I have suddenly fallen in love with green nature. Swear to God this must be because I am now living in a box in the sky.

I was born in the desert, my young memories of sand. In fact, the desert is so much a part of me that I used to eat it. Literally, before I could walk, I used to crawl along our home, wet my index finger with my baby drool, stick it in the corners to grab at the sand and then eat what little my very small finger could populate on its very small tip.

I was a baby: psychotic, cuddly, uncoordinated, completely useless, with cheeks to my belly, and incapable of rational thought. Add to these lovely characteristics that I also had poor hand/eye coordination and the result is a fat potato child in a corner for hours, ecstatic to come up with 17 grains of sand as entrée.

It got so bad that momma began pouring black pepper in the corners as a deterrent; apparently, she began finding me with a runny nose, panting, and still eating the grains of sand. I imagine that with my fat bottom sitting firmly in a corner and facing away from the humans (they didn’t have sand), I could have easily been confused with the infant member of The Blair Witch Project.

My history dictates that I have always been drawn to dry hot winds on a landscape of golden reds. Greens? Not so much. In fact, the only time I was comfortable in greens was in the amazon. Odd this as I was surrounded by insects and snakes and things I refuse to recognize as living and breathing the same air because I am terrified they will crawl into me and set up camp.

Which is an excellent segue into that: I wish to go camping, a reflection of some kind of crisis.

I want to camp in a tent, and with a canoe so I can go canoeing. I have never. Ever. In my life. Been camping. I have cabined, but that is as close to nature as I have come.

The bottom line is that immigrant Palestinians, whose brethren are in refugee camps are not much drawn to sleeping in tents for shits and giggles. Oddly however, I want to pack a long weekend into a backpack, and grill some food over an open flame and wake up to fresh coffee and a canoe. I wonder, can I do this near fresh water? Because I don’t like murky water, it makes me feel dirty. Also, have I picked up on some sort of Canadian virus that is making me wish to do this? And finally, is there a pill I might take that will oppress my need for a pee (I don’t poop. This is a gift from God) for such a weekend? I don’t want anything crawling along my bottom unless it can walk on its hind legs and has opposable thumbs, please and thank you.