I took advantage of not having class on Monday to go backpacking for a night. Technically, I could do this on two-day weekends too, but sometimes the thought of having to fit in doing laundry and cleaning the bathroom in addition to unwinding makes me very anxious.

Since it’d be two days of hiking, I felt like it was actually worth driving nearly two hours away (including nine miles up a pothole-riddled dirt road. And here my round little commuter car thought it was signing up for an urban lifestyle). The payoff was almost immediate: within a mile I was standing on a bridge over a wide, roaring river. This river started as the outlet to the first of four lakes I visited.

The lake inlet, on the other hand, did not have a bridge, and on account of my stubby legs/hefty backpack I wound up wading across it barefoot. The water was cold enough to hurt. When my feet went numb, it was a relief. I got my revenge by refilling my water bottles there. Ha, take that, river! A whole two liters less water for you!

At this point, the sun emerged, and it took way longer to walk by the next two lakes on account of how often I was getting my socks knocked off by the scenery. (Not literally. The river crossing meant that those cozy wool socks were staying put.)

The last lake was at the bottom of a nice long descent. After snagging a campsite, I ate a concerning number of energy bars and salty dehydrated camping food, then set an alarm for 3am, because it ain’t backpacking without at least checking to see if the stars are out. Luckily, the weather forecast was completely wrong, and the sky was clear enough that I could even see satellites crossing the sky. I hope we figure out some way around light pollution in urban areas because that was unbelievably soothing.

And, of course, there were the fungi, both large and small. I found trees that were more mushroom than tree and also wee little orange mushrooms hiding in crevasses barely an inch or two across. Still don’t know anything about them (adding that to my list of things I want to do).