Friday night I went camping with the scouts in the dunes - Little Sahara, about an hour southwest of here - and had a surprisingly good time (considering that we couldn't bring motorcycles).
We drove to a secluded camping area Friday afternoon, played flies up, hiked around and enjoyed the golden sand against the dusky sky, had long-jumping contents down the dunes, made dinner, and never stopped moving until, as the saying goes, somebody lost an eye.
Not actually lost, of course. When night fell, we set up the steal the flag course using little glow sticks as the midline marker and brighter sticks for the flags. There was no moon and you could barely see others walking or crawling around.
One of the rules said if you could pull someone's two feet onto your side, they'd get sent to your prison. In game two, I got one of the boys to chase me right up to the line, then dove back (keeping my feet on my side) and tried to grab his ankle to drag him over the line.
That's when his natural self-defense skills came in handy. Even in the pitch blackness, a finger or two went straight into my eye. Ouch. I saw a brilliant flash of light, but did not go toward it.
I didn't even try to open the eye for a few minutes, and when I did, pulling the lids apart with my fingers, I was happy to find it functional with only a little blood glopping the eyelashes together.
The scratchy sand was really the worst part, which I didn't finish extracting from my eyelids till I got home and used q-tips. What a relief!
Sleeping under the stars (all ten billion billion of them!) was also nice. So peaceful, so beautiful, so refreshing. An excellent time for reflection and resetting some important perspectives. It was a cool enough night, I guess, that there weren't motorcycles and 4 wheelers driving by all night, and we slept till the first ones appeared at 8 a.m.
We also shot the sequel to this winter's Snow Shark movie. Sand Shark. Nothing worth an academy award, but the boys love it. Maybe I'll edit that tomorrow and post it to youtube.
How fun. We went camping here in Missouri this weekend. There was a major storm, but it was still nice to be out in nature. The trees are so beautiful. I caught a fish and got in a good hike. I do miss the dunes, and the dryness of western camping. Sounds like it was a fun game you guys played. I hope your eye fully recovered.