Uh, camping we did go
July 4, 2010Thanks to the unhappy marriage of a course of antibiotics and a week in the Utah sun, I am now reluctant host to a full-body rash, most of which* is invisible but has left my skin sandpapery and feeling like I am being pricked all over by needles and occasionally assaulted by millions of invisible mosquitoes. I’m in a great mood!
(* the part which is not invisible is on the backs of my knees and looks like my skin has actually been removed by sandpaper, which is grotesque, and renders any kind of skirt/shorts-wearing exquisitely painful, and did you know that bandages will not stay on the backs of your knees? I have tried to keep them there, but all the bending and flexing that I apparently do all day long makes them drop right off; I’ve tried to remain still but they won’t stick on for more than a few minutes, so anyone who ever walks behind me gets an eyeful of my awful knee-back situation.)
We were in Utah for a few days to visit my brother-in-law and family, who, inexplicably, live in Utah, even though they swear they’re not Mormon. The kooks. It’s unnerving that they have chosen to live in the middle of the country —I always believed that only zombies would live somewhere that didn’t abut an ocean—but they seem to like it. And my niece and nephew never tried to eat my brains. Maybe they were being polite.
And we went camping! I have never been camping before**, and my brother-in-law Gregg and his wife Carolyn invited us to camp with them, because camping is among their favorite activities, right up there with nude-wrestling bears (probably) and mouth-fishing (after they’re done with the bears).
(**I said this to my mom and she murmured, “Not that you remember.” I’m going to assume she meant I was too little to recall the last time I camped. I think that’s for the best, if I go ahead and assume that. We can’t afford any more therapy for me.)
I was really excited to camp, as I have always wanted to. Camp. For years I've been telling Scott that we should go camping, but he insisted that I would hate it. “You would hate it,” he said. He wouldn’t even bother telling me why. When I asked him to list the possible reasons I would hate camping, he just stared at me, like it was so obvious, it was all over my damned face. Was he focused on the fake eyelashes I need to apply each morning? The exquisitely hot-rollered hairdo? The floor-length satin house-robe I was wearing, as I do each day in the early hours—from 1 pm, when I arise, until sundown—at which point I change into my evening silk pajamas?
“Now, dear,” I said, “I love nature, and nature loves me, and I know deep in my heart that I will enjoy this ‘camping’ I’ve heard tell of.” And then I flounced about comically and powder-puffed my décolletage.
We were supposed to go camping for two nights, which didn't seem like nearly enough time, to me. Why not longer? But then after the first night I had to tell Gregg and Carolyn, with great regret, that if we stayed there for one more night I was going to cram my pockets with stones and throw myself in the river. (We were right next to a river.) (Maybe it was a stream. I think technically it was a stream.)
They took it well.
I actually did enjoy camping, during the daylight. I did! We were in this beautiful campground, and there was even a bathroom, and I am a fan of bathrooms. We relaxed and wandered and ate dinner, and I like all of those things. Henry was having fun checking out nature, and I felt like we were good parents for once, giving him this well-rounded experience. The country! UTAH!
Then it came time to sleep, and so we all bundled up, as it was getting cold, and Scott and Henry and I smushed our bodies into our sleeping bags, and zipped up our tent. So we could go to sleep.
It then occurred to me, as I tried to sleep, why camping is a bad idea. First of all it is uncomfortable. You are sleeping on the ground. Why would you do that? Secondly, if you can’t sleep, what do you do all night? All you can do is lie there. You lie there, and you think. Mostly you think about how the only thing keeping you from being murdered is someone else’s decision not to murder you. At any point during the night someone could drive through the campground—a murderer, say—and that person could think, “Say, what if I murdered these people, all defenseless in their thin, easily knifed-through tent?” And they could then murder you, and there would be very little you could do to stop them. So really all you can do is hope the murderer then thinks, “Nah,” and drives on. Or, “Maybe another day,” or, “Wouldn’t want to ruin that nice tent,” or “I’ve already done enough murdering this week.” (Do murderers ever decide they’ve done enough murdering? I’m not so sure. I’ve never asked a murderer, nor do I ever intend to. And imagining that some traveling murderer has already reached his murder-quota is not enough to help me drift into unconsciousness.)
So then you realized that you’ve thought the word “murder” enough that you will never sleep, and you’re stuck in this tent and there’s nothing to do because 1) it’s dark and 2) it’s cold, and that’s when your child sleep-stumbles around the tent and lies back down the entirely wrong way, which is across all three pillows. And you fight with him about how he has to get back in his sleeping bag, only you can’t fight with a sleeping child, who is crying that you don’t understand and the armor doesn’t work the other way when the raccoons broke the barber shop, lettuce zephyr quantum noodles, and finally you heave him back into his sleeping bag and he sobs once and then is instantly snoring peacefully but now you’re really awake, as is your husband, who every time you stir at all says, “You still up?!” like maybe you two can have a party, but you can’t have a party; all you can do is try and sleep, so you don’t want to talk or look at his wide-awake eyes looking back at you, so you squeeze your eyes shut, at which point you realize you have to use the bathroom.
Which means you have to 1) find the flashlight, 2) put shoes on, 3) not get murdered. And then you think that if you were home, or in a hotel like a sane person, you would not have to do any of these things, and that is why one night of camping is more than enough.
But if we could find a murder-proof tent, and I'm sure you can buy one of those, I think I would enjoy camping very much. So there, SCOTT.
Reader Comments (83)
Otherwise, an airbed is a must.
Alternatively, rent a CABIN. Or a Yurt. Or a TeePee. Or a houseboat if you want to add in the danger factor of camping on water. There are plenty of non-tent alternatives. Tents are for kids in the backyard. Not 40+ parents.
And you need a dog. Must camp with a well trained, large dog with a very loud bark. Does wonders for the peace of mind.
That about sums up my feelings on camping.
It was an ELK. A big elk that slowly walked up to our tent and then SNORTED loudly, and then left.
Anyway, I am sending this to him because he thinks I am the only person who thinks about murderers when camping. And now I can say HA! I am not. So there. Thank you so much!
I wasn't thinking about the murderers! I thought the spiders were a good enough reason to avoid the outdoors, but now it turns out that the spiders probably saved my life. From being murdered in my unsafe Tent of Death.
I suppose I owe them some kind of debt of gratitude, but I'm still squishing the next one that has the misfortune of sauntering into my home. I don't see the hairy little fuckers protecting me from the murderers, do you? I didn't think so.
Damn spiders want me dead...
But I'll admit that those 31 floors below you give you an advantage, as long as the murderer doesn't live on the 31st or 33rd floor.
I will grant you that the 31 floors below you make you less accessible to murderers--other than the ones living on the 31st or 33rd floors. For those, you'd have to hope that the guy on 33 prefers killing upstairs neighbors, and the guy on 31 likes going downstairs to kill.
I'm not a fan of camping.
I'm not a fan of camping.
Just last weekend my husband and I took a three day drive into the "country." It was 10:30 at night and my husband turns to me and says, "wanna go see the stars?" Umm... not really. But since he was so excited and I wanted to be supportive, I threw on my shoes, packed up our five month old, and headed to the car. Two miles later we pulled off a country road where we sat in absolute darkness. Nothing was around except tall grass and crickets so my husband opened the sunroof and gazed into the heavens. I, in turn, locked my doors and kept an eye out for the crazies who would of course be in the tall grass beside our car just waiting for their chance.
Nope, camping is not for me and apparently, neither is the country. :)
Give it another try - maybe you would enjoy renting a cabin or yurt rather than a tent? Technically not camping, but might be easier for you to sleep and fend off murderers.