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Don't Worry - Go Camping!
ON THE VERGE
MARY LYNN ROY |
The best thing about Pringles is not the flavor or the texture, both of which bear little resemblance to a potato. The best thing about Pringles is that they're perfect to take camping. Along with some firewood, a coffee pot and plenty of coffee, good walking shoes, and your dogs. Your accommodations are secondary to those few essentials.
On a camping scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being extreme roughing it and 10 being a 40-foot luxury motorhome with a microwave and satellite dish and brass bathroom fixtures, Ken and I rate just about a 5.
We've bounded around on the scale for the past 11 years from, I would say, a 3 to a 6.5. Forgive the potato analogies, but they seem to work. A 3 is frozen French fries: a small dome tent that didn't allow room for Ken's feet; 6 is a plain baked potato - a pop-up with no extras. For a short time, we feasted on loaded baked potatoes at the 6.5 point on the scale, in a pop-up that was top-heavy with an air conditioner.
Now we're found our place, for the time being at least, with good old home fries or mashed potatoes, take your pick, We finally figured out that pop-ups are just more trouble than tehy're worth. If you can't move into the entrees and have a steak or at least a hamburger in the form of a small, used motorhome, then stick with a tent.
Once the pop-up was out of thep icture, I scoured the Internet and local stores for the perfect tent. It has to be big enough for us and two dogs, but not too bigt or we'd never be able to find a campsite with enough level ground to pitch it. It had to be tall enough for Ken, at 6 feet 2 inches, to stand up in the center. It had to have an awning. And it had to be a cabin tent. It's purely a matter of taste, but a cabin tent with its pitched roofline and an awning stretched out over the door just looks more welcoming to me than a dome tent. Round tents remind me of those geodesic dome structures that popped up over the landscape back in the 60's. Somewhere between science fiction and bad business, since most of them are now abandoned or can't seem to keep a tenant for more than a year.
We're now perched comfortably right in the middle of the camping scale with our brand new, on-sale-at-Sears, portable Holiday Inn. Two rooms, a rain fly, an awning, big windows, seven feet tall in the center - and it's a cabin tent with that pretty pitched roofline. Best of all, we can set it up in less than 10 minutes and all it requires is a little coordination and teamwork; no brute strength, no sweat. And no leveling. It just hugs the ground and if one end's lower, then you sleep with your heads at the high end.
All of our camping accomodations have really done, though, with their various pluses and minuses, is give us shelter for the night so we could do the things we came camping for. Fall asleep to the sounds of crickets and cicadas, not traffic and air conditioners and refrigerators cranking up and shutting down. So we could get up and make coffee to perk over a trusty old propane stove, while the campfire crackles and warms us and scents the air. So we can add the aroma of frying bacon and eggs, and when it comes time to wash the pan, two plates, two forks, two knives - which are all we have because that's all we need, and any more would just get in the way - we can take the pot and walk up the hill to the washhouse for water if we've run out.
There are plenty of things in my house that I would lament the loss of, some more than others: dishwasher, microwave, TV, computer, washer and dryer, to name a few. But the funny thing is that the absence of those very things is part of what makes me love camping so much. A tent doesn't have those luxuries, but once it's up, there's nothing to go wrong. There's nothing frustrating in a simple campsite.
There's nothing to break down, nothing to make noise other than the birds and the breeze. Nothing to distract your attention from each other. Nothing to do except be. Eat, sleep, wash, walk, talk. build a fire and watch it burn, losing yourself in the soaring flames and the glowing caverns between the logs. I've never mastered the art of transcendental meditation, and seem to be able to master the art of complete relaxation in only two places: in the woods or on the beach. I can drink coffee all day long when I'm camping and at 2 p.m. stand up, yawn and stretch and crawl into the tent to take a nap. A cozy campsite holds powers of restfulness that overwhelm any amount of caffeine.
Unless you go backpacking into the wilderness, chances are that you'll have neighbors. But that's okay. People change when they're camping. They're friendly without being pushy. Helpful without being intrusive. They smile and ask if they're in time for breakfast as they walk by your campsite. They're not asking for a meal. They're only saying, "isn't this wonderful?" They're every bit as glad to be there as we are. They don't want to give up their dishwashers or computers, either, but just like us, as soon as they get back to them they'll miss their simple little campsite and its abundance of fresh air and its lack of frustrations. Just like us, they'll go back to the house, wash their camping clothes, repack their supplies, and check the calendar for their next chance to run away from home.
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