Tales of the Nightmare Campout

As I mentioned last night, we ended up camping out both Friday and Saturday night. Camping out is usually fun but it definitely challenges your ability to keep up your personal hygiene, especially with no running water. Two days was enough to make me feel really dirty.

Here was our little set up with the tent and grill...

We did manage to have two culinary feasts despite our limited cooking capabilities. On Friday, we grilled NY strip steaks and zucchini that were downright incredible. Saturday we basically spent the entire day touring the local farmer's markets and came home with a beautiful rainbow trout which we grilled in white wine, lemon, and garlic in a piece of foil, head and all. It tasted like arctic char which was strange but good-strange. It was also sort of fun (in that caveman way that I'm starting to get used to) to just pick it right off the bone. I also made a salad from a variety of small tomatoes including Amish cherry tomatoes, red hots, mini plums, chocolate cherries, and these little yellow guys called Italian Ice that were really good. They were so sweet they tasted like candy so I tossed them with a bunch of garlic, pepper, and fresh basil. Then we threw in some sea salt and fresh mozzarella. Delish. We also grilled some eggplant and garlic, corked a bottle of a nice dry Italian white and devoured it all wholeheartedly. Even Zelda had a good meal with some of the leftover steak from Friday.

After a meal like that, we were pretty much at the point of Food Coma but before we hit the sleeping bags, we decided to go for a night time ride on the scissor lift which lifted us up 20 feet into the air where we could see the stars. It was a really clear night and I told Tim that I honestly hadn't seen that many stars in years. City life definitely blocks that view a bit.

So you're probably thinking to yourself, that doesn't sound like much of a nightmare. In fact, it sounds sort of nice. Very true. That's because I haven't gotten to the horror yet...

After our ride, we came back down and sat in the dark, finishing our wine. It was at this point that Tim decided to talk about The Trespassers again. We have a bit of a trespassing problem, you see. Somebody has been driving around our property in a big truck at night, presumably to joy ride since there's nothing to steal. We keep thinking it's probably just some dumb teenagers

who think it's fun to ride around in our fields in their monster trucks or something. Not scary, right? And yet, the idea of waking up to drunk teenagers running around our property, possibly with guns, is a scary one. It makes me think of that movie The Strangers, a movie that actually scared me and I see tons of horror movies.

The Strangers coupled with my unfortunately vivid imagination led to a night of tossing and turning and thinking that every sound was a killer perched outside the tent with a sledgehammer, just waiting to bash my head in. I also kept thinking about that horrific home invasion story in CT that's in the news every day and was alternatively thinking how sad that poor man must be who lost his wife and daughters, then thinking about how much easier it would be for killers to rape and kill people who aren't even inside a home and are actually just sitting there, totally exposed. Once I calmed myself with the idea that we had a slight advantage over potential killers because we would certainly hear them sneaking up on us by being out in the open, my mind started to drift to fishers.

I'm not sure you know what a fisher is. I didn't until Tim's mom was nice enough to fill me in. They are these nasty creatures that are like part weasel/ part wolf/ part Satan's spawn that are, and I quote, "the only species in the animal kingdom that attack its prey in the face." I love my mother-in-law to death but I really wish she never would have told me that because that phrase kept echoing in my head over and over and over....

the only species in the animal kingdom that attack its prey in the face the only species in the animal kingdom that attack its prey in the face the only species in the animal kingdom that attack its prey in the face

Once I was finally able to let go of that mantra, I found my mind plagued with visuals that were even worse. I even made up this entire horror scenario in my head in which a fisher came and attacked Zelda in the face and I ran out of the tent screaming and crying because my dog's face was all bloody and ripped off and then the fisher jumped at my face and ripped it off and then Tim came out to see what all the noise was about and it ripped his face off as well. Then the three of us were running around blindly in circles screaming and crying and barking with our faces sliding off and oh, it was horrible. I really wish I didn't have thoughts like these.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep a wink the rest of the night. It didn't help when Zelda all of sudden started growling and and then barked her Defensive Bark when she thinks that we are in danger and ran out into the field to chase something. I assume it was not a fisher because she returned with her face fully intact, but whatever it was, it was unsettling.

When the sun finally rose, I think I did a little dance of joy. Daylight is just not scary. And it was back to work! I even climbed up the side of that machine in order to help the team move that cross beam around. And the second I had heavy beams in my hands again, all the nightmares from the night before were forgotten.