5/19/2011
Canaan Valley State Park, West Virginia
Miles: 412
a little rainy, but overall successful first night camping
Annotation [aka how I really felt]: It’s rainy and probably the middle of the week and chilly and clearly not a family camping moment. The place is deserted except for two trailers that I immediately decide have an axe-murderer/unibomber feel. Psh, Rachael, it’s highly unlikely everyone’s an axe murderer, they’re probably just two loner men with nothing better to do than live in their trailer in a state park in West Virginia…is that better?…eh…they will be my bear guardians…or something. I set up my tent and pray that every strange noise is just the rain pattering my tent or a twitchy squirrel searching for food. After rummaging through my whole car, I turned up a pair of scissors – no knife, no bat, no pepper spray – but at least they were sharp. I clung to them as I cuddled my stuffed animal, cocooned in my warm sleeping bag. In my head, I reviewed lessons from that one semester of Judo and decided I could totally flip any intruder and run. I read my book and distracted my mind enough to get logical: the world is not scary and I am warm and dry and safe enough in my shelter with my judo skills, scissors, and stuffed bear.