Ian's+Journal+Entry+For+2012

I was first told of my coming internment by my little sister. She ran into my room, shook me awake and yelled, “Why do we have to go?” I was barely awake and didn’t comprehend anything at this point. I got up, ushered her out of my room and woke up by splashing my face with cold water from the bathroom. I came out of the bathroom to find everybody sitting at the kitchen table, Adam, Abby, and Mom and Dad. I asked “What’s up guys?” I had no idea what was going on. “We’re leaving.” My dad said. “The government is sending all of Sedro-Woolley’s population into prison camps.” Of course, I was shocked. I asked him the most obvious, simple question that came to mind”Why?” “Last night there was a revolt down in town. Somebody attacked the sheriff’s office and some other people, roughly 1,000 more, attacked the convoy that the politicians were in.” “They are sending us into internment camps because of what the people in town did, we leave in two days.” “We’ll be going to Montana. I don’t know how long well be staying.” “We can pack 2 suitcases full of things we own, no electronics.” The part about no electronics was hard to accept, but I knew I would adapt well. “I don’t believe you, is this a joke?” “No” was all the answer I got.

We each packed a small part of our personal belongings in one suitcase, and necessities in the other one. I took three books. They were titled Gaunt’s Ghost’s which was 1000 pages long, and contained 3 books, I also took Jules Verne’s Journey To The Center of The Earth, and the book Brisingr. I had already read it and Gaunt’s Ghost but I loved them, and knew I would read it again and again and still enjoy it. The second thing I took was my multi-tool Leatherman knife. It would let me whittle, or dig, or skin fish, and would be a valuable tool. The other things I took included, my sharpie pens and a set of watercolor, brushes and paints. While I knew that I could not take electronics, I did know that while we were gone people would ransack our house and take everything. I had some sentimentally valued movie clips and text documents. I took the hard drive out of my computer and hid it at the base of the large evergreen outside our house. I put it inside of a stainless steel container wrapped in a plastic bags and sealed with rubber bands. I hoped it would still be there when I got out of internment.

My older brother, 17 years of age, was beside himself about the unfairness and cruelty of it all. He kept asking dad “Why do we have to go with them, we could just run away!” And my dad would always answer, “You know why we can’t, they have a secure perimeter surrounding the entire area. We wouldn’t last a day.”

We had a Grandma, 82 years old, who also lived in Sedro-Woolley, but the old were to be excluded from the move. They could not cause harm to anybody and were left alone. Later, we heard rumors about the old people from Sedro collecting together and living in the unused houses in the suburban area. This way they could protect each other from robbers and the like, while giving each other company. I was glad about this part of the internment, my Grandma had been lonely, and she would be happy with other people to accompany her.

We left April 26th, two days after my sister’s birthday, the day we had found out where we would be going. The giant gray buses only bothered to come to the beginning of the road we lived on, and everybody in the neighborhood was sweepedfor electronics or guns then and there before being carted onto the bus. We made it a point to be together on the same bus, because we needed, wanted to stay together. Because we had been home schooled all our lives, we needed each other all the more. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The bus ride was to be one large journey, taking place over 2 days of continuous driving. They had multiple drivers per bus so as to do this with relative ease. I remember they worked in shifts on our bus, which held roughly 40 people, first Nikolai, an immigrant from Russia, then Thomas, who had been living in the States all his life. I remember them both being really nice to everyone that was nice to them, and were often in conversation with one or another person on the bus. That was one of the most pleasant memories I had of my internment. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When we arrived at the camp, in the middle of the night, I awoke to the sound of a loudspeaker telling us to “Exit the bus! Head towards the organization officers to receive orders of which bunker you will be placed in!” It is strangely disorienting to be woken up in the middle of the night, in a place you don't recognize, with many people you don't know, being told to do something by a loud voice. Stepping out of the bus added another layer to this confusion by introducing giant, bright spotlights being shined down on us and jostling bodies pressed up against ours. There was a scream, and some gunfire as one of the men tried to sprint away from this nightmarish place. The moon was full that night, and shone down on the alien landscape that stood before us. There was nothing but low, brown grass in all directions, with few visible mountains in the distance and a single plateau standing roughly 10 or 12 miles away. But I did not see any of this except the grass until the morning, when we finally made it to the “Organization Officers” gate. They asked us our names, date of birth, place of birth, and took our fingerprints. I remember the officer at the gate we went through. He was of Oriental descent, but spoke with an obviously Southern American accent. They were not nice to anybody there, although we tried to be to them. My family, which had managed to stay together by holding onto each others hands, entered the Camp Verger on April 28th, 2013, at 6:00 o'clock in the morning. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The sun rose as we walked towards our assigned bunker, number 28. With the opening of light on the land, we were able to see much more of the territory we were in. As I have described before, we saw nothing but plains, flatter than Alaska, and with a single plateau about 10 miles away. There was nothing surprising about the camp, the walls were made of concrete, probably with rebar reinforcements. The bunkers were...Interesting. They were built using ecology blocks, the thick cement blocks used as barriers for trails or closed roads. The ecology blocks where stacked on top of one another three tall, held together with large steel cables ¾ of an inch thick. The bunkers where meant to hold 10 people each, and were roughly the size of 3 semi trucks side by side. In case I haven't mentioned it, the population of Sedro Woolley is 10,540, according to the old 2010 census. But the population that was sent to the camps, was only about 5,000. I guess the older people of Sedro Woolley made up about 2 to 3,000 of the population, but what happened to the other 2,000 people? I don't think that many people tried to run away and were killed, maybe they were thrown in jail instead of coming here. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Our bunker held the five of my family, and another family plus some single people. The second family in my bunker were named the Jahns, they were really nice people and had 2 chilluns, as they called them. I think they were an Australian family, because they spoke with a very strange accent. The other six people in our bunker were mostly separated family members with one exception. Erick Jonathan Goldmann was an orphan. He was six foot two, 15 years old, and held inside of him an endless source of amusement for the people around him. If you sat next to him for more than ten seconds, you would find yourself enthralled by his awesome tales of fake adventures and false dreams. That kid had a gift, and his gift was telling tales, no matter how tall they were, you had to love them, you couldn't do anything but that. The characters were believable, the story was interesting, and the strange events ALWAYS were... <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We've been here a week, and I've already cried three times. The first time was when I started thinking about my friends and my life outside of Camp Verger. The second was when I dropped my book, Brisingr, in a muddy puddle, and I was just overcome by the stress of all of this...This horrible place, in the middle of nowhere, far away from all my friends. The third time I cried in Camp Verger was when Erick tried to escape. He had been planning it since a day after we got here. You just couldn't keep someone as active and imaginative as Erick in one place for long, he was always pacing, or racing other kids(including myself), or just twiddling his thumbs. Well, back to the point, Erick NEEDED to get out. He would say to me “Ian, I'm gonna get out of this place, soon.” I would always respond “You know as well as I that there is no way out of this place, unless your a corpse.” On our sixth day in Verger, we repeated this conversation, only, after I gave him the usual retort, he told me that there was a way out alive AND as a corpse. As you can imagine, I was skeptical in the extreme. “And how the heck are you going to stay alive, AND get out of this place as a corpse?” I asked him. Then, he told me his “genius” plan. He would try to make a run for it, but act as if his ankle was sprained, and only limp along. When the guards in the towers shot at him, he would feign being hit and fall to the ground, supposedly dead. When they shipped him out to the nearest hospital, nearly 100 miles away, to be cremated he would find a way to escape, home free. “<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Oh yeah,” I said to him”how are you going to dodge a bullet in order to pretend getting hit?” Well, APPARENTLY that was the ONLY risky bit bit about this voyage he was going to attempt. So, I continued pointing out the flaws in his plan; what if they check his pulse, what if they cremate him here, what if he can't escape and is cremated alive? <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">On May 4th, 2013, at 12:07 P.M Erick Jonathan Goldmann was shot to death while trying to escape by Jack Heron, MP in Camp Verger, Montana, United States Of America. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The food in Camp Verger is very...Water-like. For instance, when we were served chicken pot pie in the cafeteria, I was thrilled to have something besides oatmeal and bread. But, as soon as I was served it, I realized that this was not what I had been expecting. They give it to you in a cup, with a strainer, that was how much of it was water. Even after filtering out the chicken and veggies, it still tasted like essence of cardboard. Blech. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I have finished reading //__Gaunt's Ghosts__// and //__Brisingr__//, and with the events of those books fresh in mind, I have set out to find something new and exciting to do. I settled on whittling. As I mentioned before, I took my Leatherman multi-tool with me to Verger. Boards left over from the building of this place are EVERYWHERE and make for OK carving materials. I used to do this sometimes when it was a sunny day back in Washington, I was, okay at it, but not good. “<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Time is creeps slowly along here at the sunny, warm Camp Verger, situated in the middle of the middle of a state near the middle of the states. For nearly 100 miles in every direction, there is not one human soul to disturb your tranquil stay at this picturesque, isolated, resort.” We found that buried in the sand a day ago, can you imagine? A brochure for hell. Well, I guess it isn't that bad here. We have food, water, some shelter, even the clothes aren't horrible. One upside to this place, is that it isn't as cold as Washington. Here, the summer is at least 80 degrees every night, with lows of 65. I still miss some of the things we had to leave at home, like our two pet cats; Cookie and Maybell. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As for the rest of the family, they are doing the best they can with what they have. I once read this book, I can't remember much about it, except this one proverb that was used commonly in it. “Shikata ga nai”, which means “It can't be helped, it must be done.” I think it is fitting for the situation that an entire town has found itself in.