Save Kickapoo State Park

Rob and I went camping at Kickapoo State Park last Friday night. Kickapoo is one of the parks that is scheduled to be closed on November 1st as a result of irresponsible budgeting that has apparently left Illinois without enough money to keep its state parks open. Rob and I were both really upset about the park closures: Rob—because he spent a lot of time at Kickapoo while he was growing up, and me—because I just love trees. We both signed petitions protesting the park’s closure and wrote to the governor and other state representatives, imploring them to keep it open. As I realized how close November 1st is looming, I suggested that we go and camp there one more time. Probably not the wisest choice for someone who has been wearing 10 layers of clothing indoors for the past several weeks, but I thought I could handle it.

It wouldn’t be a Ragfield Family Camping Trip if it wasn’t pouring down rain though. I’m not sure if Rob and I have ever camped together when it wasn’t raining. For the most part it was just a light mist, and since I had doubled the already ridiculous amount of clothing I have to wear to keep warm, it really wasn’t that bad.

We Ragfields like to travel light.

As we settled down for the night, it was really nice to hear the rain drumming on the tent and the owls and other animals out in the woods. In the cold and the rain, I had thought that we might be the only people hard-core enough to camp, but quite a few people began showing up at the campground and pitching their tents. It began to get a little bit noisy. And before too long it became quite a bit noisy. In fact, it sounded like I was in the middle of a big frat party. There was shrieking, shouting, laughter, revving of car engines, etc. Rob, blessed with the ability to sleep through anything, was out like a light and completely oblivious. Not I. I was wide awake, cold and shivering, and kind of having to pee but not wanting to go out into the middle of the party. I watched the hours tick by. It was around 1am when I heard this (extremely loud and extremely drunk) conversation:

Dude #1: DUDE, I’M, LIKE, NOT GOING TO GO TO SLEEP AT ALL TONIGHT. I’M GOING TO GO TO THE F*CKING FOOTBALL GAME TOMORROW WITH, LIKE, NO SLEEP.
Dude #2: (laughing as if this is the most hilarious thing he has ever heard) DUDE, YOU SHOULD, LIKE, DRINK SOME OF (some other dude’s name) 600 CANS OF RED BULL. HE’S GOT LIKE 800 CANS.

I couldn’t help but think of something Prof. Pablo once told me: “Melissa, the world is full of morons.” Indeed. This was the moment that I decided I wanted to remove my name from the “Save Kickapoo Park” petition. I do want to save Kickapoo State Park, but not from closure. Rather, I want to save it from people like Dude #1 and Dude #2 and what sounded like 50 of their closest, drunkest, screaming, friends. And if closing the park would do that, then I’m all for it. I hate it when people trivialize nature. The trees deserve our utmost respect. The birds and deer and crickets and squirrels need their sleep. They don’t need irreverent drunk people (who apparently feel that “No Alcohol Allowed” signs are a big joke) disturbing the peace. I wish that people would learn to appreciate this planet.

Dude #1’s desire to stay awake all night kept me up all night too. I’m not sure that I slept at all. In the morning when I crawled out of the tent, I saw an empty “Budweiser” carton, and somebody who was sleeping inside a running car. Come on. Nobody is colder than me, and I managed to get through the night without going to the car and turning on the heat.

Knowing that this might be the last time for the foreseeable future that we’d get to be at Kickapoo park, Rob and I went hiking around on some of the trails. During our hike, we saw two deer. The deer stopped and we stopped, and we all just stood looking at each other for the longest time. They were really quite beautiful deer.


We headed home a little while later, and I forced myself to go out and do a 12 mile run. In general, the first “long” run of the taper can be quite grueling. I don’t know why, it just is. I was prepared for the worst this time, especially knowing that I had not gotten any sleep at all the night before. But it went by pretty well, so now I’ve got that done.

Dude, its like, getting late, and I’ve, like, got a lot of stuff to do tomorrow, so I’m, like, going to go to sleep.

Thanks for reading.