I heard the rustling of footsteps on the long grass outside my tent and lift my head up from my inflatable pillow. I listen. The woods are alive with a million insects and animals, but this was different, bigger.
It’s the second day of a college trip into the woods a few hours out of the city, where me and a few other teachers had been chosen to chaperone environmental awareness and activity award none of us gave a shit about.
The park we had chosen was nice, it was a big enough place that you could wild camp where ever you wanted but still close enough to the city that you could do an overnight and still have plenty of Sunday afternoon left to get ready for the coming week.
As I waited in the darkness, I thought about the trip. I had been upset when my name had been randomly pulled from a lost and found hat in the teacher’s lounge. The woods were not my usual grind, but it had been a nice change from the usual loneliness of my life.