fears

last night i repaired to my campsite, washed up and got into bed.

when i am on public campsites i sometimes fear that i will have unwanted company. it's a risk you take on free public sites, and the closer you are to a town and the nicer your site, the more likely it is that this will happen.

...i think.

and sometimes i sleep uneasy, thinking there are noises in the dark, and maybe not friendly noises. ever since i got here, i have been starting awake in the night by noises that are maybe real, maybe imagined. it's hard to tell sometimes when you're near water and mountains if a sound is close by or if it is reflected.

in any case, i have not been sleeping well.

and last night as i was fussing with my bedding, a thing i  was afraid of happened.

a big truck with bright lights and loud music blaring came roaring out to the little spit of land where i was camped.

sometimes this isn't a thing to be feared. sometimes the local people come and use a site and are good neighbors, but you never know who's going to be unpleasant until they've been there a few minutes.

they parked near me, and noticed i was in my car and the guy kind of skulked over to my side and i didn't know what kind of interaction that was going to be, but he said hello and that he just wanted me to know they were there.

polite, but kind of unnecessary.

and then a bunch more cars arrived and i was thinking great. it's party night out here. but they seemed friendly and maybe even good company against the darkness, and then i noticed that there were little children running around.

ok, now this is totally not threatening, if a little weird.

and then the fireworks started.

no, not metaphorically.

actual honkin' fireworks. chrysanthemum shells and everything. probably very illegal, but maybe permitted, since i can't imagine a display that large so close to law enforcement offices and visible from everywhere in the area would have gone without notice.

but i had from row waterside seats to about a half hour of pretty good fireworks, better than some small towns do at independence day.

and then after a while all the cars and trucks left, and i slept soundly all night.