Roughing it

A regular occurrence at my house is I will come home, grab Mo and head out back to see if I can start a fire. Not a simple: newspaper, lighter fluid, matches, type. More the matches and lighters are forbidden and I have to use things I find in the backyard. On Friday with strong winds, Mistress was betting against me but I started a fire in about ten seconds.

My Godfather is my longest and most prolific camping partner. He is doing an overnight in Sequoia National with his best friend Gordy this past weekend. Gordy is also a long time camping/fishing partner of mine.

I had the camping Jones and due to the fire I started so did Mo. So we camped out in the backyard Saturday night. I set up the tent, we put our sleeping bags in it, decided we would roast marshmallows and that the dog is really a cheetah and we didn't want him to eat us at night.

Mistress put a time limit on Mo. She figured he would be back in his bed by 2am. I refused to believe. As we sat around the fire, eating chicken kabobs, I lit my alcohol stove and made Mountain House, mac & cheese, which was well received. Then Mo and I zipped ourselves in the tent and I read some stories from the Book of Virtue by Bill Bennet and asleep we went.

At 1:30am it was 45 degrees and Mo woke up freezing. I asked if he wanted to go in and he looked at me like I was crazy. So I went inside and grabbed a thick fleece blanket and a beanie for his head and we slept until sunrise.

He continued to play in the tent long into the afternoon on Sunday and then as we took the tent down and cleaned up our area I taught him how to Leave No Trace, including cleaning the fire pit.

He went to bed early on Sunday, in his own bed. Happy, warm and wiped out. Camping sure is hard.

There's treasure everywhere.