I mean, logging that I went camping, not that I went camping and also cutting down trees.

It was fun! Here are some photos. The place we camped was Big Trees campground in Inyo National Forest near Bishop, CA. We hiked to Bishop Pass, which was super cool. Note to my future self: this was a 10 mile hike with 2800 feet of elevation gain. We also walked around near Sabrina Lake which was not quite as dramatic but also nice. It was down to ~36 degrees at night, which felt very very cold, and up to about 70 in the day, which felt pretty warm in the sun. Really, the daytime was perfect; at night, we huddled around the campfire a lot. No mosquitos, at least. Saw the Milky Way! At least, until the moon came up.

I should mention that the last time I went camping was in the Trinity Alps, specifically up and down the Canyon Creek trail. Here are some photos of that. I don’t remember temperatures there, but that was about 16 miles with about 2600 feet elevation. (We did it over 2 days. We were backpacking though too.)

The reason this is so Spock-like is that I want to get a well-calibrated sense of the numbers involved, so when someone says “10 miles and 2800 feet” I know what that feels like.

Incidentally, it is interesting that I spend a lot of time worrying about my feelings in relation to the outdoors. I want to enjoy it. Like, I do, on the whole, but there’s a lot of moments of “uggh I am uncomfortable, why’d I come out here.” And I don’t know that I’m open and aware enough to have these really transcendent experiences like a Thoreau or something. Just, yeah, there are a lot of good moments and a lot of bad ones; you’re optimizing for your remembered self; suffering together is a great way to deepen friendships; you get good exercise, anyway; inoculating yourself with the occasional discomfort is a good way to keep active the muscle of tolerating discomfort. I’m sure there are other good reasons too.