Where the White Things Are: Ultimook 2021

Ultimook 2021 was a blast! It was good to be back after the 2020 hiatus. When we arrived at Hydrangea Ranch around 5pm on Friday night, still riding the beach and ice cream high, everyone helped unload the bus in the camping field. Then we said goodbye and thank you to our bus driver as she drove off to her hotel (where she would get a good night of sleep in preparation for our long drive home the next day). Time to set up those tents! Watching and listening to the teenagers wrestle with their tents was as amusing as ever. Everyone figured out what to do eventually! Jeff and I were surprised that we had such a hard time setting up our own two tents--it had been two years since our last camping trip, and we kept making ridiculous rookie mistakes with our tent setup, right along with the rest of the team. A stiff breeze blew through the valley as we worked, so we had to hustle with the stakes. Since Covid rules required separate tents for each household, everyone got to set up a tent. By the time we had all untangled our tent poles and staked down the corners, we had a cluster of seventeen tents! Two for our family, and 15 for the team (2 of our 16 runners are sisters and they shared a tent).

The finish line at dusk, with a fire pit aflame to the left.

Once our fleet of tents was set up, Jeff went on a course walk-through with the team plus Jay and Rose while I organized the debris around our camp area. I set up our folding table, parked our wagons at a jaunty angle between the tents, and gathered random stuff scattered across the grass. Amber relaxed in her tent and decompressed with books and an old cell phone while I worked. By the time the team returned, our camp was looking snazzy and orderly. I changed into all of my warm clothes: two pairs of pants, long sleeve wool shirt, down jacket, and windbreaker jacket with a hood, along with wool socks. I was prepared for the overnight low of 48, and it worked! I did not get cold while we were outside.

After an underwhelming dinner of chicken, canned corn, and spuds at the on-site food cart, Amber boldly joined into a game of soccer with the boys, her bright pink jacket and boots standing out among their gray and black apparel. That girl has confidence! She was all over the ball, chasing the boys up and down the field. It was hilarious. Meanwhile, site managers were lighting a scattered handful of fire pits and the sun was sinking lower and lower behind the mountains. Eventually Jay, Rose, and Amber retired to their tent for the night.

When it was dark enough, a running movie was projected onto the outdoor screen under the pavilion: McFarland USA. Jeff and I watched the first half of the movie with some of our team before feeling too tired to continue upright. So we walked the quarter mile back to our tent, pausing to look up at the clear black sky that was coated in sparkling stars and smudged across the middle by the Milky Way. It was absolutely stunning. We looked and looked until our necks hurt. Then we visited the less-stunning port-a-potties. Jeff went to the tent while I did a final paranoid mother-hen sweep of the property, making sure all of our 16 teenagers were accounted for. Some were hanging out at a nearby fire pit. Some were still watching the movie. Some were in their tents already. But I couldn't find a few of them, and I felt so responsible yet helpless! We weren't worried about any of our kids being reckless or anything, because they are all trustworthy, but the burden of responsibility that comes from being in charge of teenagers overnight tends to weigh rather heavily. I went into our tent to rest and regroup, and within a few minutes, the final group of teenagers returned to our camp and everyone was accounted for. With a sigh of relief, I snuggled into my sleeping bag.

It was cold. I cinched the drawstring of my mummy sleeping bag tight around my face, so only my eyes, nose, and mouth were peeking out, but my eyeballs felt cold, even when I closed them! I laid there in exhaustion, trying to read a chapter on my kindle. My arms were so tired, I could barely hold my kindle up! Jeff and I decided not to bring pillows because we had SO MUCH OTHER GEAR to lug. We thought we'd take two bulky pillows out of the mix. It was not the right choice. We stuffed clothes into stuff sacks to use as pillows, but they were lumpy and low. Our tent was pitched between the girls' tents and the boys' tents, and both groups were talking among themselves as well as talking to each other across our tent. Slowly, their voices dropped off until the few remaining guys and girls were playing a kind of pointless-yet-flirty verbal-only game of Marco Polo back and forth across our tent. Somehow I eventually fell asleep for a few hours, but around 3am I was only dozing and checking my watch every half hour until 5:45am, when I finally gave in to my bladder and got up for the day. Jeff groaned and said he hadn't slept at all for the whole night! We were in for a long day of endurance, just like cross country meets of yore.

The schedule of our races was as follows:

8:15am: combined men's and women's open 5k race (Jeff and Shaina)
9am: middle school girls 3k race (Rose--yes, we entered our ten year old in a middle school race)
9:30am: middle school boys 3k race (Jay)
10am: JV girls (all four of our girls who came)
10:45am: JV boys (seven of our guys)
12:15pm: Varsity boys (five of our guys)

The results for our family:

Jeff 5k: 18:48 (8th/47 men; 8th overall)
Shaina 5k: 24:20 (4th/23 women; 28th overall)
Rose 3k: 17:41 (39th/66 girls)
Jay 3k: 18:22 (71st/88 boys)

When Jeff and I were standing on the starting line together a little after 8am, I looked over at him and said "Wow, I feel so mentally weak right now!" He laughed and agreed. That fitful night of cold pillow-less tent sleep was talking, telling me that three miles sounded way too far to run. But the starting bell rang and we ran anyways, because that's what we do! I did not have much "bounce in my bungee", and I found myself running alone with no competition in sight after the first mile, so my race turned into a nice brisk run. I didn't overextend myself at all. The mud pit was sticky but not too deep, and I got through it with relative ease. I walked across the river at both crossings to avoid turning my ankle on the slick round rocks beneath the water. It was a low effort low stress run. I finished a modest 50 seconds slower than last time I ran this course in 2019.

Jeff did a flying long jump into the mud pit, legs pedaling through the air like an Olympian. I wish I could've seen it, but I was two minutes behind him on the course. I did give Amber my phone to take pictures during our race if she wanted to, but she just ended up taking a very long shaky video of people's feet, her fingers, the sky, and the trees. It was worth a try! Haha.

From there, the day's momentum built with each successive race. Our race was in the early cool hours of the day when less people were around. By the varsity boys' race at noon, the grounds were packed with people cheering and yelling along the course. There is nothing like the atmosphere of a cross country meet--all of that positive energy and encouragement saturates the air!

We entered Rose in the middle school 3k race (just under 2 miles), and she did so well as a young underdog! She is a tenacious runner and handled the pile-up at the mud pit like a champ. Jeff and I raced out to watch her on the second river crossing--we still had energy at that point because her race was only the second race of the day, haha. It was fun having my own daughter in a race! Jay was next in the middle school boys' race, and he got to run with his buddy Jordan. They ran neck-and-neck to the finish, with Jordan finishing two seconds ahead. We had to remind Rose not to gloat about running a faster time than her big brother, because the mud pit was such a wild card. While all of this was going on, Amber was playing happily among our high schoolers at our team tent on the side of the course.

Whenever our runners said they were nervous, I told them to focus on having fun. We go to Ultimook to have FUN, not to get fast times. Watching them navigate the mud pit among the throngs of other runners was hilarious and inspiring all at once. Kids kept losing their shoes in the sticky gluey mud, and the race rules stated clearly that you had to get both shoes out of the mud pit or else you wouldn't be allowed to keep running. So many kids had to stop and dig through the mud to retrieve their lost shoes, and once they were out of the mud, they paused to squelch their muddy feet back into their muddy shoes and somehow keep running. Thankfully the two river crossings were after the mud pit!

After the races were over and the coaches were thoroughly exhausted from all of the back-and-forth running and cheering (about four extra miles of running for us), we hiked back to the Field of Tents to break down camp. Jeff stayed back near the pavilion to direct the last few guys after their cooldown while I talked Jay, Rose, and Amber through rolling up sleeping bags and pads, packing backpacks, and dismantling tents. The tents were all nice and dry in the warm sun after the drippy dewy night, and we got hot while we worked. My children were overtired and extra dramatic, seemingly determined to utterly drain my depleted well of patience. Jeff did not come back! I worked and had everything rolled and zipped and packed, and was about to roll up the beautifully folded last tent when he finally showed up. He had been waiting for the varsity boys to come help lug the rest of our team gear back from the pavilion area, but they came straight to the tents instead, so Jeff finally dragged the gear back himself and took over rolling up my final work of art tent. "Sure, swoop in and steal my crowning moment of victory!" I teased him, as he fitted the final tent into the final bag.

Next we had to move our gear about 200 meters uphill on a gravel road to the bus pick-up zone. Since the meet was still going on (they had something like another half dozen races on the schedule after we were done running), our bus couldn't drive all the way down into the Field of Tents to pick us up since that would block part of the course. In several agonizing heavy sweaty backbreaking trips, we lugged, dragged, and hoisted our seventeen tents, bags, backpacks, snacks, etc. up that dusty gravel road. Before we could make it to our stop, though, the bus had come and been turned away since we weren't there to board. When we had everything at the bus stop, Jeff ran 3/4 mile down the road to the bus parking area to get the bus (we had no cell phone reception). He left and we waited in the bright hot sun on the side of the gravel road. We waited. And waited.

And waited.

Half an hour after Jeff left, I told the team to go find some shade down the road a bit, promising that I'd stay with the gear and alert them when the bus finally showed up. I didn't want anyone to get overheated and have medical problems! So I draped my jacket over my side to block the sun and kept waiting. And waiting. Finally, close to 45 minutes after Jeff left, the bus arrived! We learned that the bus driver had parked the bus and walked all the way back to the meet to find out why we weren't waiting at 2pm like we had planned. Jeff missed her in passing and when she wasn't at the bus when he arrived, he simply laid down in the shade of the bus and waited for her to return. We quickly loaded the bus and managed to get outta there before the next race began and made us wait another 20 minutes to cross the course.

WHEW, we sank into the rigid tiny bus seats with relief. The next leg of endurance was merely sitting on a school bus for five hours. The hardest part was over, and good thing too, because we were over 20,000 steps for the day and feeling the fatigue. We stopped at Five Guys outside of Portland for a hamburger dinner and even after everyone had ordered everything they wanted, we still only ended up using half of the money the school district provided for the team's meals! While everyone was finishing up at Five Guys, I walked across the parking lot to Trader Joe's and bought some of their coveted delicious dark chocolate peanut butter cups. The closest Trader Joe's to our house is 3 hours away, so I rarely get these divine confections. The opportunity was too good to pass up! I shared some with Sandra (our bus driver).

During the drive back to Sunnyside, Hector and a couple of other guys sang for nearly an hour--mostly songs in Spanish, but also some in English. It was great. The team also nicknamed a freshman named Cameron, Camarón, which means shrimp in Spanish. It was all in good fun, not mean, especially since Camarón is not short. Everyone called him Camarón with the perfect accent the whole weekend (and beyond), and it was just another layer to the team spirit and camaraderie that built throughout this trip. I loved watching our teenagers relax and get more comfortable around each other. It is such a good feeling to know that our plans panned out and one result of that was our team bonded! Mission: accomplished.

We arrived back at Sunnyside High School at 9:45pm, 37 hours after we left! Our kids were draped all over the bus seats and sleepy-limp. We unloaded all of that infernal camping gear one last time and the team dispersed so blessedly efficiently that our family got home at 10:11pm. Bed, sweet soft bed. Pillow, sweet soft pillow.

We loved our Ultimook adventure! We also loved having Labor Day to recover from it!

Setting up camp.

The Field of Tents. These are all of our boys' tents.

Bundled up for the night.

Amber, playing soccer with the big boys. She was IN that game. She even did a very professional looking throw-in at one point. When did she learn how to do that??

Mud pit on the right, finish line on the left, fire pit in the middle. By the last three races, Jeff and I were so tired that we just hung out right there, going back and forth between the mud pit, a section of the course just past the mud pit, and the finish line.

The stars were so bright, even my cell phone camera managed to catch a few of them!

Sunset with a sliver of moon. Those are the three girls' tents on the right, with the White family tents in the middle, and allll of the boys' tents on the left.

Sunrise.

Team tent/home base for meet day!

I enjoyed the hydrangea pathway during my race warmup.

Amber, making sure our runners made it to the team tent. Oregon required masks outdoors whenever people were not running or able to be 6 feet apart, which made for a long day.