Friday, August 02, 2002

Thinking About Roughing It

My family and I are about to try camping again, after an extended hiatus while our children were small and it just seemed like too much trouble to shlep all that kiddie paraphernalia out to a camp site. With those years behind us, we have refitted ourselves with a new Coleman stove and a slightly posher tent, with handy little pockets for stowing our eyeglasses. But as our camping trip nears, I find myself increasingly ambivalent about all those wholesome hours we’ll spend communing with nature. It all just sounds so...uncomfortable. Despite my best intentions to be an outdoorsy adventurer, I’m afraid I’ve become, prematurely, a homebody. The granola part of my brain is genuinely excited by the prospect of roughing it, but the fuzzy slipper part of my brain is already kvetching about how much trouble it will be to pack and set up camp, not to mention cooking in dented tin pans on gas flames, spitting toothpaste into the bushes and making adventurous trips to the outhouse.

Now, excellent camping genes run in my family, so I am embarrassed by this damaged rung in the ladder of my wilderness DNA. I do have fond memories of childhood camping trips in the Colorado Rockies – of snuggling down into my mummy bag while gazing upward to watch the soft shadow of June snow collecting on our tent roof, of relishing the al fresco breakfasts of steaming canned hash and tooth-achingly cold Tang, of the honeyed slowness of days spent fishing and messing about with the sticks at our camp site. Our Kodak snapshots from that era could be any family’s late 1960s camping adventures – grubby, smiling figures gathered around a fire, Melmac dishes teetering on laps, a tent sagging in the background. I feel compelled to pass along this legacy to my daughters, and yet am already, guiltily, in mourning for the nights I’ll spend away from my comfortable mattress and night table stocked with books and a good electric reading light.

In his song “Who Wouldda Thunk It?” my favorite Midwestern lyricist, Greg Brown, nails this fading desire to rough it with the following self-deprecating lines:[music: “We used to say we could walk all night and we could and we did....Now we say we could walk all night, but it’s not true. We can’t walk all night, because we don’t want to. We want a bed and a blanket, [and] some light breakfast some time tomorrow....Who woulda thunk it?"] Yes, who woulda thunk that bed and breakfast would become so important?

In fact, we did try the intense creature comforts of the literal Bed and Breakfast scene during our honeymoon dawdle through small Midwestern towns, but I was quickly cured of this anti-camping experience. B and B’s left me feeling smothered by calico pillows, heavily sugared food, and hosts who were both obsequious and obnoxious. After the third experience of uneasily sliding into the family-style breakfast table with the other guests and having the host introduce us as “The Newlyweds!” with endless winking and nudging and saying-no-more, I had had it. Old houses with creaky beds, paper-thin walls, and rooms creepily jammed with antique dolls and chamber pots did not inspire romance. We were astonished to discover through the guest book at one B and B that a married man we knew from one state over had been conducting a clandestine affair for years in that same frilly purple room. I was self-conscious enough simply turning the pages of my paperback in bed at night, fearing my slightest little rustle or cough would unsettle our too-attentive host like a clucking hen in a flurry of fuss, wondering if we needed perhaps another afghan or lozenge to make our stay more comfortable. After all that, I was ready to hike into the woods with my beloved and live off berries and sleep on rocks, roughing it until all that country kitsch was cleansed from my system and I could return, with fresh appreciation, to my own home comforts.

I suppose mine is the old Goldilocks problem of being dissatisfied with beds that are too soft and beds that are too hard, but my better self knows that roughing it a bit is a more restorative break from the norm. And now that I am a freshly minted Girl Scout leader, I have the additional responsibility of talking up the outdoor life with the girls in our troop. At a recent Leader Training event, I listened to more experienced leaders enthuse about camping with their scouts, cheerfully describing how much fun everyone had – and how much they had learned! – while cooking out in days of solid rain or an unexpected spring blizzard. I had to work hard to impersonate someone who was game – even eager – for this kind of character-building adventure. But a few weeks later, while helping our eldest daughter prepare for her first independent experience of roughing it at Scout camp, I waxed nostalgic while helping her label her cunningly designed mess kit, her “sit-upon,” and my old faithful mummy bag. I guess even from my comfy bed, I can still hear the call of the wild.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on August 02, 2002
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