I had decided that I wanted to run away from the world for a little while. In my head it was so simple. I wanted to be alone but I didn't want to be lonely, and when I set out to fade into a brief solitude I found that I was fading into oblivion. That isn't what I wanted. So I went back, regrouped and decided on a different course.
I thought and I planned and I racked my brain to think of all the ways I could "make it work", but what I realized was that I needed to work my favorite people into my plan.
I thought of the small group of people I would want to run away with me: my sister Squid, and of course she would never go without her other half Jamie, my best friend Dani, and her boyfriend Jon, then of course my good friend Kaleb, who opted to bring his best friend Jay, whom I loathed due to an unfortunate incident in high school where he embarrassed me and made an ass of himself, but it's not all about me, Jenna (another friend) and Brian (her boyfriend), and my new friend Karsyn.
I had my ideal group, next I needed an ideal hide away. Well there was this place a few hours away that I used to love going to, I called it Ferngully. It's a beautiful forest setting with an incredible venous system of creeks and streams. So, we took a few months to plan and we went on our way. Some of us quit our jobs, others took leave, some just didn't work anyway, but we got everything lined up. We were going! And we would stay gone as long as possible. I put in for nine weeks of leave, and I got approved. As did everyone else, in one way or another.
We got what we thought was necessary; there were ten people making the trip in four vehicles, so we had space. In preparation I splurged and bought four very expensive but very nice coolers, basically like solar-powered mini-fridges. I had a collapsible card table, a grill, tubs for storage, and a generator. I knew with ten people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five there would be a lot of sex, so I had two plastic shoe boxes for those necessities, one full of condoms, and one of pregnancy tests, just to be safe, I also have some prenatal vitamins if we end up needing them. Plus plenty of tampons, with 60% of the group being female, we were sure to need those too. I also had a very large twenty-person tent that I brought for either everyone to sleep in, which seemed less than ideal, or to use as a town hall of sorts. I made sure that I brought food enough for two months of living off the grid with ten people and let me tell you, that is a ridiculous amount of food. I also found a wash basin to do laundry for the essentials and the other good stuff like soap for the occasional bath and clothes for myself, as well as a smaller four-person tent and the necessary sleeping needs.
I left the other stuff up to everyone else. Their clothes, particular snacks, tents if they had them, and I asked each person to bring two cases of water, a case of soda, a box of trash bags and whatever else they wanted. Once everything was prepped, packed and loaded we headed off on our adventure, 400 miles of caravanning later we arrive in Ferngully. Now luckily we all had off- road style vehicles cause we dove into the wilderness without missing a beat, we stopped in a few different areas just taking it all in, then after about forty minutes of navigating the great outdoors we found it. It was perfect, a little mountain stream that came to a small fall over a grand cliff face, pooling beneath the thirty foot drop. To the side was a clearing that shrank beneath the cliff almost in a cave formation, just a small alcove of shelter in this beautiful landscape. We parked about a hundred yards away and let our loved ones know we made it and were going dark. We'd turn our phones back on in about a month to check in and when we are leaving, but for now we locked them away in a safe in the car. Now we unloaded and settled in. by the time we got all set up it was a little after two in the afternoon.
