A Dry Run

Here are the boys practicing for camping. They are curled up inside their fabric igloo, warn and cozy and, most importantly, inside.

We were supposed to go to the Channel Islands today, but the temperature dropped to high forties at night, low sixties in the daytime, winds, and rain. So we pushed our island adventure off for three more days. The day dawned wet and cold, but now, as the ferry would have been pulling up the pier at Scorpion Ranch on Santa Cruz Island, the air is clean, the sky is blue, and the breeze is spring sunshine. Gorgeous!

This is our transition trip. We have done endless car camping, and I long to do back packing with my boys. On the Channel Islands we will be a million miles away from civilization--in a world that feels like California before the white man--but we take a boat there, and only have to drag our stuff a half mile. That means we can still bring our big tent, our heavy sleeping bags and an unwieldy camp stove you wouldn't dare to take into the wilderness. There is water from a pump, and latrines for campers.

I have been reading the boys the Swiss Family Robinson, and a great book sent me by my sis in law, about a sailing trip around the world. Sometimes we read inside the igloo.

If the weather gets too rough out on the Channel Islands you can be stranded. Boats are cancelled if the waves are high or the currents too strong. The National Park service tells you to pack for an extra day, just in case that should that happen. The prospect of getting stuck out there only makes the trip more exciting!

Last time we went the island was lush like Ireland, and monarchs fluttered through the eucalyptus grove where we will be camping. We saw a whale and a bunch of midden sites. It will be too cold to swim, or kayak, but the ocean will be wild and beautiful. We also saw 25,000 dolphins on our last trip. Our boat got caught up in their migration. It was one of the most magical things I have ever seen. I pray we will see them again. But there is no way to predict, you can only hope. And if they come, those dolphins and their baby dolphins, leaping around the boat so the whole ocean is alive and we humans are NOTHING, and you can imagine the ocean before we harvested everything to dangerously low levels, then my heart will sing.

If it doesn't, that is OK, too. The wildflowers will bloom. The little island foxes will sneak up to our tents, and the wild pigs will snort around our tents and try to eat our food. The rats have hanta virus, which is a little scary, but the rats are mostly on Anacapa island. Still, that means the threat of disease, too! Pigs, hanta virus, foxes, whales, beauty and seclusion will be adventure enough.

Oh how I long for some time in the wilderness. I am counting down the minutes.