~o:> oh, camping, oh

I think of myself as growing up in a Big Camping Family. I have slept on the ground with only an ancient sleeping bag between me and the rocks, on bouncy cots that turn over if you’re not careful, on grass out in the open, and I’ve done these things on both coasts and several places in between.

But in the last many years when I look back on those days, I realized we were really sort of gentleman campers; we never went hunting. We never took motor cycles with us. Never took a generator or a skeet gun or a portable toilet in its own tent. We never even fished.

We just watched dad put up the tent (one of the two circumstance under which he swore volubly—the other being lighting the Christmas tree), played cards and games and—I don’t remember what else we did, actually. Eat. Eat the food that always seemed to spring full grown out of the hands of my mother.

Here we are in the Fingerlakes.  I have no pictures, oddly, of early camping trips – the one in the Silverstream trailer, the one at Lake Arrowhead.  But this is how our camp always looked.  Neat, organized, clean – my parents in their natural element.

But that was enough magic for me—the smell of canvas, cooking over a fire or a grill. Flashlights.

My favorite place we ever went was Montauk Point—the beach on the eastern tip of Long Island, where crazy things tended to happen and seagulls stole meat right off the grill.

Maybe the charm of it was having Dad all to ourselves. No yard to mow, no office to pull him away, no handy household repairs to be making. I just remember camping as a good time. And Mom and Dad were pretty darn good at it.

Me.  With my little brother.  Who is now fifty.

G and I haven’t done much camping with our own kids. We tried it a couple of times early on, and—I just didn’t remember afternoons ever being that hot and long and boring when I was a kid. Maybe my parents always chose places where there was something you could drive and do in the hot hours. Or places where there was water. I can’t remember now.

The family at home.  My parents were pretty darned good looking.  Only don’t tell me that Dad looks kind of like Captain Kirk.

And I am left wondering whether Mom was ever bothered about bears or moose or something trampling the tent at night and carrying off the children. She never said anything about it. (I suspect she might actually have hoped, from time to time, that just such a thing might actually  happen). She did tell me once that a mouse had run right over my stomach while I was asleep. I don’t remember how I felt about that.

But then, we never had a skunk in camp with my parents. Heaven was saving the skunk for me—the mother who really did not do camping all that well. Not that I didn’t plan things out. Not that I wasn’t competent. It was just, my mom made it all seem so easy and natural, I wasn’t prepared for the depth of thinking required.

I honestly remember, one time when we were getting ready for a simple drive up the canyon—we were going to cook dinner over a fire up there. And all day long, I kept waiting for my mother to come along (drop in from Texas, maybe?) and tell me what to pack. Twice, we got all the way up the canyon with buns, napkins, mustard, mayo, ketchup, cups, plates—and no hotdogs. (In my defense, I’d put them in the microwave to thaw and forgotten to take them out. But why were they in the freezer till the last minute, is what I can’t figure out.)

I still think of myself as a camper. But the kind of camper who packs musical instruments and games and cards, and sings Irish songs under the bright moon and stars and the leaves of a stygian mountain forest, dreaming about how lovely it will be someday when she grows up, finds her love and takes her lovely little family romantically camping under the high desert sky.

I am hoping they have camping in Heaven.

All of that said, my friend, Geneva, is always after me to go up Blackhawk way with her. She goes up once a year in July, takes horses and students and her own kids (and dogs), and stays in the mountains for over a week. And sometimes Rachel goes too, and takes her Cadillac hard-core camping stuff, like her solar shower.

It usually never works out for me.  But this year, Rachel and I drove up there together to visit for an afternoon. And in those few hours, I learned that I have been deceived all these years; there is a whole brave new world of camping that I never dreamed existed. And so I took pictures of it (some on my iPhone) and brought them back to share: