The second day at Nature’s Classroom started in probably the worst possible way. I woke up, put on my socks, put on my boots, went outside, and immediately stepped into a puddle. My shoes were completely soggy. I went back inside and realized that bringing six pairs of socks had actually been a very good decision, because I was going through socks almost as fast as I go through napkins or tangerines. That might also explain why my voice is dying right now. I did not completely lose my voice, but I definitely killed it a little. People kept saying my voice was dying, and honestly, they were not wrong. Maybe I also ate too many tangerines. At one point I even said “two pairs of tangerines” instead of “two pairs of socks,” so I think I may have lost a few brain cells too.
I changed into another pair of socks and put on my Adidas sneakers. This is not an ad, by the way. I am not sponsored. I went outside again, and within about two minutes my shoes were wet again. Great. I changed socks again, found two other pairs that had dried but were still dirty, put on boots, and went back outside. Eventually almost everything I was wearing seemed wet, so I finally changed into waterproof clothes. After that, I was actually fine. Basically, the whole day was mud, mud, and more mud.
The most interesting part of the day was the night hike. I insisted on going to the beaver pond, even though there were supposed to be coyotes in the area. Walking through the dark did not exactly make that information comforting. We were standing on a trail with flashlights that we were not supposed to turn on, making coyote noises and waiting to hear coyotes answer us back. I am not sure that was the greatest survival strategy. It felt a little like pouring blood into an ocean full of sharks and then waiting to see what happened. I was not completely freaking out at first, but once I started hearing noises, I definitely became more nervous.
Then there was the story about Michael Angelo. Under my bed, someone had written the name “Silas Scratch,” which reminded me of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and I already did not like that very much. Then the teachers started telling us stories about Michael Angelo, who apparently used to flush paper down the toilets, do weird things around the bunks, and then somehow disappeared. I am pretty sure the story is fake, because if somebody actually went missing out there, why would nobody be searching for him? But when you are walking through the woods at night, your brain starts making things worse. I started imagining that maybe Michael Angelo had been living in the wilderness for years and had turned into some kind of human-ish, tangerine-addicted, coyote-looking creature that now ran around with the pack and hunted children from Nature’s Classroom.
We also found quartz rocks that could make little flashes of light when you rubbed them together. At first I thought this was amazing. I kept trying to figure out whether I could somehow turn the quartz into a flashlight or some useful source of light. Unfortunately, it did not work at all. The rocks technically made light, but only enough for you to see that they were making light. You could not actually shine the light on anything. It flickered for a second while you rubbed the rocks together and then disappeared. It was basically proof that light existed, not an actual light source. I still kept trying because I really wanted it to work, but eventually I had to accept that two quartz rocks were not going to save us from the coyotes.
At some point we heard more coyote noises, and our teacher told us that those were real coyotes, not people pretending to be coyotes. That did not make me feel better. Still, we eventually made it all the way to the beaver pond and then started walking back. On the trail, everyone kept yelling “rock!” and “root!” whenever they saw something that the person behind them might trip over. In theory, this was supposed to help. In reality, it mostly made everyone more paranoid. You would be walking through complete darkness and suddenly somebody would yell “ROCK!” Then someone else would yell “ROOT!” and now you were just waiting to fall over something.
Eventually we made it back to the bunk and went to sleep. The next day somehow became even more chaotic than this one. But other than people screaming at two in the morning and somehow pulling me out of my sleeping bag, the second day was pretty normal by Nature’s Classroom standards.
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