out, I'd willingly go camping if we could do so in the style that the Saudi princes like to do it. And he's probably right. I certainly don't see any point in "roughing it," as he likes to do.

So, instead of joining him in his adventures today, I'm in my warm and cozy home where piles of grading await me, Lizzy also awaits to take her walk and there's a beautiful fall day unfurling, bidding me to make the most of it, if not in that order. This is what my Sunday has reserved for me before another busy week of this semester starts afresh tomorrow.