Nothing To Do But What We're Doing

Greenhorn Ranch | Quincy, California

I noticed the first Weird Thing about Greenhorn Ranch twenty minutes after we arrived and wandered into the pool area for a pre-dinner swim. There were about ten teenagers hanging around, laying on their stomachs next to the water, tossing rainbow beach balls at each other, and drinking A&Ws in the shade. Something seemed off, but I couldn’t put my finger on it for a second. And then I realized what was making the whole scene feel so bizarre:

Ten teenagers, and not a cell phone in sight.

I’m writing this sitting on my porch on my fourth day at the dude ranch. We’ve spent the last few days taking wagon rides to middle-of-the-woods cookouts, scanning the pond with flashlights after dark in an attempt to catch frogs, and showing our kids how to hook a worm. My neighbor Karen just walked by to ask if I was going on the afternoon walk-trot, and I quickly flipped my computer closed, embarrassed to be seen with it.

Mine is the only computer I have seen all week long. The other devices I’ve observed total six: three point-and-shoot cameras, two phones (removed from pockets, checked, and then quickly replaced), and one iPad.

So. Weird.

The second Weird Thing happened when we walked out on the lawn in the middle of a massive water fight. I sat down to watch with Goldie on my lap and a man started talking to us as if we’d been best friends for years. The New Yorker in me wondered, for a split second, whether he was mayyyybe a little crazy, and then I realized…nope. He’s just really, really nice. Like EVERYONE here. (Literally everyone, from Lela, the housekeeper/RN who brought my son Gatorade and when he wasn’t feeling well, to Joe, the seasoned wrangler who should have been terribly intimidating but would better be described as “a total sweetheart,” to Paul, a ponytailed, flannel-wearing guest who stopped us outside the mess hall just to tell us that our little girl “sparkles in the morning.”)

I knew this place would be “nice to visit.” I did not know that, upon arriving, we would be immediately adopted into an extended family of adventurous, joyful people who would scoop up our kids and show them how to hold a frog and pet a horse and release a fish, and who, instead of rolling their eyes at us not-especially-outdoorsy city kids in our shiny boots and pre-ripped jeans, would welcome us into softball games and rodeos and clay pigeon shooting contests and cheer for us like we’d always been right there.

Some completely wonderful things that have happened over the past four days, in no particular order:

My daughter got so dirty during a wagon ride that I had to throw out her outfit (which to me seems like a good sign).
I tried skeet shooting – my very first time ever in my life holding anything even resembling a gun – and hit the target SEVEN OUT OF THE EIGHT TIMES THAT I TRIED. This makes no sense, as I’m sure you are aware, but it also won me bragging rights for the rest of my life. Also it inspired Alison, a beautiful, competitive-shooting, rodeo-conquering seventeen-year-old to call me a “badass,” which made the dorky teenage girl inside me turn purple with “She likes me! She actually likes me!”-style joy.
I made friends with a dog who was hanging out not “in” the bar, but actually on it.
I discovered that I should probably enter the Olympics in the category of “bouncing a ping-pong ball on a paddle.”
I ate fajitas so delicious that I considered smuggling a few home in my purse.
My son won first place in his frog-racing heat (more on this shortly, because omgggg frog races omgggg.)
I read almost an entire book (Pretty Baby) while lying on a blanket in the shade next to the pond.
Kendrick and I dropped off our kids at the “Kiddie Corral” for a few hours of games and petting zoos and pony rides, and they yelled “LUBBBB YOUUUU!” at us while we rode off on our horses to spend two hours trotting through the silent woods.
I forded a creek on horseback for the very first time, and took a fish off of a hook all by myself for the very first time.
I sat next to a bonfire nuzzling my face into my childrens’ necks while Hannah, a 15-year-old girl with a surprising, haunting voice, played Hallelujah on a guitar.
We let Indy run over to the game room so he could play old-school video games with one of the older boys, and I remembered what it was like to be a kid and get permission to run off somewhere all on your own.
I turned a corner only to discover my daughter and a staff member named Rae knocking over a massive Jenga tower over and over and over and laughing so hard they were practically in tears.
We sat cross-legged on the ground, talking about ants.
We practiced our lasso technique.
We “snuck into the kitchen” after dark (and after checking with the staff) to pick up slices of fresh bread and butter to bring back to our rooms for a late-night feast.

And then sometimes we just sat there together on the grass, sharing bags of potato chips because it was the nicest thing we could think of doing.

When I was a little girl, my parents and I spent nearly every weekend at a sort of lodge in upstate New York that our friends owned. Over the years the other kids and I became more or less family, and we spent our days horseback riding, or hunting for blackberries in the forest, or hiding under the tables in the dining room practicing holding wine glasses like our parents did. We played ring-around-the-rosy and badminton, and our parents slept on plastic lounge chair cushions with their books planted on their faces, covering their eyes.

These past few days at Greenhorn Ranch (which, for those of you who live in the Bay Area, is only about an hour and a half north of Tahoe, so you basically have no excuse not to go) was paradise for all the obvious reasons, but in retrospect I think it was paradise mostly because we’ve been so here: whatever we’ve been doing at any given moment has seemed like the coolest thing in the world. I spend a lot of time these days thinking ahead, planning, trying to make as many things happen all at once as I possibly can, but here we have nothing to do but be together and do whatever.

This is a special place for obvious reasons – the spectacular rides, the gorgeous property, et cetera – but I think the moment that struck me the most was during the bonfire party last night, when I was standing next to the bar chatting with a woman named Mona, when I suddenly realized that I’d just spent four days with her and I had no idea whether she was a guest or a staff member. Because you literally cannot tell them apart: every single person I’ve met just seems so, so happy to be here.

It turns out that it took me until age 35 to realize how much I love going to camp. And now I want to go back, as soon and as often as possible.