Feeling salty.

The disillusionment persists. Last Thursday, I decided I needed some time off the island. I mashed my overnight gear into my panniers and pumped my legs all the way to Swartz Bay. There, I had seven different destinations to choose from that would take me off Vancouver Island. I’d already decided on Salt Spring Island. Ruckle Park is one of my favourite camping spots, and it’d been several years since I last camped there. In fact, I believe the last time I camped there was with Yann and Ed in 2019.

This time, I was all on my lonesome. The last time I camped alone was… never. That was actually my first time. I didn’t realize until recently that I was an outlier among my friends for never having had that solo camping experience and wanted to change that. (Cocaine and changing a diaper are two other things that most of my friends have done that I haven’t, and I plan on keeping it that way.)

Since I was arriving on a Thursday, I figured there would be plenty of walk-in sites available. At Ruckle Park, only 10 of the 78 tent sites are reservable; the remaining 68 are available on a first-come, first-served basis. It appeared that most of them had already been served, but after turning around at the end of the park to scan the campsites again, I found an unclaimed campsite.

Or so I thought. Within five minutes of leaning my bike against picnic table #68, someone approached me and insisted that the site was theirs. I looked around and gestured at the absence of camping gear. They responded by pointing to a bundle of wildflowers pinned under a small piece of driftwood on the picnic table. Apparently, I was supposed to take that as a sign that the site was unavailable. I know, I know: rookie camper doesn’t know camping etiquette.

In this scenario, I was not the rookie. I pulled out my phone, ready to do some shaming.

“So, are you telling me that you picked wildflowers–which is illegal–as a way to stake a claim to this campsite?”

But my fingers left a trail of sweat on the phone’s screen instead of opening the app I wanted to use to communicate my displeasure. Plan B involved rolling my eyes and forfeiting the spot: I’d come to relax not argue with a tenderfoot hipster.

I should have gone with Plan C, which I conceived after having settled into a spot 8 sites over: challenge them to an arm wrestling match. I could have made them sweat a bit. I could have won that campsite. Or I could have made them feel even more uncomfortable? I would have been okay with any of these outcomes.

Site #60 turned out to be a decent consolation prize.

The spot came with the largest snake I’d ever seen in the wild. The two and a half feet long snake slithered through the grass away from my tent. To ensure it didn’t plan on joining me inside later in the evening, I moved where the zippers on my tent door meet higher up.

I carried my camp chair and the seemingly snake-related book I’d been reading, Demon Copperhead, to the presumably snake-free rocky outcrop by the sea. A few pages into reading about Demon’s adolescent tribulations, a pair of yellowjacket wasps had zoned in on me.

So much for a relaxing afternoon reading a book in the sunshine.

I abandoned my reading plans and instead made the 40km round trip on my bike to Ganges to pick up bonus snacks, including two cans of kombucha. At some point during the ride back, one of these cans got punctured, flooding the inside of my waterproof panniers. I shotgunned the rest of the kombucha, dumped out what leaked into my panniers and cleaned the lining with water. Thankfully, the chips I’d bought were still crunchy, and the dried fruits were still dry. I thought my power bank might’ve gotten damaged, but it’s working again after having given it a good clean.

All in all, my first solo camping trip was a success. I had no real need to get back home on Friday apart from following through with the tentative plan I had made with Amanda*. To my delight, Amanda was eager to experience a night in Ruckle Park. By 2pm on Friday, a larger tent was pitched beside mine, along with a taller camp chair that dwarfed my own. Amanda’s camp stove was even more compact than my MSR Pocket Rocket, and her utensils were titanium. The shiv-like toothbrush I got for free from Turkish Airlines was no match for Amanda’s folding toothbrush.

I dedicated 16 years of my life to working for a major outdoor retailer, where I had access to deep discounts on top-of-the-line camping gear. Yet, former Comic Book Gal had better stuff than me? Rude. Amanda tried to ease my envy by explaining that she had married into a wealth of high-end camping equipment. It was her husband who had spent the big bucks on titanium cutlery.

I was glad not to have to school her on the legality of picking wildflowers or petting the wildlife.

Even the domesticated animals were respected. A heritage farm exists within Ruckle Provincial Park, so it is not unusual to see a turkey strutting around the campgrounds. (I didn’t. I assume #68 had something to do with it.)

While I can acknowledge Amanda’s camping gear superiority, did she have a nicer bike? Of course not!

She had a car. She used it to drive us to Ganges the next morning, where we checked out the hippie wares at Salt Spring Market. There were earrings, belts, soaps, ointments, and even psychic readings, but I wanted none of it. Even when Amanda and I were offered the “best experience of our lives” by a local character promoting something called a solar meditation bow while we waited on the wharf for the next ferry sailing, my answer was still “no.”

(I found a YouTube clip of this guy getting the runaround from the dragons of Dragon’s Den.)

However, when Amanda asked me whether I’d like a lift home, she got, “Yes, please.”

My three-day retreat was everything I asked–and didn’t ask–for.

*Amanda also has never done cocaine.