Frozen Panties

Put That Thing Away!

My best friend Sara and I were going on a weekend backpacking trip along with about 30 campers. I have backpacked a lot before, so this wasn't my first trip. However, it pretty much was for Sara.

"Raise your hand if you're scared of spiders!" A middle aged woman announced. A few girls did. I still don't know why she bothered to ask because then she informed us that there would be spiders in the forest. Great advice. She looked more like the tents than a backpacker, so I let it go.

Everyone had to prepare and get a pack. Luckily, I avoided this by having an internal frame. The girls and I headed outside to learn how to tie a special knot. Done. I've done that only a thousand times. I leaned onto the stone lodge and flipped out a knife, continuing to carve leaves and faces on my staff named Windsor. I lifted the staff closer my my face to inspect the veins I was carving on the grip. 

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" One of the ladies screamed at me. My blade chipped off a piece of the grain. Great.

"Carving." That should have been obvious. "being inconspicuous."

She held out her hand. "Give me that."

"My knife?" I asked, raising my eyebrow. "How am I supposed to backpack without this knife or my hatchet? (Because apparently that was 50 shades of a no-no)"

I closed the blade with my teeth and handed it to the disgusted Girl Scout Lady. When did us Scouts become such wimps???

I heard screams. Lots of little girls and one slightly lower pitched yelp. Oh. That was the Counselor, Meg. No camp name for her, she was just a long time Scout fresh out of College. I ran over. They better be dying. Meg shushed the girls and had them evacuate. A hognose snake slithered towards them and then hissed. Before long, it died. Not really. That's how they fake it to protect themselves. I squatted back behind and grabbed the snake, handling it just as I was trained to. The snake was big for its species, and so I determined that it was a girl, picked her up, tromped into the forest and sent it off.

Meg told me to go and wash my hands. No thank you. no nothing. So I did go and wash up. It was time to pack. Everyone dumped their stuff by their back and learned to only bring the necessities. Apparently my emergency poncho was "too much weight" and it 'wouldn't rain'. haha. were they wrong. 

I handed my med bottles in (I could keep them this time) and got a bag with the night's dosage. I slipped my knife off of the table.

I overheard the girls. "And then- Twitch grabbed the snake and threw it 20 feet!"
I walked over. "Yep. And did you know that when camping, you can eat some snakes? It tastes like chicken."

Parental GLARES.

"Hey, where's that knife?"

Hiking? This is my part bitches!

Next up: 2 girls, 1 can