I don't camp. I like my own shower, bathroom, hair dryer and lighted mirror to put my makeup on. I like my own space. My warm bed and fluffy pillows. And privacy. I like privacy alot. So, it was a big step for me to decide to do this knowing I would have to sleep in a tent, use port a potties, go without electricity and shower on a truck. Oh yeah, and sleep in a field with about 2,200 other people. But, the call of the pink was stronger.
Camp is cool. Yep I said, I liked it. Now, we didn't have to rough it quite as much as most do. We were supposed to camp outside in a field at Fairmount Park. However, with heavy rains on Thursday and strong wind gusts expected for Friday and Saturday, they moved our camp indoors to the PA convention center. Toilets that flushed, woohoo! We did still get to shower on trucks, but I rolled with that. What I did not account for in all my planning was that I was expecting to zip my extremely claustrophobic self up in a 6.5x6.5 ft bright pink coffin. Yeah, that was a problem. Seems as soon as I climbed into that pink tent of doom, I had a very hard time breathing. Luckily, since we were camped inside, we were able to leave our tent unzipped at night and I slept with my head half out the doorway.
We camped on the lower level of the convention center and Main Street, the dining area, camp medical station and the remembrance tents were on the level above us. Loved those men and women who served us breakfast and dinner everday. Tried to stuff one in my camelbak, but I'll need a bigger pack for that. Got to visit the medical tent on Saturday night. My wonderful shoes helped some nice blisters fill up on my heels that I got to have drained. I was a bit, ok so alot, nervous after that about walking another day with the way my heels were torn up, but then we headed to the remembrance tents.
This place was tough. There were white tents from all the cities the walk has been through lining the walk to the main tent. These tents are signed by walkers with notes to those they've lost. Then you enter the main tent. On the walls hang pictures of women that have walked in past 3 day events and since lost their battles with breast cancer. One picture shows a woman with her daughter who looks to be about the same age as Emma. That woman was born in 1977, the same year I was born. It is very quiet inside this tent. No one speaks really. There are just quiet sounds of tears. I sat down and wrote a short note to Kathie in the remembrance book. There was a woman beside me writing to her mom. It was hard. But as we walked out of that tent, I found I was no longer worried about how my blisters would feel the next day. I'm not one to whine about how I feel and am usually annoyed when others do. And no matter how my feet had felt on that last day, I would have walked. All of it. But leaving that tent, I was reminded of why I was there. And I was bolstered by those fighters, knowing my little blisters were not even a blip on the radar of the hell they'd been through. And I was going to finish that walk and not give those blisters a second thought. Because those women deserved it. Because Kathie deserved it. Besides, whining causes blisters.
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