The 35-Year-Old Spinster

"You've never been married?"

This wasn't the first time I'd been asked this question, but it always surprises me. I've waited my whole life to find someone who'd want to marry me, but part of me still feels like a kid who's too young to be married. Even though it seems like everyone around me is pairing off.

"No," I scoffed. "Not even close."

A pause.

"How about you? Any kids? Ever been married?"

"Nope," said Joe, a good five to ten years older than me. "I've always wanted to, but..."

"It just never happened," I said.

Joe was speechless.

"I know," I said. "People ask me all the time why I'm not with someone, why I'm not married. They ask me what's wrong, if I'm too picky, whatever, and the answer is: It just never happened."

"Yeah," Joe said. "I'm glad you understand."

It didn't happen between me and Joe either.

The reason?

There was no reason. It just didn't happen.

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Proceed With Caution

With all the driving I've been doing down winding mountain roads - Angeles Crest, Anza-Borrego, Palomar Mountain, Palms to Pines - as I round each bend, navigate each hairpin turn, avoid each shoulder railing, rock slide, oncoming truck and passing motorcyclist, I keep thinking about the lessons I learned in Driver's Ed, somehow that have stayed with me for nearly 20 years.

A couple years ago, Edith and I started traveling a lot together, and although usually I rented the car, we'd either split the driving duties, or I'd decide when it was safe for her to get behind the wheel (something she rarely did in New York City in the years since first earning her driver's license). From the passenger seat, I'd find myself reciting the lessons of my driving instructors, regurgitating the text from the driver's manual (still fresh in my mind after recently having passed the written test for my California driver's license).

Once, in between a couple of our trips, apparently Edith tested out her new-found driving skills in the car with someone other than me - someone slightly more fearful of death than me.

"Why did you tell Edith to hit the gas on a curve?" Uh oh. Her husband didn't act very happy with me.

"Well..." I paused. "That's not exactly what I said. What I told her was, to brake slightly before the curve, and then to accelerate gently into the curve. Because you have more control over your driving when you're accelerating than when you're braking."

"Oh," he said, softening. "That makes sense."

Whenever things seem harrowing on those forever undulating mountain roads, even though I'm inclined to slam on the brakes, I know that stopping too quickly will send me tumbling over the edge. Instead, I just slow down (usually to whatever the posted speed limit is, because whoever puts those up knows what they're talking about), make it halfway through the curve, and then start to gently accelerate again to get me through to the next turn.

No matter what, you have to keep going. Even if you hit the brakes and stop safely in the middle of the road, there's someone behind you who can't see you, will accelerate through the curve, and will come crashing into you.

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Recap: A Beginner's Journey Into Desert Camping

In case you missed any of my previous posts, here is the full chronicle of my first-ever camping trip in record-breaking desert heat, replete with video of the Journey Into the Badlands.

Part 1: The Arrival
Part 2: Darkness Falls
Part 3: The Sleepless Overnight
Part 4: The Morning After
Part 5: Overlooking the Badlands


Journey Into the Desert Badlands: Anza-Borrego Desert State Park from Sandi Hemmerlein on Vimeo.


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Overlooking the Badlands

When we reached the top of Font's Point on our 4WD excursion through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park before arriving to our campsite for the night, we paused before reaching the top of the overlook, the highest point above the Badlands.

"So there's a procedure to walking up to the top to get the biggest impact of the view," our tour director, Joe, said. "Are you ready for it?"

Joe had already taught us how to smell a creosote bush by cupping our hands around its leaves and breathing into it. After that, it was easy enough to say "Sure, why not?"

"OK line up just about here," he said, "And now close your eyes."

I was in front. I've fumbled around blindly through life - both literally and figuratively - plenty of times, so I was more than willing to let my lids drop over my contact lenses, and to follow the sound of Joe's voice.

"OK start walking, a little farther, a little more..."

I was taking baby steps, the crunch of the desert beneath my sneakers, the whistle of the wind through my earrings.

"OK stop."

I stopped, eyes closed.

"Now open your eyes."



Gasp. The Badlands.

I don't know what I expected to see when I opened my eyes, but not this prehistoric expanse of geologic mystery, basically untouched since Juan Bautista de Anza first reached this summit on his way to Monterey.

It was almost too much, to take it in all at once, vertigo setting in, wind intensifying.

How often have I trudged ahead blindly in life, having no idea of what was ahead of me, no inkling or clue, no glimpse into the future, only for everything to be revealed to me all at once?

How often have I trudged ahead blindly, unable to see even where I was in that moment, or what I'd been through?

On our way to Font's Point, after driving through the Badlands, Joe had paused the Jeep for a moment and said, "Look, that's where we were. You'll get a better view of it up at Font's Point."

Unlike in life, at Font's Point, I had Joe's voice guiding me, telling me when to continue and when to stop, and - most importantly - when to open my eyes. Joe didn't bring the Badlands to me, Joe brought me to the Badlands, and showed me what has been there all along: something I could not see, even when we were driving through it. Something bigger, older, and more unmovable than myself.

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Ride the Wave

I knew I was going to go on this camping/stargazing trip last weekend, and I knew I wanted to catch the fireworks over the San Diego Bay, so I decided to leisurely make my way down with stops in Julian, Palomar Mountain, Valley Center, and Del Mar to catch the last day of the San Diego County Fair, something I'd wanted to visit when I lived in Joshua Tree two years ago, and when I was housesitting in LA a year ago, but never did.

Amusement parks and fairs aren't that fun when you go alone, but I'm enough of a fair food and amusements nut to brave the solitary life and just go.

And boy am I glad I did, not only to see my first demolition derby, but to discover my favorite ride I have ever ridden: the Rave Wave.

Faster than the Flying Bobs, less nauseating than the Scrambler, and louder than the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Rave Wave is a version of the Himalaya (as us East Coasters know it), with a circular train that goes up and down an undulating circular track, only the Rave Wave goes really fast, only backwards, and envelopes you in a canopy that leaves you riding in the dark for the last half.

You have to see it to believe it, so I scrambled to document it.

For your viewing pleasure, may I present, the Rave Wave:


Rave Wave - SD County Fair amusement park ride


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A Beginner's Report on (Curiously Hazy) Desert Camping: The Morning After

To be honest, I didn't sleep much at all on my first camping trip. Then again, I didn't expect to sleep at all.

Even when I was sleeping, I was dreaming about various goings-on in the tent, dreaming of faces peering into the tent, animals scratching their way into it, moths crashing about against the interior wall by my feet.

Then again, maybe all those things really did happen while I was sleeping.

I knew I would wake around 6 a.m., as I usually do when I sleep (indoors) in the desert, and like clockwork, I began to stir around that time. But it wasn't the glare of the sun that pried my eyes open, as it usually does. In fact, I wasn't sure if the sun was even up, the light outside of our tent was so dim. Had I actually woken up before the sun?

The lack of bright light made it easy for me to close my eyes again, but I kept hearing buzzing outside of our tent - the beat of wings against air, and flying body against tent. The flying beasts - which I at first thought were flies - seemed to be trying to storm their way into our tent, crash through its nylon walls by brute force.

I sat straight up, my wet back not cooled at all by the air inside of our tent, which felt like hot breath against my skin. The buzzing persisted. My tentmates awoke.

"Hot," I said, unable to utter anything more coherent.

"Hear those bees?" Katie said sleepily.

"Oh is that what they are?" I looked up and watched them through the skylight of the tent, the same transparent canopy that had allowed me to stargaze through the windstorm that had hit in the overnight.

I felt stiff, filthy, and stalked by bees, so I grabbed a towel, scrambled up to the opening and said, "I gotta get out of here. I'll try not to let any of them in."

I emerged from our tent into a thick marine layer of haze over Anza-Borrego, a desert that by definition is usually dry, with no bodies of water closer than the Salton Sea, still about an hour away.

I went to the latrine, barely eliminating anything, and shyly aware of how not private it was in the light of day.

I stumbled to the wash station, eager to slide the slick mixture of dirt, oil, and sweat off of my skin, where I faced even more bees - this time in a proper swarm, completely covering the wooden platform under the water spout.

I went around the truck and said good morning to Joe and Alan, who were cooking the breakfast we'd retrieved from the office the night before. "The shower's been commandeered by bees..." I said, to which they replied, "We know." I then saw that they themselves had been commandeered by bees as well, the swarm encircling the brewing coffee and cooking bacon and sizzling peppers and onions.

Expiring from thirst, I headed to the cooler set on the picnic table, where I faced the biggest bee swarm yet. "Oh my God!" I said. Where would I not find bees that morning?

I returned to the tent, which had been evacuated by my bunkmates, probably because I'd let a bee in though I promised to try not to. I retrieved my overnight bag and a clean pair of underwear, and I returned to the latrine to change. The small amount of moisture I'd managed to eke out must've distracted the bees or attracted more, because I faced another swarm there, as I danced around trying to place a flip flopped foot through a leg hole, my PJ shorties slung over a sagging creosote bush branch, and my foot leaving a trail of spiny spiky desert debris in the inside of my underwear, promptly sticking to me when pulled over my bare backside.

I grabbed a book and a chair, positioning myself midway between the chuck wagon and the latrine, hoping to grab some peaceful moments of solitude in the quiet morning, though it was impossible to see where the sun was rising. The pools of sweat forming behind my knees between my crossed legs became the bees' next target. Suddenly, I was swarmed.

I brought my bag to the truck and threw it into the back, through another swarm.

I tried to return to the tent, but I'd broken the zippered seal earlier, and now bees had evicted us and taken up residence in our former safehouse shelter.

I tried returning to the chuck wagon, but breakfast was a long way off, and the bees were still looking for water.

I changed my shorts behind a tree.

I walked up the dirt road towards Clark Dry Lake, but a single tenacious bee followed me.

And so I spent the next three hours pacing back and forth, getting up and down from chairs, swatting when necessary, shaking my legs up in the air, and doing the heebie-jeebie dance whenever I discovered a bee trying to suckle the sweat off my legs.

At one point, the moisture in the air was so unusually thick - especially for the desert - that it began to sprinkle. At first, we thought it would help dissipate the bees, giving them the water they so desperately desired, until I realized that every raindrop left on my shirt attracted them even more to that wet spot on my shirt.

There was no escaping the bees. There was nowhere to go where they wouldn't find me. There was no way to send them away. There was no sitting still and letting them swarm me. Never having been stung by a bee, it has become one of my greatest fears. I'll jump out of a plane, but do not leave me in a room alone with a bee. Please.

"OK, I'm ready to go home now," I declared. It was only 7:30 a.m., less than an hour and a half since I first left the tent.

Sometime after 8 a.m., the constant chase and my compulsion to flee became maddening. "OK, now I'm really ready to go home," I said, hands upon hips, hoping someone would agree with me.

In the 90 minutes that followed, three fellow campers got stung, though admittedly they weren't dancing around as much as I was to avoid the bees. By 9:30 when we were ready to leave - earlier than scheduled and about as late as I could possibly stand - we chucked our luggage into the back of the bee-swarmed truck and asked Joe to drive up the road a bit so we could chuck ourselves into the back through a somewhat dissipated swarm. A good idea in theory, the bees seemed to fly fast enough to follow the truck, and the inside of it was just as infested up the road as it had been by the chuck wagon. "Oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus," I said, sticking to my seat, holding my head down and rocking myself back and forth. Joe was loading the last of our load, including the ladder we'd climbed to get into the truck, but it was taking him too long for my taste. I began to chant, "Come on Joe, let's get a move on!" as a mantra until Joe hopped back into the front seat and sped away, finally scattering the swarm and giving us the morning's first moments of peace (though rumbling over rugged terrain through the roar of a diesel engine).

"It's always the camping trips where things go wrong that you remember most fondly," I heard one of my fellow campers say in the row in front of me. "When everything goes perfect, you never remember it. But when you get flooded or you set something on fire, you look back on it and say, 'Well, that was a pretty amazing trip.'"

Of course, being a camping newbie, I have no other reference point. On my first trip, I faced the worst perils I could imagine: heat exhaustion, dehydration, and bee infestation (not to mention the shocking absence of s'mores). And yet I can honestly say, when reporting on my first-ever camping trip, which I somehow foolishly scheduled on the hottest day of the year in one of the hottest spots in Southern California - because, for some reason, this is my idea of fun - it was really great, except for the bees.

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A Beginner's Report on (Suffocatingly Sticky) Desert Camping: The Sleepless Overnight

"You don't seem so tired now," Joe snickered, as our Jeep sailed over a ridge in the desert on our way into Borrego Springs, leaving our camp behind to go retrieve the forgotten breakfast.

"Well at least something's happening now!" I laughed. "I was afraid to go to bed before everyone else because I was afraid of missing out on a scorpion hunt or something."

Story of my life.

Upon our return to a satisfyingly deserted camp, I confidently retired, knowing I'd stayed at the party til the bitter end.

My bunkmates and I were stacked threewise in our tent, allowing just enough room for me to sleep on a single bed pad, hoist my hips in the air to pull my dirty gray (now brown) cargo shorts down, and replace them with a pair of clean, soft black PJ shorties. I stripped off my sweaty bra, leaving my turquoise tank top on, unable to bear covering my shoulders with anything, even sleeves that would feel clean and smell good.

I was pretty sure I did not smell so good.

I lied flat on my back, staring up at the stars through the top of our tent. My lids did not droop, the eyes behind them afraid to miss out on the celestial show above. I heard someone sigh. I could see the flicker of the torch stake by the latrine, and hoped I wouldn't have to find my way over there in the middle of the night, given all the wine I'd had. But my body was holding onto every little bit of moisture I'd put into it, even the sort that it normally has no use for.

I drifted asleep on my back, a fluffy pillow in a lavender case beneath my head, and woke up with a start a half hour later. After such a short slumber, I'd lost all desire for sleep, drifting in and out of reality, imagining shooting stars and spacecraft in a starshine supernova that perhaps I only saw with my mind's eye.

Again, I was afraid of missing out on a starshow - though I'd skipped out on the astronomical presentation earlier in the evening - but eventually my enthusiasm gave way to exhaustion, sending me back into sleepytime.

Until the wind.

I've lived through two sandstorms in the Sahara - one faced head-on during an extended camel ride - giving me enough experience to recognize the groan of the storm before the wind actually hits. The air moans. The atmosphere groans. And then, the wind hits.

The turbulence reported earlier by our guest astronomer came on full-force, manifesting in a tent-rattling, chair-flipping, sand-spilling windstorm that nearly lifted us off the ground inside our tent. I thought the stars would blow away, but they remained steady in the sky, twinkling as ever, giving me a mark upon which to fix my gaze, my eyes bulging open in wait for what kind of debris would fly by overhead.

I half-expected to see Joe's face pop overhead to check on us. I half-considered getting up and out of the tent to seek solace in someone else who was awake, who'd protect me from the elements, like I always wanted to do during the thunderstorms of my childhood. But either I decided I was safer inside the tent or I once again succumbed to fatigue, because I wasn't conscious for any other entertainment that the evening had to offer, until three hours later when morning hit.

Until, three hours later, when the bees hit.

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A Beginner's Report on (Decidedly Sweltering) Desert Camping: Darkness Falls

"I got bored."

I'd returned to the chuck wagon where we'd gorged ourselves on an as-promised gourmet dinner, smugly holding a camper's tin cup full of surprisingly chilled white wine, though it could just as easily been chili, or baked beans, or coffee. But it was too hot for any of those campfire staples. I was on my first-ever camping trip, which I'd perhaps foolishly scheduled on the hottest day (and night) of the year in brutally punishing Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

To get back to the chuck wagon, I'd walked without a flashlight through the dark, using the lit torches as a beacon and trying to retrace my steps from memory to avoid the various sinkholes and buried treasures that we'd found in the sand while it was still light out. Behind me, I left a dazzlingly starry sky, and a seated circle of stargazers who enthusiastically quizzed our guest astronomer about nebulae, space stations and the Milky Way with heads tilted upwards, eyes squinting, absorbing the various celestial factoids of impress.

The air was turbulent, so our astronomer said, making the stars twinkle violently - curiously, something astronomers do not want to see. But it was Fourth of July weekend, and I wanted some fireworks.

Otherwise, I wanted to go to bed.

So I returned to the place I felt most comfortable, in the light - if ever so dim as the torch flames waned - and with the men who cooked our salmon and tri-tip, splayed out various cheeses, flatbreads, spreads and grapes for us to nibble upon, and ushered us into the protective folds of the desert night.

"Pull up a chair," Joe said, creating our own little circle of three, our eyes dazzled by the wine, which polluted our view of the stars as much as the light from the torches did.

Joe had just returned from an hour-long trip back to the California Overland office, to deposit an overheated camper whose reddened face worried everyone enough to send her into air conditioning, pronto. He sank into his folding chair, drink in its rest, and finally relaxed.

It seemed we'd only had a moment of gabbing when I turned to Alan, our chef and tour associate, and asked, "Did you figure out where the coffee is?"

An hour or two before, Joe had been promising breakfast and coffee to my fellow campers (not that I care for coffee, especially not on a hot desert morning), and I'd overheard Alan mutter to himself, "Hmmm I wonder where the coffee is..."

I half-thought he was at least half-joking, so I started giggling, attracting Joe's attention. "What's that?" he asked, and I immediately jumped in with my dingbat falsetto - "Nothiiiing!" - continuing to giggle.

"So did you figure out where the coffee is?"

"Uh..." Alan sank further into his chair. "No..."

Joe was understandably...appalled. "What? Now I have to go back!"

"Again!" I pointed out.

Joe must've repeated "I have to go back" about a half dozen times by the time he realized they'd also forgotten the turkey bacon and the English muffins. Resignation set in. He had to go back.

"Do you want someone to go back with you?" I offered. An hour before, I'd been dozing under the stars, afraid to retreat to my tent for fear of missing out on a scorpion hunt or marshmallow roast, and now I was ready for the adventure I'd been waiting for.

I climbed into the passenger side of the military-grade Jeep and fumbled to buckle myself in with a lap restraint of heavy tether and metal clips, until I realized the desert terrain and the open-air Jeep required the addition of extra straps and buckles with which Joe secured me, the excited rollercoaster passenger that I am.

With a roar of a turning engine, and the flash of blinding headlights, we set off into the darkness, no street lights to guide us, no street to follow, only bouncing jackrabbits and the dips and tilts of the off-road path carved into the desert, across Clark Dry Lake and back into Borrego Springs, jostling from side to side, shouting over the diesel dust we left in our wake.

I spotted a flare in the distance. "Look, heat lightning," I said. Otherwise, the night in Borrego Springs was just as black as out in the desert, save for a silent flashing ambulance that rounded the corner by the California Overland office, as I waited strapped to the Jeep while Joe collected our breakfast.

It was midnight by the time we returned to camp, the astronomy lesson completed, all campers tucked away in their tents with no sign of melted chocolate or graham cracker dust. Still trying to regain my land legs after our four-wheel-drive excursion, I stumbled towards the one light at our camp, flickering from inside my own tent, which I was about to share with our trip's other two female solo travelers. Desperate for rest, I barely said goodnight to Joe, though I managed to sleepily through my arms around his neck to give him an impromptu hug, as a gesture of desert-dwelling camaraderie, or romance, or appreciation, or what, I wasn't sure.

As I slipped inside the zipped opening of our tent, illuminated gently by Chris' flashlight, I whispered, "Hi girls! Are you ready for our sleepover?"

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A Beginner's Report on (Deathly Hot) Desert Camping: The Arrival

"You've never been camping?!" People always seem to ask me this, as I rattle off the list of various things I never got to do as a kid (among which flying a kite can also be counted).

"No, when would I have?" I asked, explaining my agoraphobic mother and overworked father. "Who would I have gone with?" Camping is not the sort of thing I'm inclined to do alone.

So when I saw the opportunity to join a group camping excursion in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, coupled with some dark sky stargazing, I sheepishly called California Overland, the tour company, to inquire.

When they confirmed that there was an opening on the trip, I said, "Now, I don't have any gear. I mean, I don't have anything. I can bring a camera and some water but that's just about it."

"You don't even need to bring water, we've got that covered," Joe, the tour director, said. "Maybe you want to bring your own pillow, and a washcloth for our wash station. Otherwise we've got everything else taken care of."

I then eeked out my next question: "I'm a solo traveler. Is that OK?"

"Oh yeah," Joe said. "We've got a couple other solo women travelers, that's no problem at all."

I didn't give it another thought until I actually arrived at the meeting point, and faced the usual array of traveling companions: older couples, much older couples, a pair of female friends (still older), a surprisingly chic and outgoing Borrego Springs local, and a quirky, slightly neurotic outdoorswoman who seemed to take a lot of these trips on her own.

And me - the youngest of the bunch by far, suddenly shy and retreating into my own solo social circle of one.

I'd had quite a rapport with Joe on the phone the two times we'd spoken, so I loosened up when he arrived to greet us. His face was kind and weathered, restful in its smile. His eyes twinkled as he tried - pretty successfully - to memorize the names of all 13 of us. We were in good hands.

We'd pushed our meeting time 90 minutes later than originally planned because of the extreme heat in the desert that day - at 117 degrees, a good 10 degrees hotter than a normal July day, hotter than the hottest day in Anza-Borrego most times - so the sun was already starting to dip behind the mountain by the time we arrived to our campsite, the old Clark Homestead, just past Clark Dry Lake.





We were way out in the wild, but right by a former military site for fighter pilot target practice, where plane crashes and old junk car wreck targets have left the desert littered with ammunition shells (though perhaps those are of more recent ne'er do wells), bits and pieces of rubber, plastic, and metal, and booby-trapped patches of sand that give way to reveal buried relics.



But we could stare up at a mile high's worth of mountains and the alluvial fan at its base, which looked close enough to touch past the creosote bushes...





and the sprouts of little spiny bits in the sand that stuck to shoes and socks and sneakers and flip flops.



Past our military-grade tire tracks, we discovered the tracks of those that had come before us, be they bird or rabbit or other, our neighbors for the night.



When you are camping, even way out in the middle of nowhere in the desert, you are never alone.



Soon the sun was disappearing altogether, as we all sat in our folding chairs drinking a bottle of Corona Light - finally! - despite our dehydration and desperate need for water. In a few moments, the tiki torches would be lit, attracting the flies and the moths to our camp, and adding to the heat of an evening which never seemed to cool off.



Little did we know, our adventure was only beginning...

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California Conversations: Table for One

"A girl as beautiful as you should not be sitting at that table alone."

I was caught. I knew the couple next to me had noticed me on their way in, but I was hoping I could slip out without a comment.

I finished signing my credit card slip, put down the pen, and said, "You're telling me."

I thought that I could get away with just that, but the woman proceeded. "In a restaurant as romantic as this..."

I looked down at our tables, and I realized that when I first walked in and was instructed by the host to "sit anywhere," instead of sitting at the smaller round two-seaters on the right, I chose the row on the left: slightly larger round tables, wide enough for two people to sit next to each other on the pillowed bench while a third could join across the way. Every other table on the side I'd chosen had a pair of plates facing the bench. Mine was littered with the dirty relics of only one place setting.

My cheeks ran hot.

"Well, I wanted to come here, and I didn't have anybody to come with, so I just came alone," I said. I'd rehearsed that line so many times already, saying it was as easy as hitting the "Play" button. "I wasn't not going to come."

"You're absolutely right," she said, shaking her head. "But why you don't have someone to come with, I don't understand."

I pulled out the "I'm new in town" card which brought on a battery of questions of where I live, what I do for a living, etc. "I'm going to try and think if I can find you someone--"

"--Someone age appropriate," I interrupted. "I'm 35, I know I look younger." I should have requested single, honest, capable of intimacy, unintimidated, adventurous, etc. but I figured "age appropriate" was at least a good start. Maybe some of those other qualities necessarily come with age.

"Right," she said. "I'm going to work on getting you a job, and getting you a man. You are too young and too pretty to be in here alone."

"Well," I said, as I collected my purse and tried to keep the tears from welling up into my eyes, "Thank you very much."

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