On camping

My husband loves camping. Over the years, he's slowly been collecting more and more camping gear, although the truth is that the two of us have only gone camping together a handful of times.

As an Alaskan, T has a particular definition of camping which he sometimes struggles to widen enough to encompass what passes for camping down here in the "lower 48." My impression of his definition of true camping is that it must involve the following four features: 1) Trekking some distance and carrying all of one's camping gear along, 2) absence of other humans, 3) absence of bathroom facilities or running water, and 4) the possibility of bumping into large carnivorous animals. T asked his dad for a list of essential camping gear, and it was 7 3/4 pages, single spaced, when printed out. Camping is serious business for him.

T is happy after setting up his new tent for the first time, at Susquehanna State Park.

I am largely unfamiliar with this method of camping. As a Midwesterner, for me camping involves loading up a camper with easy-to-cook food, life-sized cooking and eating utensils, suitcases, maybe even a bicycle for each person, and driving some distance (maybe as little as just a few miles), and setting up the camper at a camp site. Alternatively, one might load up a car, truck or van and "rough it" in a tent, but that tent is likely to be the size of a room or even a small apartment.

Throughout the years of our marriage, T has been under the impression that I hate camping. I guess I can understand why he thinks that, given our very different definitions of what constitutes camping and our differing tolerances for different aspects of camping, which I can illustrate with a discussion of our most recent camping trip (and the first in at least two years) to Susquehanna State Park in central Maryland.



I will admit that, in general, I dislike rain. I particularly dislike camping in the rain. T, suspecting that my dislike might be related to the fact that our previous tent always leaked on us (because, of course, we always end up camping in the rain), did some research and bought a lightweight two-person tent a few months ago. This weekend's camping trip was our first test of the tent. Yes, it rained over night, but we stayed nice and dry inside.

The Susquehanna River, lovely even in the rain

Problem solved, right? Well, another complaint T often hears from me is that I'm uncomfortable sleeping on the ground. The fact is that I tend to have a lot of aches and pains anyway, and sleeping on hard surfaces exacerbates them. Add in the fact that this weekend I was sleeping on the ground while six months pregnant, and I think I handled the discomfort quite well. And in any case, T is, as I write this, ordering a comfortable pad to go on the bottom of our tent for our next camping trip. (We've got to get in an as many trips as possible with this fancy new tent because it will be too small once the number of people in our family expands to three.)

The final big issue with camping, for me, is that I'm a nervous person. I hypothesize that some people are alive today because their ancestors were clever or strong. I believe I exist solely because my ancestors were nervous. Just as I, as a child, survived dodge ball games by hiding behind the refrigerator in my grade school's cafeteria/gym, my ancestors survived the dangers of their environments by being alert and nervous and running or hiding whenever they sensed danger. What does this have to do with camping? Well, as soon as it gets dark outside and there is nothing between me and the nature I ostensibly loved during the day except for the thin walls of a tent, my primal nervousness switches on. I do not sleep at night when camping. I lay there, awake and alert and nervous, hearing all kinds of dangers. This was particularly bad when we camped in the wilderness of Wyoming and Montana, when I was constantly on the alert for bears or porcupines or whatever kind of creature I thought might at any moment wander into our tent. 

It's true that my nervousness was largely diminished camping in Maryland because, as far as I know, there are no animals here that might wander into one's tent. (This didn't stop me from being nervous last night, though. Since there were no dangerous animals to listen for, when I heard human voices outside in the middle of the night, I was convinced they were messing with our car, and I awoke T from a deep sleep, essentially so that he could calm me down a bit.)

Yes, I am a tree hugger.

But as my camping comfort increases, it seems that T's decreases, because a situation in which I feel safe is likely to be very far away from his definition of "camping." While I was thrilled I wouldn't have to squat in the rain when I got up to pee in the middle of the night, T had a little difficulty seeing how pitching our tent four feet from our car, six feet from the road, and less than ten feet from another campsite constituted camping.

Like many things in a marriage, I think our camping adventures together will continue to involve compromise. And this weekend's trip, in my opinion, was an example of a successful compromise.

One important thing we both agree on is that we enjoy our time in nature.