Breakfast turns out to be breakfast burritos. The Gopher brings out eggs, lettuce, salsa, and cheese. I find hot sauce somewhere and pile everything on, especially cheese. "My gosh," Christine says, looking at my plate. "You put way too much cheese."
"Love me some cheese," I say, taking a bite. Christine shakes her head.
After eating, we head out to the bus. I'm wearing a Golden State Warriors hat, and my backpack has all of my necessities, including a flashlight, camera, sanitizer, and a science book.
"The beach, the beach, the beach!" Aparna is repeating this over and over again, thoroughly excited. I make a mental note not to sit anywhere near her.
"Aparna, calm down," says Kaylyn. Aparna smiles an impish smile and walks away. I reach up and spin the propeller-like attachment on the top of Kaylyn's hat. She flips my hat over my head and walks away, too.
Just then, the bus pulls up. I put the hat on my head and get on the bus, behind a few of my classmates. Shrimayee is right behind me. I take a seat, and she sits next to me. The whole bus ride, we talk about what we think is going to happen at the beach.
"I hope we get to have some free time there," says Shrimayee.
"I hope we get to explore tide-pools," I say.
The bus ride takes around ten minutes, and Shrimayee and I chatted the whole way. Afterwards, we get off and meet the rest of our trail group outside.
"Come on," Erosion says. He leads down the side of a highway and down to a beach with a little inlet. We walk past the inlet and down a trail leading away from the water and into a marsh. By the trail are little plants.
"Hey, Erosion," says Caleb, a boy in our trail group. "What are these?" He points at the triangle-shaped plant.
Erosion stops and looks over. "I'm so glad you asked," he says. "Let's do an experiment. Everyone pluck a piece of the plant."
I do so skeptically, like everyone else. The plant breaks off with a snap! I put it into my mouth and cringe.
"Eww," says Christine. She whips it out of her mouth. Two seconds later, nearly all of us do the same thing.
"How does it taste?" asks Erosion. Nobody answers for a moment, as we are all still wincing from the experience.
"It's..." I struggle to find words to descr ibe what I just tasted. "It's一it's salty, kind of. It makes my mouth kind of dry, somehow."
"It does, doesn't it?" says Erosion. "This is called an ice plant, and it's an invasive species. Can anyone define that?"
I eagerly raise my hand again. "An invasive species is a species that is not native to a land, but instead has been brought here somehow, most likely by humans."
Erosion nods again, and we start walking even further. A few times, I slip a little in mud, as does everyone else. Finally, we stop at a huge, twisted-looking eucalyptus tree. I notice a huge, muddy area of water beneath it—too small to be a pond, but too large to be a puddle.
'Whoa," says a boy named Kyle. "Can we climb that?" We all look at Erosion fervently, silently willing him to say yes.
"Let me check the tree," he says. Erosion climbs the tree, explores a few different branches, and eventually sticks his red bag on top of a branch.
"You are allowed to climb the tree," he says, "but do not go higher than this bag." He jumps off the tree, and steps aside.
Excited, we all charge for the tree to pick different branches to climb on. Kaylyn and I head for the middle, where the main stump is, and Kaylyn sits down. I do too, but after a few minutes, I spy a branch that no one has climbed.
Standing up, I say, "I'm going to climb that branch over there." I climb over Kaylyn, and scope out the area.
It looks a bit difficult, but I try it out anyways. I gingerly climb over branches and step carefully to get to the large branch that is my destination. I realize that the branch is a little more slippery than the rest, but it's too late now, so I keep going. Finally, I sit on the branch.
"Five more minutes!" calls Erosion. Kaylyn cranes her head from her spot to look around at me, and I grin back.
"I did it!" I say to her, but as I say it, I feel myself slipping... slipping...
SPLASH!
I land smack-dab in the middle of the muddy puddle, and immediately get drenched in dirt from head to toe.
"Adwithi!" Kaylyn yells at me from above. I look up to see her staring down at me, a smirk on her face.
"Whoa!" exclaims Erosion. He looks a his watch. "That's time up anyways, guys," he says to the kids still safely on the tree. Everyone gets off in an orderly fashion.
After drenching my hands in sanitizer, I take a carrot from Erosion, and we set on back to the inlet, me still dripping wet. After arriving, Erosion makes an announcement.
"Do you see all these logs here?" he asks, gesturing to the large amount of fallen, wind-battered branches around us. "Your challenge is to make a fort using them. Boys versus girls."
As soon as he says the word, Christine and I, the two fastest girls there, rush out to get logs. After a while, both forts start to take shape. Ours isn't really a fort; more a fenced in area, with logs placed in a circle and stacked on top of each other to make "walls", with logs placed haphazardly inside to make seats, and a large stump in the middle. The boys are sticking large branches into the soil to make walls, but the branches are placed far apart, and there really isn't much else. All in honesty, both are chaotic.
"Time's up!" calls Erosion after fifteen minutes. Everyone steps back from their erratic creations. Erosion takes a good look at each fort, while both cabins banter at each other on whose is better. Finally, Erosion raises his hand to silence us.
"I have made my decision," he says. "It's a tie!" He puts down his hand, and we all burst into groans.
"What?" I say in spite of myself. "This is like kindergarten, where everyone wins no matter what!" Everyone laughs at this, and we head back to the buses.
"Lunchtime!" calls out Upasana. We have customizable sandwiches for lunch. My sandwich is turkey, cheese, mustard, and pickles. After all of the other trail groups on the trip have finished their lunch, we head down to the rocks to go tide-pooling.
"While you're down there," a trail group leader says, "make sure to look for starfish, sea anemones, and crabs."
Tide-pooling is one of the best experiences I had there. We found a huge starfish, and many, many crabs; even letting them crawl over our hands. We touched sea anemones and watched them close up afterwards. Of course, we all slipped into tide-pools a few times, too.
After that fun experience, we go back up a steep cliff to get to the buses, and down a wet flight of wooden stairs. Below that is a beach, but this beach is pretty different from what I've ever seen before; this beach has no sand, but only small, smooth, rounded pebbles.
We get free time here, and I find some friends from another cabin and sit down to talk with them. After some time, we are ordered to get back into the buses and back to camp. On the bus, Christine, Shrimayee, and I sit together.
We quickly get bored, but Christine suggests a game. "How about rock, paper, scissors slap?" she asks. Shrimayee and I decide to play. We play the entire bus ride, and I soon develop an addiction (that I still have not gotten over). Once we get back to the camp, we get off, and it is recreation time.
During recreation time, I eat an apple and watch people play the piano. Afterwards, we are collected by class to go somewhere for a program called "Teacher Time". It turns out to be something where we get with our class and discuss what we did that day.
"Alright, everyone," our teacher, Mr. Rivera, says, "why don't you tell us something interesting, exciting, or weird that you learned, did, or saw today."
Kids in my class raise their hands to give out answers to the question. After some hesitation, I do, too.
"We went on a solo hike for twenty minutes," says Emily. Mr. Rivera nods and chooses another person.
It's someone that came on the trip to the beach with us, too. "I fell in a tide-pool," he says. "I pretty much went swimming."
This hits too close to what I was going to say, so I put my hand down for a few turns, then put it up again. "Adwithi?" says Mr. Rivera.
"We were climbing a eucalyptus tree, and I slipped off a branch and fell into a muddy puddle below." This brings giggles from many people in my class, me having a kind of reputation for falling over.
"I saw it!" exclaims Praniti to anyone that will listen. She's the only one in my trail group that's in my class. "It was hilarious."
Mr. Rivera gives her a look, then moves on. After Teacher Time, it's cabin time. Our cabin, since we went to the beach, is eligible to take a shower, but I don't trust the showers very much, so I decide not to, only washing my feet. Kaylyn and Christine do the same thing. Everyone else, however, takes a shower.
"Hurry up!" Christine and I call to Neha, Akshaya, and Praniti. We're late for dinner, and they're still in the bathroom. "Hurry up!" we call again. They finally come out, and we hurry down the hill and to the dining hall.
The naturalist in charge of dinner that night frowns at us as we scurry into our line. Once we are settled, the naturalist dismisses lines one by one to enter the dining hall. We sit down and choose our gopher, this time Christine. She brings out a cheese pizza, a bowl of salad with ranch, and more parmesan cheese. As usual, I dump cheese on my pizza and we all eat. Later, it is time for the Barnyard Boogie.
The Barnyard Boogie is mostly uneventful; you could say it is a dance, but I don't get to much dancing, me being not a dancer. I spend most of my time talking with my friends, also due to the music killing my ears. After the Barnyard Boogie, we get to bed.
"Do you guys want to read stories?" asks Upasana. She thrusts a binder into my hands and heads to the door. "I'm going out with the other counselors," she says. "This is when we get to rest and do our homework. Yes, we have homework," she adds. She leaves the room, after telling us not to make too much trouble.
"Okay," I say, "I'm going to read a story about..." I peer at the binder in my hands, using Praniti's flashlight. "I'll read a story about a ladybug." We each take turns reading, careful not to alert any patrolling naturalists.
"Okay," I say, "I'm going to read a story about..." I peer at the binder in my hands, using Praniti's flashlight. "I'll read a story about a ladybug." We each take turns reading, careful not to alert any patrolling naturalists.
We devise code words so to alert each other for any danger. "I'm tired" means "flashlight", "sleepy" means "danger possible, lower voices", "I need to go to the bathroom" means "imminent danger", and "blue fire" (the only one I didn't come up with) means "be quiet now!"
Since I am the only one that can see out of the front window on the door, I am the one keeping a lookout. For a while, we are all safe, until I see something.
"I'm tired," I say. Shrimayee, who is now reading, lowers her voice a little bit. I keep an eye on the flashlight, walking down the path leading to the cabins. It comes closer, standing right next to the flight of stairs leading up to the cabin.
"Sleepy," I say. Shrimayee pauses for a minute, fearful. After that pause, she keeps reading, while I keep watching.
"I need to go to the bathroom," I say, scared now. Everyone stops talking and listens. I watch every move of the person coming up the stairwell. Is it just the counselor of the cabin next door?
It isn't, I discover; it's Acorn instead, and she's walking up right to our cabin. "Blue fire!" I frantically whisper, and I can hear Shrimayee stuffing the book and flashlight under her blanket.
Acorn opens the door and looks around. "Is anyone awake?" she asks. Thinking it would be extremely suspicious if nobody answered, I raise up, rubbing my eyes to create the impression that I am extremely tired, even if that's nowhere near true.
"Yeah, I'm pretty tired though," I say in a mock-sleepy voice. For added effect, I fake-yawn, praying that I'm convincing enough. I give Acorn a small smile. It seems to work, and she smiles back.
"Okay," she says. "Good night!" When she heads out the door, I watch her, and soon she finally goes down the stairwell, now just a light in the distance.
"She's gone!" I report. Everyone in the cabin sits up, giving a collective sigh of relief that we weren't caught.
"That was good of you, Adwithi," says Akshaya. I nod, and I hear Shrimayee take out the book again.
"Do we really have to read stories?" asks Christine. "I'd rather just talk again." We talk for about 15 minutes when I see another flashlight coming closer.
The same scenario as before seems to play out. One by one, I call out warnings, and I try to see who it is, though without my glasses, it's hard.
"It's Upasana!" I cry out after realizing it. "Blue fire, nobody say a word!" Everyone plops into a sleeping position.
Upasana steps into the room, and puts something away. I scarcely breathe, and my heart pounds. Soon, she leaves, and I breathe again.
"Do we really have to talk?" Neha asks. "I'm a little drained." People murmur agreement.
"I guess so," I say. I check my watch. "It's nearly eleven o'clock." We fall into our pillows, and soon I hear the steady breathing of sleeping people. It is evident that I am the last person awake, further proving my point when Upasana comes in, and not one person pauses or stops their breathing in fear except for me.
I decide that finally I should try to go to sleep, and sometime during the night (who knows when?) I drop off to sleep.
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