July 24, 2011
Camping
Camping is so not my thing, truly. First you have to haul everything with you. Tent and gear and bedding and food, tools for the odd inconvenience or need. If we were driving two hours and checking into a room, we would need our bags, period. But no, this is a year we have to be frugal, and we missed Ferry Beach last year for all kinds of good reasons, so we are going to camp.
For my wife, this is a little slice of heaven. She gets to be Dan Boone for a week. We get to be frugal, which she loves, and she gets to be outdoors for every moment of each day we are here. For each hour we are settled and camping and the good weather holds, she will be more refreshed, energized, and happy.
But now it is 9:00 and dark and 85 degrees and 100 percent humidity, and the tent is up, but nothing is inside it and we have no lamp or lantern. I am getting eaten alive. The chief of mosquitoes sent an All Points Bulletin out that a sweaty Sicilian is in camp site 3C, and they have arrived en masse. Each time I stupidly forget to breathe through my nose I swallow another bug, and I think only my moustache is preventing them from flying up my nose. I bend over to drive the final stake in the ground, get up too fast and nearly pass out. I have a moment of clarity and grab the water bottle I had bought en route, open it, and drink the entire 20 ounces without pausing.
My wife, ever the more practical one, is reading the directions to every new thing we bought to save money. The mattress. The mattress pump. A younger me would have had 100 screaming tantrums by now, but since cresting 50, I have finally learned to shut my mouth. She knows I am not happy, but she also appreciates my patience. I offer to make the remaining 37 trips to the van to unload everything, and we finally have the rhythm I want. I have always been a good pack animal. It makes sense to me. It requires no thought. And I am left just a moving, slogging, sweating beast. After perhaps a half hour of this, we are set up. The mattress is filled, the bedding is in place, I know I will have a place to sleep. And, lord, do I sleep. I lie on the mattress in just my boxers, a breeze makes its way through the tent, my body returns to a normal temperature and my heart stops racing, and I drift into a long, deep, uninterrupted sleep.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:51 PM