Falling or Flying? Group Camping Part I

It started out so well. I was peaceful. I was having deep, milestone-y thoughts. 

I had illusions of being in charge.

Prologue, written on a bench with a view Friday night, before all the badness:

I'm going to be 40 in three weeks. Today, I'm wearing pigtails and a surfer hoodie. I am looking at Puget Sound. The San Juan Islands rise in the distance, a boat trailer rattles behind me. Michael and the Fox are down there somewhere, but I can't see them. I feel that I should be making some sort of "I'm going to be 40" vow... drawing some kind of line. 

Besides the line of bleach I've drawn in  my hair. 

A man in a blue workshirt and baseball cap walks by with an old lab on a leash. The lab is in charge. That used to be me. I used to be the man. Now I want to be, I think I am, the lab.

Tonight is the first night of our Peps camping trip. Our dogs are at home. The tree below me is dying beautifully; maybe half it’s branches bare. It’s an evergreen, maybe a fir. The bare branches hold out against the blue. That is me, also. Maybe halfway there, maybe less. Somewhere between 80 and 100, I’ll fall into the ocean, not to be heard from again, except in mermaid fairy tales about the night the woman with the white stripe in her hair leapt from her life, falling, to swim the rest of the way home.

But first, she flew.


Isn't that a lovely sentiment? Don't you feel all contemplative and empowered? I did.
And then, it was bedtime.