When I was a kid, I was like most kids. The idea of camping sounded exotic and full of adventure. The smell of the pines, the campfire smoke, the sleeping outside, it was guaranteed fun. I wanted to experience the cattle drive camping I’d read about, seen in movies and TV shows. I wanted to hear the cows mooing on the cattle drive. At the end of the hot, dusty trail, I wanted to get some grub from Cookie then sit by the fire and chow down on sloppy good stew and biscuits served on tin plates. I wanted to slurp coffee from a tin cup. Those movie cowboys carried their bedrolls tied up behind their saddles. But you never got a feel for how it might be sleeping on hard dirt night after night in a couple of smelly rolled up blankets.
The first big camping experience I remember was when I was 8 or 9. It was a backpack hike into the glacier smoothed granite outcroppings, wind-bent pines and scrub brush of Desolation Valley, in the Sierra Nevada mountains southwest of Lake Tahoe.
I was with my parents and Uncle Roger. We climbed a rocky trail most of the day and finally made it to a glacier lake and set up camp. There weren’t any other people around the small lake, which sat below two converging, tall ridges. Thin stands of pines were near the shore.
It was quiet up there where we camped, a peaceful experience of being in the middle of nature, away from people and the constant hum of civilization. Light breezes filled our senses with the bracing fragrance of pine trees. The earth was pungent with moss and lichen-clad granite near the ice cold and clear water’s edge. The trees offered carpets of dead brown pine needles.
The long hike and cool, thin air made us hungry. We ate well and only a couple hours after dark, crawled into our bags to enjoy dreamless, deep sleep. When dawn came, the site remained still and quiet. Icy cold air slowed our progress in getting out of our bags to build a fire and make breakfast.
A few years later when I was a young teen I worked on a summer resort on Lake Tahoe’s west shore that had a campground, beach and marina. It was only a few miles as the crow flies from Desolation Valley. This resort campground was like many others along the shores of Lake Tahoe: It had showers and bathrooms and garbage dumpsters.
I worked on the resort’s maintenance crew, and one of my jobs included keeping the campground showers and toilets in running order. My partner on jobs was Cory, a chipper old retired fireman with a big belly and red bulbous nose rivaling those of WC Fields or Karl Malden. Like WC Fields, Cory was a fan of alcohol. He liked to laugh, but was nowhere near the comedic barb-master Fields was. But like Fields, Cory tended to grumble about the things in life that pissed him off. Like his adult son.
“Thinks the world owes him a livin’,” he’d mutter. Cory did brighten at female resort goers walking around in bikinis. “Look at that bellybutton sandwich!” he’d chortle. “Ann (his wife) always says ‘Look, but don’t touch!’”
One time we entered the women’s campground restroom to fix a flooded toilet. It had a trout’s head in its tank, and maliciously bent flushing hardware. That was my first look at what women write on public bathroom walls in campgrounds. Or at least the female composed graffiti at that campground. To my surprise, the messages were much nastier than anything I’d read in any men’s public restroom. By a long shot.
While working at the resort, I never understood how people could be happy setting up their campsite next to a dumpster or the restrooms. When the campground was full, which was all the time, people just dealt with having their campsite in those less than ideal locations, maybe stringing up a tarp to give separation. Yes, there were pine trees dotting the campground, but to me, this wasn’t real camping. It was more like a tent city, with campsites set up side by side like a mobile home park.
I figured the whole idea of these organized campgrounds was to bring civilization to a well trampled version of the wilds. This approach seems to do the trick for the countless people who stay at campgrounds. And some are much better than others. They’re near or are in the middle of wilderness. Some of these are off of remote roads deep in the woods, and are too far off the beaten path to draw crowds.
But the high-traffic campgrounds work well for those who don’t want to give up too many amenities while being in a less threatening version of the wilds. They figure being near any live pine trees makes for a perfectly fine alpine experience. Even if the trees have been peed upon by a million dogs. Even if the bathrooms are hygiene free, the showers don’t have hot water, and the dumpsters bring furry flies and stench to the campground experience. That’s their version of roughing it, and they’re good with it.
Many of these campers pack not only camping gear, but many of the comforts of home. They haul and unload mountains of gear: tents, air mattresses, sleeping bags, elaborate cookstoves, mosquito nets, pots, pans, plates, silverware, tables, lawn chairs, beach chairs, lanterns, radios and even TVs.
I always wondered, if comfort is the big goal, why leave home at all? Just pitch a tent in the back yard if you yearn to sleep outside under the stars. Think of all the hassle saved by not having to load, unload and set up tons of gear. You might not be close to a beach or a lake if you camp in the back yard, but then it’s not likely you’ll smell a dumpster with rotting fish heads in it or the ripe aura of public toilets wafting into your dirt-caked nostrils.
Through my college years, camping became less and less of a good idea to me. Camping during those years with minimal gear, as in a single sleeping bag, I realized a few things. Such as, sleeping on the hard ground really sucks. And having to get out of a warm sleeping bag in the freezing air to go pee isn’t so great. You’re lying there in the pre-dawn frigid air, your face, or maybe just your nose, is the only part of you that’s sampling how very cold the air outside is. Otherwise you’re toasty warm. But there’s one problem. You’ve gotta pee really bad. You know getting up out of your warm bag, you’re gonna freeze your ass off as you make a beeline to wherever you’re going to pee. So you think about waiting til it warms up. But, no, you really gotta go. So you get up and bear the cold. It’s worth it for the relief, but still, you never forget how you shivered all the way.
And getting dirty from head to toe from moving around in the dirt and dust of most campsites, isn’t fun at all. Having a stiff neck and achy back from sleeping on an unforgiving, hard surface isn’t so great. Making freeze dried food with boiled water is overrated, no matter how great the pictures on the packaging make it look. So camping to me became a first hand experience of being a prairie pioneer of yore, sleeping under the stars after days on end of getting rudely jolted while riding in your Conestoga Wagon across an endless prairie. At the end of the day, you were filthy dirty, starving, with a sore ass and a wrenched back.
Back in those days, or now, camping is just an exercise in discomfort and inconvenience. It’s messy. Dirt becomes something you wear. Unless the camp is stocked with gourmet fare, the food is usually carb-heavy and produces enough smelly ass gas to fumigate a circus tent. Still, if booze is included in the camp supplies, which it usually is, even bad camp food is tolerable. I’ve learned that the intake of booze helps smooth over a lot of the annoying rough spots of camping. And I’d venture to guess that for some campers, getting shit-faced is the most feverishly anticipated part of camping. So that’s what they do. This is why at campgrounds, one often hears cackling laughter and occasional whoops of “Yeeeee-Haah!” into the late night hours.
A few years ago my old college roommate suggested we camp out and snorkel on the northern end of Santa Catalina Island. This sparsely populated island made famous in song many many years ago by the Four Preps is a mountainous north/south stretch of jagged cliffs, rocky deserts, and pockets of lush grasslands. It juts out of the Pacific Ocean 26 miles offshore of Southern California.
This trip meant camping at a campground I’d stayed at a couple of times several years earlier. It had a waterfront view, and a nearby general store and restrooms, so it wasn’t exactly roughing it. At that point, I had no desire to rough it in any way, so I said I’d go.
Several years earlier on a hiking trip across the island, I camped in its barren interior on an exposed high desert-like plateau. The site offered a westward view down a wide canyon on one side. An eastward gaze was rewarded with a big view down a steep grassy slope that dropped to a panorama of the deep blue Pacific below. While that had been more the pure camping experience in the wild, the night spent there on hard ground in the company of many sharp little rocks had been a little unnerving.
Catalina at the time had wild buffalo wandering around the island, grazing wherever they wanted. It was pre-dawn when I heard heavy hooves thumping the hard earth nearby. I sensed something very big, something that was breathing, was very close. I looked up and saw a buffalo sniffing around, its massive furry brown head lowered. Looking up at it from the ground, this animal seemed twice as big as it really was. Which was still pretty damn big. I was happy to see this buffalo wasn’t riled up, just mildly curious. If he was annoyed he could have easily stomped and butted the crap out of me. But to my relief, he lost interest and meandered off.
That was my second camping encounter with sniff-happy wildlife investigating campground scents. A year or so earlier I was in the wilds of Northern Arizona with two buddies on a camping and fishing trip.
I slept near our burned out campfire ring only to be awakened in the dim pre-dawn light by a clinking sound and the incredible, unmistakable stench of a skunk. The other two guys were sleeping in a tent a few yards away and were oblivious. I looked up to see Pepe Le Pew sniffing some empty cans about 25 feet away. He seriously reeked like he’d already sprayed his calling card somewhere close. He waddled directly toward me in my sleeping bag, sniffing the ground, tail up.
I’d heard that if a skunk sprays you, the only thing to do is bury whatever clothes get hit. So while this skunk is nosing his way toward me, my first thought is, just don’t scare him. My heart thumps harder as I wonder when he's finally going to look up to see me sitting up in my sleeping bag looking at him. He finally sees me, and quickly scampers off. Oh, what a relief that was.
On another trip, curious wild animals weren’t a problem. Some college buddies and I hiked to the bottom of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. There was a campground up a way from the river, but we broke the rules and set up our own site on flat rocks and sand right on the Colorado River. The sound of the flowing water, the bracing cool air, and the star-lit sky dome above the canyon walls on each side made for the best camping experience I’ve ever had. Other than my buddies, it was people-free. It was like the universe saying, “You want to camp? This is camping.”
Taking the shuttle boat out to Catalina, my buddy generously provided all the gear we’d need: Two one-man tents, a huge cooler stocked with steaks and beer and full bar, a gas cook stove, food, plates and cups, folding chairs. Once we got to Two Harbors we went to our site perched above an inlet’s calm waters.
But this is a high traffic campsite. It and every other site in the campground has been camped on thousands of times. A large group was camping adjacent to us, with a monster tent and enough gear to make it look like a small circus. There was straw where I first started to set up my tent. I quickly discovered it covered up some fresh shit a cat likely deposited there and disguised under a veil of straw.
The smell was overwhelming, and I immediately wondered why I agreed to camp here again. I also wondered how many people and/or animals had shit or pissed on or around this site over the years. If I knew that stat, I probably would have taken my sleeping bag and hiked into the backcountry to camp, welcoming any and all buffalo that might wander by to say hi.
After the shit was cleared away, I found a level spot on hard packed ground where no shit could be deposited and got my tent set up. After we ate and drank a bit to take the edge off, it was time to retire to the tents. I got in my tent only to discover two things: The pad for my sleeping bag didn’t really keep the hard ground from feeling like a long sharp rock under me. And the air in the stinky little tent was ridiculously hot and still, making it easy to sweat, but well nigh impossible to snooze comfortably.
The only thing to do was lie still in the stifling heat, in hopes of falling asleep. I woke in the night to a flashlight beam’s silhouette of a stray cat strolling through the campsite, a creepy, distorted Halloween-like view through the tent material that made me wonder once again, why I had agreed to this trip. The cat was probably looking for snacks and some nice straw to decorate.
The next morning, a little bit hung-over, I walked over to the camp’s men’s restroom. Some of the toilets were backed up, making for a noxious stench as unshaven, dirty men campers waited in line to shave, shower, or take a shit or a piss. This activity took place in stalls that made a tipped over, overflowing Port-a-Potty in the hot sun smell like a whiff of spring flowers.
Once I finally got out of that noxious cauldron of human waste -- after a long period of holding my nose and trying not to vomit -- I wondered if I hadn’t contracted some sort of deadly infectious disease. You know, something that might cause bone rattling phlegm-rich coughing jags or patches of skin to boil up into pizza-like pus craters.
Upon surviving that camping trip without getting any symptoms of the Black Plague, I decided I was done with camping. And looking back, I think it was the right decision. Especially after hearing the story of a co-worker who went on a camping trip in Oregon on her honeymoon with her new groom and their dog. They were in the tent ready to go to sleep when the dog, a basset hound, started shaking in mortal fear. They didn’t know why until they flicked on their flashlight to survey the darkness outside. Oops, they saw the eyes and outline of a mountain lion about 20 yards from the tent. Terrified, they didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t sleep. They ended up waiting out their hostage situation until first light, when they burst out of their tent, tore it down, grabbed what they could, and ran back down the trail with the dog, hearts pounding.
They made it. But it’s a good bet they don’t like camping in the wild so much anymore.
And a woman friend told me of camping with her boyfriend in a tent somewhere in the wilderness when they heard a bear going through their campsite. The boyfriend decided he knew what he’d do, he’d scare the bear away by banging some pots and pans together. Surely that would scare the obnoxious Mr. Bear away.
Well, no. The bear reared up on its hind legs at the offending sound and let out a murderous roar. This caused the boyfriend to beat a hasty retreat back into the tent, happy to wait for the not so compliant bear to go away.
I figure the pioneers that made their way across the prairies of this country in search of a place to settle down, really didn’t have a way out of their myriad discomforts. They had to suffer through the inconveniences of camping out night after night with only the barest of essentials. They didn’t have bug spray, hot showers, clean comfortable beds, and kitchenettes while on their overnights. No, they had to rough it, recovering from their bone jarring days sitting in or on their Conestoga Wagons. They had no choice but to deal with clouds of horseflies and mosquitoes, and relentless methane generating, air befouling daily menu specials -- like pork and beans – every night.
But then came modern times with all the comforts we can enjoy while traveling and staying overnight at places away from home. So we can choose to rough it by going camping, trying to bring as many creature comforts from civilization as our cars, trucks and/or trailers can haul. Or we can choose not to.
I choose the latter. No, getting filthy dirty, spending the night in stinky hot tents, getting a stiff neck, wrenched back or both, freezing, trying to keep cool in oppressive heat, eating freeze-dried food, taking cold showers in public filth infested stalls, holding back a furious need to pee, taking shits in campground public toilets that emit mutant stink, just doesn’t work for me.
I like to hike, and bike and kayak, but I now make sure I go on day excursions only. Instead of camping, I plan for my outdoor forays into nature to end in our modern, amenities-rich world. Call me crazy, but after a strenuous, satisfying hike, bike ride, or kayak trip, I’ll drive home, to a friend’s place or a local motel so I can enjoy a hot shower, good food, and a firm bed with clean sheets and blankets. It means a roof overhead, not smelly canvas or nylon. The bed will likely be just as comfortable as any cushioned sleeping bag. And even if it’s Bob and Stella’s Free Cable Motor Lodge and it has a dirty carpet with airborne scents you figure are a mélange of mold and bleach, that’s OK.
At least a great night’s sleep is a good bet even at a cheap motel, provided the walls aren’t too thin. There, with the creepy artwork of sad-eyed puppies on the far wall dimly lit by the old TV casting an orange-ish hue over other colors the ancient set fails to produce, you don’t mind.
Pleasantly tired from your day in nature, you don’t mind watching the local weatherman with the blinking tie and hairpiece give his goofy maniac forecast. You’re showered, fed and comfortable on the bed. Tonight, you won’t have any chance encounters with feral cats, skunks, buffalo, mountain lions or bears wanting to see what’s new for snacks. You won’t sweat, you won't freeze. No, you’ll sleep like a baby.
So if you decide to just say no to camping, you won’t be sorry. Roughing it can be fun. But too much roughing it, at some point, needs to be left to our hardy ancestors who never knew the joys of hot and cold running water, heating and air conditioning, and toilets that magically flush the stink away.
Camping? Uh…no.
This essay is dedicated to Roger Franzen, my uncle, who brought joy and magic to my childhood.
