Preparing

Newcastle, ME--I am preparing for a trip.  I am searching for lost things and trying to get my life in order (though I would be satisfied with merely getting my thing-life in order) before I leave tomorrow morning.  Preparing for a prolonged camping trip is, I'm discovering, entirely unlike preparing for a normal trip.  Regardless of a trip's length, when one anticipates staying in hotels or houses or at a friend's home, one can anticipate the End, the return to shelter.  Not so for this.  Every detail must be considered, every problem prepared for, every discomfort anticipated.  Of course the task is impossible, and thus preparing for the trip becomes an exercise in preparing for problems and discomforts.  To insist otherwise is to bring one's home along on the trip, a man fighting a strong wind--and could there be anything more grotesque?

The packing is nearly finished, but since I'm leaving at the unholy hour of 8:45 a.m., the frantic packing in the morning is becoming the frantic packing at night, and so I sign off.