Weird Place I've Slept Again

We did our Order of the Arrow ordeal (my boy bear and I) at Camp Josepho up in the Santa Monica Mountains. It's supposed to be an ordeal and an honor. You first have to picked out of the circle (ours was at the District's Camporee and you are mysteriously picked by dancing braves in Indian garb late at night) and
we were taken out to sleep under the stars. Its all done very spooky and the young boys eat it up. Then you go for an ordeal weekend. You are required to take a vow of silence for the day and you do service and you fast. Our service was to clear brush at the camp all day long without saying a word and we ate crackers and water all day. Another father and I mowed a high meadow above the main camp most of the day. We whispered when the boys were not around. He was a professor at UCLA and was the leading expert in academia on the Asian international trade markets. At the end of the day, we were served a steak dinner and the boys got to sleep on the floor of the great lodge there. I looked at that swarming mass of sweaty boys who would be up until the early hours and I took my sleeping bag up to that meadow we mowed and slept out under the stars. And heard every insect that passed by my head. Now I sleep out all the time. It has made all the difference in the way I look at camping.

 This was the choice.