The sun sinks towards the horizon as we race south towards Alton. I tried reading my book, and now my stomach feels heavy with that familiar pit of nausea. With nothing else to do, I’ve taken to running my fingers along the tray table and looking around. For all the novelty of my first Amtrak (at eighteen years old), it is remarkably similar to an airplane. Smooth, gray, plastic seatbacks and smooth, gray, plastic fold-down tray tables. Faux leather upholstery that wrinkles when you sit on it too long. Nondescript blue carpeting down the center aisle. Dry, stale air. The outside view is new, though. This is the flattest place I’ve ever seen. Back in Massachusetts, the highways are bordered by steep rock faces and a never-ending supply of trees. The world seems so crowded, with only a stripe of sky overhead and cars all around, but here—it’s so empty. I see why they call it plains. Miles and miles of treeless countryside pass, seemingly to the end of the earth. I rest my head against the cold, clear plastic of the window and watch lone houses flash by in the waning daylight.

The woods of southern Illinois look a lot like the woods anywhere. Memorial Day Weekend means all the leaves have returned to the branches, and the trees are fluffy with new growth. The campsite is aglow in bright spring greens and pine needles with their waxy shine. The air is colder, cleaner, cut through with bits of the oily-lemony smell of citronella and day-old smoke. I mill about the firepit and steal a white peach out of one of our insulated grocery bags, sink my teeth through the reddish blush of its cherry-blossom-white skin and into soft, moist fruit. Pale yellow juice runs down the heel of my hand, over the sticky residue of sweat and bug spray coating my arms.

As the sky fades from blue to navy, I slip into my tent for the night. We’re getting up early tomorrow to go hiking, and besides, we’re all exhausted from the travel and set-up. My shoulder blades strain as I hunch over to put my hoodie on. I’m in my own small tent, wide enough to fit an air mattress and a backpack, but not quite tall enough for me to sit up without my head bumping into green polyester. Two of my friends are sharing another tent a few yards to my left, and another four are in a large family-sized tent in front of me. As I cocoon myself in my blanket (a gift from my aunt; it’s huge and soft and colored like a sunset with blue, yellow, and orange stripes), I hear laughter ahead of me. I crane my neck and see flashlights waving around inside the family-sized tent. 

This trip wasn’t my idea. And I was happy to go. But I didn’t really do sleepovers, or camping, growing up. My parents preferred to avoid the hassle of teenagers spending the night in their house, and not sleeping in a real bed when they were on vacation, and maybe I agree, but I still feel a wave of something wash over me as I watch the silhouettes of my friends through a layer of mesh. I asked for my own tent. It’s nice. It’s my own. But it’s not what I wanted, I think. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to want. I don’t really know what I’m doing.

The fire’s dead. The night is quiet. My tent is still with darkness. I wrap my arms around myself, shut my eyes tight, and pray for it to be morning.

The torrential rains from late last night mean that the hiking trails this morning aren’t just damp; they’re wet. The reddish-orange clay trails look like thick, glossy peanut butter, coated with clumps of rain-soaked leaves. Every now and then, small showers of rain fall from the tree cover overhead. We trek past rock formations with wavy faces, their layers jutting out at different depths, their surfaces mottled with small craters and gray-green lichen and lines that look like prehistoric cat scratches. Even after five of my friends fall from the slippery conditions, I’m determined not to. I tense my knees and calves and scramble between footholds of packed dirt and small patches of dewy grass, trying my best to avoid the clay. With every step, the cotton of my jeans, worn and broken-in from years of use, presses into my skin. By the time we reach the halfway point, my once-white sneakers are caked in mud, and my feet and legs are burning.

The damp weather and the ache of seven to nine miles of hiking (we got lost along the way) have settled into my bones, but I still ease my creaky knees and stiff shoulders over to the picnic table to help set up dinner. DIY pizza night means ripping up tortillas, topping them with sauce, cheese, and pepperoni, and squishing everything into square pie irons, which are then plunged into the crevices of the fire where the embers are hottest. Seven to nine miles of hiking killed my loose limbs, but not my appetite, so I make three mini pizzas, and roast them until charred. The pepperoni is blackened at the edges and curling into itself. It’s greasy and salty and it cuts through the acidity of the tomato sauce, whose liquid texture pairs with the crispy tortilla and the goo of melted vegan cheese. When we pivot to s’mores, I make two. By the time the cicadas have started humming in earnest and the night is turning from navy to black, I’ve curled up in a camp chair as close to the fire as I can get without dying of smoke inhalation. My fingers are sticky with melted marshmallow and a fine sheen of graham cracker crumbs, and my clothes have soaked up the smell of smoke and rain. I hold my hosed-down sneakers over the fire to dry and hum “Moon River” to myself.