The Unexpected Picnic That Turned Into a Perfect Unplanned Day

A Text That Started Everything

It all began with a text from my friend Julia:

"Bring whatever. I’ll bring snacks."

No context. No location. No time. Just vibes. I should have known that was code for we were having a spontaneous picnic. It was that sort of early spring day when the sun seems to be auditioning for summer, and folks who are definitely still shivering in the shade pretend not to.

I snatched a blanket that had resided in the trunk of my car since last fall. It was crusted with sand, and maybe some old tortilla chip crumbs, but it would have to do. I tossed an apple, a book I wasn’t really reading which was about being more present in the circumstances of your life and half a bottle of lemon water into my bag and left.

The Picnic Comes Together

Julia arrived with a tote that seemed to be pillaged from a farmer’s market, but no it was just goods from her kitchen and an 11th-hour heist at the “lovely zero waste store” she stops by on the way home from work. She has cheese, some bread she stole from the kitchen, grapes, and this fucked up jar of olives – that we discovered had pits in them. I practically broke a tooth, but kept eating them because they were so salty and perfect.

Anyway, we unfurled at a random hill in the park, far enough from the playground that no screaming kids were in sight but near enough to the path that dogs kept running up to us. One ransacked a piece of baguette and acted smug. His owner waved and apologized, kind of.

Honest Conversations Under the Sun

We talked about all and nothing, which is really the whole point of these sorts of days. There’s no agenda. You just sit down and let it all spill out. Work, exes, future plans; stuff you thought you’d be doing by now but aren’t. Julia said she was considering quitting her job and relocating to a smaller city. I told her I’d been checking flights but hadn’t made any reservations. We both confessed that we were exhausted all the time but didn’t know why.

The sun moved. Our shadows stretched, like dozing cats. At one point I reclined and watched a crow attempt to ride a slim branch. And it didn’t, flapped away and came back like five minutes later. I admired the persistence.

Small Moments That Stuck

Somewhere between the grapes and the melting chocolate we weren’t supposed to bring (but brought) out comes Julia with this little unlabeled box. It was a new zero waste shampoo bar she’d been trying, but that it had smelled like lemongrass or whatever and something else unidentifiable. She had me sniff it right then and there in the grass like we were conducting some sort of spontaneous product review for an audience of nobody but ourselves. It smelled fresh, almost sharp but not unpleasantly so. I said that it reminded me of summer mornings and she was like, “Yeah!

Not even discussing hair. That’s the funny thing. It wasn’t about beauty or routine. It was just this random thing that had a vibe, and the vibe fit the day. “I liked it,” Julia said, “because it didn’t make my scalp weird and because it didn’t shed to nothing after two showers.” I said maybe I’d try it. I probably won’t. But maybe.

At some point a bee became very curious about the olive jar and we had to abandon it. And the rest of the afternoon was a bit of a blur. There was someone nearby playing music on a little speaker, mostly old soul tracks, with one outlier of an ABBA song. It was the best movie soundtrack yet no one was actually watching but us.

The Feeling That Lingered

We were shut down when the shadow went cold anew. Once the bread was gone, Julia packed the remainder into her tote and I rolled up the blanket with only a minimal level of complaining. One corner had a large, apparently random stain that none of us could place. Probably juice. Hopefully juice.

On the walk back to the car, we passed a couple arguing in low voices and a little kid trying to spear a squirrel with a stick. I did some stupid joke like “same energy” and Julia burst out laughing so loudly the kid turned around and gave us a skeptical look.

Back home, I dumped it all on the floor and ignored it for two days. The apple was bruised. The book is still unread. But the mood lingered. That floaty, no-deadline, dirt-under-you-nails kind of joy that really only comes when you don’t try too hard.

Sometimes I wonder at how easy it could have been to bypass the whole thing. Cancelled because there was “just too much to do” or we were both a little tired. But we didn’t. We just came with what we had. And that was enough.

We’ll likely plan even less next time. Just shoot off the same type of disorganized text.

“Snacks. Blanket. Let’s go.”

It works.