I relinquished all my privacy rights.

If you see the blog headline and assume that I’m referring to last week’s Equifax breach, you are W.R.O.N.G. Granted, I am on the list of those impacted. But read on for this nearly equally serious issue.

One of our recent campgrounds, Cape Perpetua, was in a fairly dense forested area. Until you walked the mile or so to the beach, you’d have no idea you were that close to the ocean. Big tall trees. Kind of damp. Rainy.

On Thursday afternoon, I was returning to my campsite after walking the dogs, and spotted this sign in front of my new neighbor’s campsite.

Such a statement is unusual in a campground, so I stopped to greet the new campers, a couple with a young son. They were very nice people, arriving at the campground in advance of the weekend to set up for an annual reunion/festival of some of their friends. The woman introduced herself as “T”. Or “Tee”. Or “Tea”. I didn’t ask her to write it out. I provided her with my full name.

On Friday morning, there was some activity at T’s campsite and I stopped by before I headed to town to do some errands. Some of the festival-goers were arriving, and there was already some concern that they wouldn’t have enough campsites. They were headed to talk to the camp host when I left for town.

Jump to Friday afternoon when I return from town. I hop over to T’s site  to offer up the tent pad on my own campsite in case any of her festival people had a tent but no place to put it.  T jumped on that offer.

Ok. So when I was driving back from town and considering making this offer, I said to myself, “Self, you  know what a privacy freak you are. If you do this, make sure you either A. define the parameters, or B. live with the consequences of not defining the parameters”. “Parameters” would be something like saying to T, “T, so that I have my own privacy, please make sure your friends do their socializing/cooking, etc on your group’s site and just sleep in my site”. Even the act of typing those words is almost too tight-assed to bear — I could not imagine saying them out loud. So I chose Option B.

And they moved in.

They brought a car, which was parked in front of my camper (yes, effectively blocking me in :-)).

And they put up a tent. And erected a canopy. And brought a cooking stove and cooked meals on it. And unloaded about a dozen plastic coolers and bins of gear. And hauled in wood for a fire. Etc. etc. etc. It’s what you do when you tent.

But other than making my skin crawl a just a tiny bit when the tenters would walk directly in front of my camper window, it was totally fine. In fact, it was more than fine — they were nice, gracious people, and I’m delighted  to have met them. And they were all exceptionally interested in Sally and Trax, and they in them.

This group of friends has been meeting annually for about 15 years for their “Drowning Rat” festival. They meet near water, often by a river but this year at the ocean, and make a gigantic Rat out of pieces of wood. Each piece added symbolizes something that the participant wants to release — anger, fear, etc.

Once the wooden Rat is built, they throw it into the water and drown it. Pretty cool concept.

It’s a small group — about 20 people. I met most of them, and enjoyed their company and their energy. T and her family. A couple with connections to an Oregon community college. A doula and her dad. And thankfully they probably headed out without referring to me as that crazy bitch lady with the ridiculous camping rules. Actually, they were probably referring to the camp host using those terms, but that’s another long story (and one of the reasons I offered up my spot in the first place).

By Sunday night the campground emptied out —  it was a little sad.

Thanks for reading and for your comments!