Field Trip : Part Two

The sleeping bags stretched out in a long line along the wall, with each night watch crew grouped together. Our group -- five girls and two adults -- was first up for Night Watch, so we just stayed up when the rest of the class went upstairs to settle down. We got the yeast and flour mixture started for the egg bread biscuits we'd eat for breakfast, and began heating up the branding iron to take turns branding the girls' candleholders. Ms. Jordan also stayed up with us, directing the girls to set up a table near the fireplace and getting games out for those not actively doing some task. She also set out the makings for S'mores, which we had gotten reprimanded for by the ranger. ("There were no S'mores in 1843!") (Our response: a blithe "We know." We had decided that if we had to wake up 9 and 10 year olds to stay up for two hours in the middle of the night in the cold we were going to offer them hot chocolate and S'mores, history be damned.) When it got close to 11 we took the girls back down the hill to use the bathrooms again (and I will admit that I informed the girls they all would try-- even if they thought they didn't have to go-- because if they had to go during the night, it was MY responsibility to take them back down the hill) and brush their teeth. The adults went in to wake up the next watch's adults, who roused their charges, and our group all gratefully went to bed.

It was really, really, really cold. I had on footless tights, sweatpants, a denim skirt and a silk skirt, a turtleneck, a shirt, a sweatshirt with a hood, and my sleeping bag, and I was still so cold I couldn't sleep. The hard wood we were stretched out on didn't help... and the sound of all those people rustling and/or snoring didn't exactly ease me into dreamland, either. At about 1 it dawned on me that I needed to use the bathroom (and yes, I had gone at 11!) and, figuring I couldn't get colder than I already was, I got up to trot down the hill. (There was a full moon, so it was easy to see the path in the dark, and trotting kept me warmer than walking.) Once in the bathroom, however, my body literally siezed at the thought of removing any of my layers and I stood there, frozen in place, arguing with myself to just do it already and get it over with. Several seconds went by before I could muster the courage to override my body's reluctance, but I finally won. When I got back up the hill (again trotting) and upstairs and into my sleeping bag, I was finally warm enough to begin to drift off... until Megan leaned over me and whispered, "Mommy? I have to go potty." Back down the hill we went...

We "woke" at dawn, and took groups down to the bathrooms as they came downstairs. The last crew on Night Watch was still up, so we joined them in finishing the breakfast stuff -- peeling cooked potatoes and cutting them up for country style potatoes, fetching the scrambled eggs out of the fridge (also not available in 1843, but we did have access to on this trip, setting out the orange juice sqeezed in the night.

At this point Ms. Jordan appeared like a vision, carrying a familiar brown carton with a beautiful green circle on the side. What is this? A miracle? It seems an angel on horseback had appeared in the parking lot and handed her a gift from the future: Starbucks coffee in a big package!! Ahhhhhhh! (The Starbucks was (sadly?) very close by, and Ms. Jordan figured it was easier than the tea-bag instants we had brought, plus it was a treat for the hard-working adult volunteers. Isn't she an angel, horseback or not?)

We ate breakfast -- scrambled eggs, country potatoes, egg bread biscuits, leftover jicama and apple from dinner, and orange juice -- and cleaned up the dishes as best we could. (Here is a confession: We ran out of dish soap during dinner. During my night watch I went to the bathroom and squirted several pumps' worth of handsoap into the container, and we used that to wash the rest of the trip's dishes. Probably that was in violation of a few codes or whatever, but we decided if we sent someone to the store they might not return... so it was the safest bet to keep all of the adults on site.)

Cleaning up the site meant putting everything back exactly as we'd found it, from mats to tables to benches to cookware. The ranger inspected each dish to make sure it was clean and properly dry before checking it off a long list, and sending a child or two to carry it to its proper location. (This job -- the checking off of dishes -- was quite possibly the ranger's highlight of each trip. She was very, very, very diligent in her duties as inspector. Really. Very.) Shockingly we passed -- even with the "dishsoap" --and we began to have the kids carry our belongings back down the hill to the parking lot.

We arrived at the school in a tired mess of humanity and belongings, all dusty, grimy, and reeking of woodsmoke, but strangely elated. We'd done it... we'd gone back in time, and experienced life in the 1840s! We looked like the walking dead -- especially those of us adults who'd averaged 20 minutes of sleep all night -- but we had survived the field trip of a lifetime!