In Which We Celebrate Earth Day in the Big Woods

Mother Nature strung together a couple of nice days, and we decided to seize the opportunity to go on backpack #2 for the year, into the Sproul State Forest. On Sunday afternoon, I began packing up my gear, and by end of day, I had all of my gear in stuff sacks, and most of my backpack packed.

On Monday morning, Earth Day, we got up, finished packing, made some sandwiches and snacks, and hopped in the car heading for Sproul State Forest. It was sunny and delightful, a perfect day for backpacking.

(The only snafu was that they were berming route 144, and a big yellow construction truck knocked a huge rock into the windshield of our car, putting a tiny crack in it. So that was a bummer, but nobody was hurt.)

For a change, I decided not to take along Big Agnes, my green inflatable sleeping pad. This meant a few things: I had to take an extra regular sleeping pad, and that meant there was no room for my bamboo pillow in the big blue sack that usually goes on top of the pack.

It also meant a few other things: 1) I didn't have to spend 20 minutes pumping up Big Agnes, 2) the black fleece sack that I put Agnes in, I was able to use myself as a sleeping bag liner, when the overnight low temperature dropped to 30 degrees F, and 3) the regular pad I took didn't make as much squeaky-squeaky noise when I roll around on it, such that I was probably less annoying to nearby campers (which is to say, my husband).

But none of that had happened yet, as we are looking at the campsite late in the day on Monday. On the left is my husband's tent. On my right is mine. You can see his backpack to the left of that tree; my boxy blue retro Kelty pack is on the other side of the same tree. As you can see, this campsite is surrounded by pine trees, and in fact, huge piles of pine cones were available beneath many a tree. I expected a porcupine to show up, but none did.

When evening fell, we looked up to see a huge moon above. And it stayed with us for the rest of our night, providing enough light to see by, even without a flashlight. So this is how we celebrated Earth Day in the big woods.

My soundtrack song is Iggy Pop, with Real Wild Child (Wild One).

Read about day 2 of our backpack adventure here.