June 22, 2007

Camping? I'm Not a fan

It's camping season, when families load up the old SUV with tents, sleeping bags, and cans of pork & beans and head to the woods to sleep under the stars.

My family weren't campers. Their idea of sleeping outside was falling asleep with the windows open. To purposefully seek out discomfort and hardship? It's not our way. The closest we came to suffering when I was a kid was the trip where we stayed at a Motel 6 and experienced the horrors of one-ply tissue.

Starter Husband didn't exactly grow up in the wilderness, either. His boyhood in Van Nuys included hardship and privation, certainly, but it was more about having to make do with a used bicycle than having to hide food from bears.

By the time Starter went to college, however, he had discovered the joys of sleeping outside. I think it was more that he woke up outside after a party and had a mushroom-induced "oh, wow" experience. Nevertheless, he was hooked on fresh air. By the time I met him he had invested in some serious equipment, including a down-filled mummy bag that cost more than my Volkswagen.

When we began dating seriously, his friend Mike suggested that we take a double-date camping trip in the Chiricahua Mountains. This was a ways from where we lived in Tucson, but the Chiricahuas held the romance of having been an Apache hideout in the time of Cochise and Geronimo. I was an Anthropology student. I looked at it as a field trip.

I gathered up what little equipment I had: a sleeping bag that doubled as a comforter for my bed, long johns from the Army surplus store, and the standard-issue hippie coat-a poncho woven from Icelandic wool.

We drove over miles and miles of desert and then started to climb. When we finally stopped-it was midnight and we were pooped-we found a clearing in which to put up the tents. The men set up camp while the women searched for firewood. I brought back my share and then furtively scouted around for a bush large enough to afford the privacy I needed to relieve myself.

The fire-making didn't go well. The wood was wet, the wind was high, and it was bitter cold. We decided to just go to sleep.

Sharing a sleeping bag may sound romantic, but when it's 17 degrees, you're wearing a poncho and mittens, and you're in a bag meant for a mummy, the romance factor is somehow missing.

It was a long night. We heard Mike and his girlfriend (one of a long string of nameless co-eds) arguing because she refused to allow him access to her sleeping bag. We heard the wind howling up the mountain. We heard twigs snapping and some kind of snarling. I dozed off around dawn, just as Mr. Great Outdoors yelled that the fire was going and the coffee was ready. I peeked out of the tent to see a world that had gone white with a late-season snowfall. It was dazzling. It was spectacular. And it was totally lost on me in that moment because as I glanced at the fire crackling in the circle of rocks, I saw Starter feed the flames with the last of the toilet paper.

Next week: Our second (and last) camping trip, in which we narrowly escaped disaster.