BY ALEXA CHERRY
For the UAS Whalesong
If you have spent over an hour in my immediate presence, you’ve probably heard me voice something regarding my distaste for nature. That being said, it then becomes understandable that several people have approached me regarding my participation in the recent camping trip up to Windfall Lake Cabin that UAS Housing put on. So in answer to the not-infrequent question “Why did you go camping?”, I respond that my reasoning was precisely because I do hold little affinity for nature. I don’t like being outside, amongst the elements, “roughing it” in the style of true Alaskans – but I still know how to go camping, and enjoy doing so occasionally, and I have also read many writings that extol the virtue of the Great Outdoors™ and Fresh Air©. Also, I have a Very Alaskan Father who makes fun of me if I don’t do at least one outdoorsy thing each year.
But on this particular occasion, there was even more to it than that. On this particular occasion, my presence on the Windfall Lake Camping Trip of 2015 was a serious case of Hardcore Investigative Journalism to compare it with the Windfall Lake [Winter] Camping Trip of 2014. That was an Experience of an entirely different kind from regular camping, filled with snow and ice and wet gooey marsh and a 5-hour hike in the rain and dark with failing flashlights. (There are some who would argue that the hike took us only 3 hours. I will maintain to my deathbed that it took us 5.) So, my participation in this camping trip was as much to see if conditions had improved and the housing department had listened to our feedback from last year as it was for my own personal edification and exposure to the outdoors. Continue reading “#Nature”