The next few days provided little relief – from the heat and from my own self-depreciating snafus. Unbeknownst to me, my Camelback had a leak in it, so on our next hike I wound up looking like I had quite the issue with bladder control. My ears and toes got sunburned, and one of my Tevas broke. When I was the navigator from Joshua Tree to Anza Borrego, I got us lost, twice.
But I had a few successes, too. I was able to act quickly and move the tent to a better location during a windstorm our last night in Joshua Tree. I was always the faster hiker, and I was able to maneuver through really difficult terrain and offer very helpful suggestions as to where my boyfriend should secure his footing. I started the fire the next night, too, and cooked, and my boyfriend said he thought the freeze-dried Chicken Stew I de-thawed tasted delicious.
It wasn’t until we were sitting under a palm tree in the oasis at Anza Borrego that I realized what I had been doing. The day was absolutely glorious, and my boyfriend and I were dipping our feet in one of the pools when he started telling me about a trip he had taken his students on in this same park, years ago, when he was teaching in Pasadena.
“Wait,” I stopped. “You’ve been here before? You’ve done this before?”
“Oh, yeah! I didn’t tell you?”
He proceeded to spend hours sharing beautiful stories with me about taking his five and six year old students on a three day, two night trip to Anza Borrego. I learned how precious his students were as they determinedly carried their little lunches with them up to the waterfalls, how they all laid their sleeping bags out together at night and he played guitar for them, how none of them really slept at all because they were so taken with the stars.
“Wait,” I knew it was trivial, but I needed to get this piece of information right, “So, you have started a campfire before?”
