I got back from camp­ing on Monday, and had a great time. We went up as a group of 16, divid­ed into three sites. I resumed my role as the token Chinese guy, since I was the only one on the entire camp­ground. The sites were less than a three minute walk away from each oth­er. Activities con­sist­ed of bad­minton, ulti­mate fris­bee, read­ing, or just loung­ing. It was 20 degrees dur­ing the day so a lot of the time was spent in the shade. At night it dropped down to about 8 degrees, leav­ing most peo­ple shiv­er­ing in their sleep­ing bags or hud­dled around a camp­fire.

Some tried to swim, but the water was so cold that they end­ed up wad­ing. There was a com­pe­ti­tion every day to see who could stay neck deep in the water the longest, but they all end­ed in ties when every­one agreed that the idea was sil­ly and that suf­fer­ing through the icy water was not worth the poten­tial brag­ging rights.

Most peo­ple brought quite a bit of alco­hol (Wheaties actu­al­ly got a 2–8 just for him­self), and we were caught twice on the first night for hav­ing open alco­hol con­tain­ers off the sites. Fortunately, it was by two dif­fer­ent groups of rangers, so we got two warn­ings, instead of a warn­ing and then a fine with evic­tion.

Even when relax­ing on the camp­ground, with no time lim­its and no sched­ules, I dis­cov­ered that pol­i­tics had fol­lowed me there, to a place where one is sup­posed to for­get the stress and con­flicts of dai­ly life. It’s such a pity that life can be so com­pli­cat­ed in the midst of such serene sim­plic­i­ty, when the only thing that one should wor­ry about is how much beer one has left or whether a fire will be going in time for din­ner.

Something that I’ve long real­ized is that the pol­i­tics of life are every­where, most­ly preva­lent in uncom­mu­nica­tive or secre­tive sit­u­a­tions. An uncer­tain attrac­tion, a group of peo­ple with mutu­al dis­like for some­one, or per­haps even var­ied appro­pri­ate­ness in var­ied com­pa­ny are all typ­i­cal exam­ples I’ve most com­mon­ly run across and dealt with.

I always try to remain out of such com­plex affairs, in order to sim­pli­fy my life, in order to have clar­i­ty. By doing so, I find that things are much less uncer­tain, and I thus have less to wor­ry about. Of course, life thrusts me into such sit­u­a­tions whether I’m will­ing to par­tic­i­pate or not. After all, peo­ple will for­ev­er be upset by oth­ers. I find that I’ve been able to under­stand and sur­vive these sit­u­a­tions with increas­ing con­sis­ten­cy.

It’s quite a dif­fer­ent sto­ry when I am per­son­al­ly involved.