TT and I left Seattle in early spring on our cross-country camping extravaganza, Destination: Graceland, Tennessee. Our trip began first with a snow storm in the mountain passes, then again when we woke up in our lightweight tent and matching sleeping bags to a dusting at Devil’s Tower. A flash-flood at Mammoth Caves in Kentucky had TT threatening to put me on a plane back to Seattle, and me angry with TT for using hotdogs to encourage raccoons to cut our throats while we slept (it’s complicated; you had to be there, unless you have a healthy fear of raccoons, then you know exactly what I’m talking about). Two speeding tickets were incurred in Texas, with me trying to document the second ticket for prosperity and TT screaming at me through her tears to PUT THE CAMERA AWAY (okay, I kind of get that now), and getting dehydrated in the Grand Canyon while fighting about listening to my Beastie Boys Check Your Head tape. Again.
| Dude looks like a stripper |
The highlight of this friendship-destroying trip was coming upon the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, in the middle of the night. Not wanting to wait until morning to tour it properly, we decided instead to “check in” with the tiny police station, which, I swear, was a part of the palace. That *may* not be the case. This was post-Rodney King, so we thought it would be hilarious if we got some (posed) pictures of the cops beating us with nightsticks (I really need to point out that I now see how totally fucked up this is). The police declined our beating-request, but they were willing to take us into a back room and handcuff us for pictures to send home (those pictures were never sent home– remember when you couldn’t post on Facebook? What were we supposed to do, buy an envelope and a stamp?). Although I have pictures of TT being shackled, she sadly never gave me my pics, because, not a joke, we didn’t talk again for years. When we finally met up again, she had been living in Zambia (which seems like overkill), had gotten married and had a handful of kids, and I figured it would be weird (and possibly further damage our relationship) if I YET AGAIN asked for the cuffed pictures of me.
And that’s basically it for me and camping. Once I got a car, I stopped lying about camping, mostly because I then had the means to leave the city and I was afraid someone would expect me to follow through and actually CAMP (interesting how all of this happened around the age that my prefrontal cortex would have been gelling). And, pleasantly enough, my first husband was also anti-camping. Our outdoorsy trips were limited to taking a ferry, driving around an island, and heading home. Sometimes we rented a cabin, although the last time we did that, I was outraged by the poor water pressure in the bathroom shower and sulked in the Jacuzzi that overlooked the river.
There was a multi-day journey in the Olympic National Forest, which thankfully has several antiquated lodges, all with full bars. For this trip, I picked up a thin book: Best Easy Day Hikes in the Olympic National Forest. I really thought that because the book was thin, that the so-called easy day hikes would also be thin, like a paved path around a pond or whatever. But I think the authors really took the day part to heart, which just allowed them to be all willy-nilly and include hikes that took, you know, basically a whole day. We settled on the book’s suggested walk to “Hole in the Wall Rock at Rialto Beach” because it seemed easy enough. It wasn’t.
It was a deceptively long walk with an incoming tide that forced us onto the soft sand, and involved scrabbling over logs and wading into little rivulets, all for a handful of pictures of us pointing at a giant rock with a hole in it, which we could have just photo-shopped at home. After a night spent recovering in the bar, we spent the next day driving along paved forest roads, hanging out the window and snapping pictures of deer that were eating out of garbage cans. With a little cropping, it looked as if we were actually out of the car.
This was the shitty trip that inspired me to write a travel book of day (if you include driving time–which I do) trips that would offer the biggest payoff (i.e., pictures that looked impressive on Facebook) with the smallest investment. My plan was to rank hikes on things that people like me actually cared about (like Facebook photo ops). Hikes would also be ranked by the distance to, and quality of, the nearest tavern, plus bonus tolerability- ratings for all nearby public toilets (I’m using toilet loosely here; this would sadly have to include port-o-potties). So, I, the reluctant hiker/ traveler/ camper, started a blog about (and called) Tooling Around the Pacific Northwest. Of course, to write such a travel blog would require me to actually go places, outdoor places, places that would force me to explore those so-called day hikes that those other guidebooks reference so that I could unequivocally call out a hike as a total fucking waste of time, and include fact and not just gut-instinct to back of my claims.
So basically my blog sat dormant for about a year. I finally decided I would just have to write reviews of the places I do go, which is why, if you dig through my past posts, you’ll see reviews of frozen yogurt stands and Home Depot. I mean, it’s not exactly what I was thinking, but I still feel like these reviews are a valuable resource for anyone who finds themselves in the Home Depot on 205th street and Aurora, and in need of finding the closest “crying location” for that (eventual) fight with your partner over wood stain or whatever.
And then came Michael.
See, when I met Michael, he had a giant, bushy beard which to me is an indication that you love the outdoors. It was summer, and we were going to meet for dinner and drinks. Since there was some time before the sushi restaurant opened, he suggested we walk around the neighborhood. FUCK. Even a slow walk would end in sweat for me, summer or not. Plus, I was wearing strappy (and slightly heeled) sandals, perfect for dinner and drinking and stumbling back to my car for making out, but not so great for walking, but I said yes because what else could I say, and also he was super cute and I was totally into him already and it would sound stupid and girly to say my shoes weren’t made for walking.
Point is, the suggestion of a walk only further substantiated my belief that Michael liked camping. And at some point, I have no idea if it was that night, he did bring up camping. Of course this was discussed with 37 year old me, who possessed a fully developed (if not actively disintegrating) brain, so I had no trouble telling him that: 1. I’m not recovering from a drug addiction; 2. my only religious upbringing was Judaism, and therefore 3. I don’t camp.
Actually, I’m not sure what I said, and I probably wasn’t that confident in my response to him because I was still crafting the illusion that I am flexible and agreeable, but yeah, I told him that I don’t like camping. Of course, at this time I didn’t really know what Michael meant by camping. I was imagining hiking while carrying stuff on our backs like poor gentiles who can’t afford a room at Motel 6, and admiring rock formations while sweating heavily, which all sounds really, really horrible. I mean, there was talk about a spreadsheet of meals, for chrissakes, and don’t forget this guy had a beard, so what was I supposed to think?
But this “outdoorsman” -image of Michael didn’t reconcile with the Michael I came to know, who would rather watch another shitty episode of Under the Dome than walk the dogs. I mean, if Michael thinks that logging 800 steps a day on his Fitbit is pretty good, how bad could camping really be? Besides, I began to pick up on a major theme of camping, which is eating and drinking: once, I asked Michael if he ever drank booze in a moving car. “Yeah. We were on a forest road, looking for a place to camp.” “So why not just wait until you got to the campsite?” “Because I was tired of not camping.” An excellent story that boils down to the essence of camping: camping is drinking.
But also? Why I also started to actually consider camping? Well, to quote my friend Lori, “I need to re-think my entire throw-pillow situation.” Yes, it was like that. I mean, how long do you stubbornly insist on square pillows with solid prints? At one point do you stop saying no to the ruffley oval pillow, but instead, dare to say maybe? And, worse case scenario, if you don’t like the pillow, take it to Goodwill. And you know what? As a result of Lori’s re-think, she got to go shopping. AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE? Saying yes to camping meant that I got to GO SHOPPING, TOO!!
And so I said yes to camping, which sounds like I was accepting a proposal of marriage, and in some ways it was so much more serious than marriage because in neither of my two wedding ceremonies was I asked to just try pooping outdoors. Waste elimination really was (and is) my biggest issue with camping. It started to affect my work (not a huge accomplishment), in that I wouldn’t shut up about my upcoming camping trip and peeing outdoors (always shared in the same sentence: camping and peeing outdoors. camping and peeing outdoors). But it did drive my coworker Haley to send me a link to the Lady Whiz! or Pee Pal! or whatever it’s called (I assume they all have exclamations in the name). “I never go camping without it,” says Haley, apparent part-owner of the Gee Whiz Urine Co.!
Okay, so I was willing to try it, but it wasn’t that simple, there are like a thousand versions of this device on my frenemy Amazon’s website, which totally makes sense, because none of them work (as I soon learned), and so why are women still being forced to urinate outdoors? AND YES IT MUST BE BY FORCE! It is so stupid that a guy can discreetly slip away from the campsite and appear to be, I don’t know, looking for firewood? Bird watching? But basically if someone came upon him, no big deal. Not the case for women. I’ve heard about women who can pee standing up, and I think that’s weird. And yes, even though I see how this would be a desirable skill, I STILL THINK IT’S WEIRD. Or then there’s the women capable of peeing without full-on stripping from the waist down, but not me. Even if pulled down to my knees, and then away from my body, there is a strong chance I will urinate on my clothing if I have to motherfucking squat in the woods. Although then the problem becomes being freaked out that someone will see me, which leads to halted- peeing (preparing to fight or flight), which leads to urine running down my leg. And of course, there’s no running water for hand washing, let alone the washing of the nether regions.
But maybe worse than that is, what do you do with your soiled tissue? I bet a guy would tell you to bury it, but that’s only because they haven’t considered the very real prospect of having to dig a URINE TRENCH 10 times a day, just to bury used tissue. And I’m being generous with 10 times a day, because remember, a big part of camping is drinking booze, which for me means peeing hourly. So, my first camping purchase was a Pee True! or whatever, which I naturally experimented with in the privacy of my home and within the proximity of running water and soap, and although it worked (once I stopped clenching), it felt DIRTY WRONG BAD.
Plus, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to rinse it in the sink afterwards. Which then had me thinking about using and re-using this in the woods without cleaning it. And jamming it into my pocket every time I needed to pee, so basically getting urine droplets all over my sweatshirt. FUCKING. CAMPING. (Side note: practice-peeing at home was barely manageable for me; this was an unmitigated disaster in the wild, and I ended up with urine on my legs and hands and clothing.)
What else did I need for camping? Clearly a private crying place for when I urinated on myself. The tent. Michael of course already had several tents, and he was really excited for me to see them, and all of his other camping stuff that was jammed into these giants tubs he tucked away in our basement. He showed me his tent for two, which was panic-inducing in that it looked like a coffin, what with the low ceiling and narrow sides. Then there were the sleep mats. He swore that those Styrofoam cup-like mats were super comfortable. Mmmm- no. The problem with mats is that there was no give. I don’t need waterbed/ excessive give; I just didn’t want to be flat on the ground.
Which led to the next purchase, an inflatable queen size air mattress that did not fit into Michael’s current tent, because it is absolutely false that is was designed for two people. So Michael got us a new tent! It still required crouching, which isn’t something I do well, but at least we could fit in there side by side. Oh, and then the sleeping bag. I chose a brown one with pretty pink flannel lining. There might be more to it, like warmth ratings or whatever, but, like I said, BROWN WITH PRETTY PINK FLANNEL LINING. Once it arrived (from Amazon–fuck you, Amazon!!), I realized there was no way I could incorporate my three support pillows (one under or between my knees; one for spooning; one for my head) inside the bag. PLUS, I knew full well that the pugs would be freaked by the whole experience and would want to hide in my bag with me (and yes, that is exactly what happened), which meant that I needed warm sleepwear because most likely I would be pushed out of my own bedding by their sweet fat faces and all my goddamn pillows. But that’s okay; I just bought multiple pairs of long johns, a pair for each day, all cute and kicky and probably not designed with the outdoors in mind but really just for photo ops by a lodge fireplace, which maybe that’s where we’d end up after I wept all night in the cold tent? And maybe a lodge that was also a casino? OOH! And a Jacuzzi tub in the room… doesn’t camping sound AWESOME?
And, casino-fantasy aside, I was now equipped to camp.
Stay tuned for Part III of the Reluctant Camper: Camping with the Gays