Sorry for the delay, I was in the woods. Granted it was only for a few days, but it seemed like a long time. I want to like camping, I really do. I just can’t think of a time that I really want to willingly not sleep, get all grimy and rashy, eat bugs that have fallen in my food and crap in a small shed filled with spiders.
I do it for the kids. From what I hear it is essential to their development as a normal person. Something about freedom, and dirt. If it were up to me we’d rent some giant camper that has a sink and a toilet. But my husband and I have decided that we must try to be grown-ups about this, that a few bug bites never hurt anybody and that fishing meat sticks out of a cooler that is filled with luke-warm water is okay. Not great, but okay.
I had high hopes for this year, which started to fail when we drove through driving rain to find our campsite. We’d driven through the worst of it, but I was mentally noting the motels along the way, trying hard not to “call it” even before we got there. Instantly upon arrival, my daughter announced that her tummy hurt. We got to say hello to our friends, the ones who have all the gear that we mooch off of, and then we headed off to find the nearest port-o-potty. I would become friends with this four by four bit of land, as I would spend many a twenty-minute stint there, holding my nose. She was a trooper and didn’t cry, not even once. (I would have cried. ) At one point I stared at the wall, trying to ignore the odious funk. My only thought was from a Discovery show long ago: a vision of giant mounds of dirt that African ants build, like giant towering beehives. I imagined that only a few feet below us was one such mound, created mostly by my daughter, and possibly a few other campers. The thought was erased as I saw a spider so huge I could see it was looking at me, sizing me up. It had eyeballs, massive, light catching eyeballs. I pointed out a moth for my daughter to look at, hoping she wouldn’t see the hairy thing in the corner.
The site was gorgeous and lush, plenty of overturned trees and mossy trails for the kids to feel like they were unsupervised and therefore teetering on the edge of danger. (No danger befell us, which is important to me, as I have a very real fear that the kids will poke their eyes out with sticks, any minute now.) We did find out on the first night that the site was situated under a military fly zone, and they practice at night. WWHHHHHHHHOOOOOOMMMMPPPPHHHHHHHH. It sounded as if aliens were crashing into our campsite, or sucking us into their mothership, roughly every three hours. But we weren’t getting three hours of sleep in between, thanks to the barking dog, the great horned owl (I found out that owls are stupid, by the way, not wise, and next time I meet one I will not feel such reverence for it) and the woman who drunk about sixteen more beers than she should have and let her teenage sons have it.
“HA!” She’d yell, as they rebuffed her cackling outbursts. “HA, HA Ha, whelllll you little shits are NEVER coming camping with me….mumble mumble HA!”
It was all I could do not to yell “SHUT Up You Inconsiderate, Drunk A-hole!” which I think someone else finally did do, only without the A-hole part.
Besides not sleeping, which mostly makes me grumpy but has other side effects, like, a simple task taking two hours longer than it should, it’s the dirtiness of it all that makes me twitchy. Dirty feet, dirty clothes, dirty plates. Add a little rain and you have mud. My car is covered inside and out in mud. I can deal with mud, but almost every member of my family has some sort of skin “issue” so I get upset about dirt working its way into the spots only cortizone is supposed to go.
I realize I may be bitching, so I’ll stop. There were very lovely moments of the trip, like spotting a jellyfish in the water, walking out in the sea in the sand flats, having a meal with friends who are like family. Surely I can do those things without having to sleep in a tent?
On our way back from the trip we stayed with an old friend (in his house, with a working toilet) and he reminded us that once, very long ago, we traded him all our camping gear for a case of Kokanee. The story preceding that decision is worse, and ended with me floating in my sleeping bag, our tent flooded. I’m working my way back from that to “tolerant camper.” But Happy camper? Maybe, next time. I’ll rent a big, obnoxious vehicle, bring some earplugs, and drink sixteen beers myself.