In times of desperation, there are few limits to human behavior. Consider the Donner party. I'm sure few, if any, of them thought they were going to be eating each other before the trip was over. And yet, when the snows began to fall - or, hopefully, a good while after the snow began to fall - there they were, munching on their buddies' bodies.

Similarly, I was not planning on spraying bug spray into my ear. I had never even considered this as something one might do. But, just 10 minutes after landing at the Pine Tree campsite in Assateague National Seashore - which, excepting the mosquitoes, is lovely - I found myself intentionally aiming bug spray directly into my ear. There was no other way to stop mosquitoes from flying in there, and god damn it, it worked.

The bugs there were truly unreal. Until I doused my entire body and clothing in both DEET and picaridin, I was killing 4 or 5 with each swat of my hand. Knowing that my spray was buried, I cleverly put on my raincoat, which was effective for about 30 seconds, until they began to swarm under the bottom.

The sprays were fairly effective, as long as I stood in a stiff breeze (it was, thank god, very windy) and applied it every few minutes. At one point, however, while exploring a creepy old abandoned house in the middle of the swamp (I feel lucky to have not been murdered by the grotesquely misshapen, chainsaw-wielding religious extremists who no doubt lived there), I found myself walking in the same direction as the wind. Immediately, the cloud of mosquitoes caught up with me. The spray was not enough, and I panicked. I started to run, and while breathing heavily, I accidentally ate a mosquito.

This was new for me, but not for my family. My father, in pursuit of his long-standing goal to horrify all children he interacts with, has been known to eat carefully prepared mosquitoes. Because of this, a rumor spread around my elementary school that he ate bees for a living. I have a hard time understanding how this was plausible, but one of my classmate's mothers actually asked my mother whether this was true. I've wondered about this a lot through the years. How did an adult think that this might be true? Perhaps she confused bees, which are not edible, and honey - though eating honey is also not a career, unless you happen to be Winnie the Pooh I suppose. In any case, I did not enjoy eating the mosquito, especially because it was still alive. Next time I will kill the bug first.

Anyway, the trip was great. I saw wild horses, walked on an empty beach, and paddled through pristine wilderness. Check out the pictures below: