Mark 6:31

Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while

Ann asked me yesterday what my favorite part of the trip was. My mind flashed past scenes like these:







And then I replied: doing laundry.

Something about camping makes everything hard work. It's good work, and I like hiking to beautiful places and being in the mountains and doing things out of the ordinary. But I get spoiled by vacations where I do those things and then go back to a hotel room, or at least a cabin with electric lights and a kitchen.

Cooking over a fire (we even baked! We're so cool!), sleeping on the ground (albeit on air mattresses) on kinda chilly nights, having to keep everything food related in the cabin of the truck...it just makes things a little bit harder. On the plus side, well, here's a nice little list:

1. kids loved it
2. campfires are lovely
3. food tastes great when you work for it that way
4. it's so so much cheaper than staying at a lodge or hotel or what have you and, therefore, far more accessible in a year when we weren't planning to take a vacation at all

And the other thing it did is kind of this intangible thing, this perfect exhaustion. After one hike, I was sitting in the truck headed for the place we were going to eat lunch and I finally exhaled, saying, "There is nothing in my head right now."

Mike decided that this was why Benedictines prayed and worked. Work produces a good feeling of work accomplished, but also creates this semi-hypnotic exhausted altered state.

The last two days in Colorado were consumed by this feeling. A feeling of being right now.

On Sunday evening, though, there was no way around the fact that laundry must be done, immediately. I loaded everything--bedding and towels and clothes--into the truck and went over to Dad's Laundry and Public Showers.

I did 6 loads. I walked around with Leo in the mei tai, I sat in the laundromat, I thought about almost nothing.

When I got back and changed all the beds and put all the clothes away while Leo slept in the carseat in the open truck, Mike asked how laundry had gone.

"You know," I started to answer, zipping up the girls' suitcase. "This probably isn't a surprise, but I'm kind of a solitary person. I mean, I'm an extrovert and I love being with people. But I just needed to be alone, get something accomplished, and then come back to all of you."

"So it was good!" he summed up enthusiastically.

Christ and his friends didn't stay away forever. Just long enough to recharge. Then they fed the 5000. Probably over a campfire.