Day 1, Hitch 1

I am writing to you at 10 pm from my gently swinging hammock in our lovely campsite/ construction site at White Lake State Park. I just heard a loon calling across the lake, and a dad telling his child to “always remember the sound of a loon.” I’m wiped out—we had a loooong first day. It is really starting to sink in that this is real. Hitch 1/ building a shelter/ being on our own/ leading ourselves. Our hitch team, Team Ultimate Hummus, had a couple of instances today where we sat around discussing next steps and realized that Wow we are really out here, this is it! We have fledged the nest! Trainings are complete, we are our own bosses, we need to rely on our own accumulated knowledge, and if we forgot anything then we’ll have to make do. It’s a good feeling to be finally working at what we’ve been preparing for during the past two months.

Still we are hitting our fair share of snafus. It wouldn’t be hitch without some of these, am I right?:

-The reoccurring non-matching rainfly to our tent

-A tempermental stove

-Not having all of the information necessary to start phase two of our project (setting the foundation)

-The struggle of our small minivan being our food storage locker, transportation, gear cache, trailer hauler, and truck bed all in one.
-Red squirrels got into TWO trail mix bags (luckily most of the mix was salvageable) (update: they have gotten into at least 4 bags... these squirrels/ chipmunk are totally habituated to humans and out of control!)

Coming soon: a blog post about an actual work day on site!