The (sort of) Camping Trip

I came home from school last night around 9:30, exhausted after my turnaround trip to Pusan then a full evening of teaching. As I began to fix dinner, the phone rang. “Lori, it’s Sang Jae.” Hello, how are you? “Guess where I at?” I don’t know, where? “The lake. Yesterday.” You’re at the lake that we discovered yesterday? What are you doing there? “Fishing. Camping. I come get you. You outgoing. You love to go outdoors. So you come here.” I started to explain that that really wasn’t what outgoing meant, but decided against it.

Not too much later, he arrived at my house. Are you really camping? Do I need to bring anything? A pillow? He pointed to my sweatpants laying crumpled on the floor. “Those. Mosquitoes are bad.” I stuffed the sweatpants in my pillow, along with a small flashlight. I grabbed a bag of tangelos and we were off. As we drove up to the lake, I wondered where he and his friends had set up camp; I couldn’t remember any flat clearings from our walk on Sunday. I was just a little surprised when I saw they had set up a tent in the turnaround area at the lake, basically, on the road. And one small tent. Five people. I looked around. Where is the other tent? “Only this. No problem.” Hmmmm. Maybe I better reconsider this camping thing. Five people, one small tent, pitched on concrete.

I said hi to everyone there. One friend was playing the guitar, one was collecting rocks to build a campfire ring, the other was just hanging out. They had been there all afternoon. Sang Jae led me over the guardrail, down to the edge of the lake. He showed me the net of all the little fish they had caught over the course of the afternoon. Bright, shiny, silvery fish, no bigger than my hand.

We returned back up the slope to base “camp” where a fire was burning brightly within a circle of rocks. They threw a screen over the circle of rocks and began tossing chunks of meat on the screen. The smell was incredible. Sang Jae tossed me a pair of chopsticks and I picked up a piece of meat, blew on it, then popped it into my mouth. Delicious. Mmmmm…. Something about food cooked over an open fire that just can’t be beat.

During dinner and afterwards, the boys were playing the guitar, singing various songs, doing shots of soju. Soon thereafter, a couple of them climbed over the guardrail, stumbled down to the lake, stripped down to their underwear and dove in. I am a water baby. I love the water. To see others enjoying the chilled water on a moonlight night and me sitting on the sidelines, well, I just couldn’t stand it. But I also realized that shedding my clothes as they did wasn’t really an option either. I thought for a moment – ahh, I brought my sweatpants. I’m wearing a sweatshirt. I’ll swim in my shorts and sportsbra. When I get out, I will still have dry clothes to sleep in. And with that, I dove into the water. They all turned around, amazed to see me in the water. Sang Jae yelled to me, “You think like man. You cannot be controlled.” Maybe that was supposed to be a compliment, I’m not sure.

I swam far into the center of the lake, feeling the water get icier and icier as I got farther from the edges of the reservoir. Long after they got out, I was still swimming, turning round and round, over and over, in the water, loving the feeling of my skin parting the cool water, relishing floating on my back, gazing at the few stars in the darkness and perfect half moon shining brightly in the sky.

After I was satisfied with my swim, I sat on the rocks in the moonlight, listening to the chorus of frogs nearby. In the warm night I dried quickly. I picked up my tevas and made my way back up the bank.

At that point I think the effect of the soju was wearing off and the boys decided that five of us sleeping in one tent pitched on concrete probably wasn’t such a good idea after all. We began breaking camp. “Lori, did you drink?” No, I didn’t have anything. With those words, Sang Jae threw me the car keys. We packed everything in the trunk, then all five of us squeezed into his small car. Ugh. The odor of probably not so clean lake water, soju, and fish was overwhelming. At that point I was *really* glad we didn’t camp out. Being able to take a hot shower then crawl into my comfy bed was a perfect end to a perfect evening.