You Call This a Holiday?

I recently went camping in the sort of weather that assures you that sleeping outside under a bit of nylon is never a good idea. The four of us had driven up to Waterton (a town that I was later told was known for being windy. Next time I figure I will advocate for setting up on a nuclear test site) and persisted even though it was miserable, eventually setting up in the front of friend’s tent with our chairs and giving up on the fire because it was too wet.

That first night the wind was crazed. I woke up several times to see the tent being battered around and I continually thought that it was going to blow over or tear (in the morning we came into town and found that several trees had gone over, it was that wild). At one point I was certain I heard a pole snap and I waited for the whole thing to come down upon us.

Meanwhile my boyfriend slept heavily, his elbow jutting into the small of my back as we slept nearly on top of each other. The air-mattress we were on wasn’t fully inflated so we continually rolled together until we gave up and went with it. It was less than romantic.

Though I’m told some people find sleeping in the bush to be wildly idyllic. My father once took it upon himself to tell me which national park I was conceived in and this knowledge has never left me. I have since decided that if I ever have inquisitive children I will assure them that their conception occurred on the moon.

The next morning in Waterton, we discovered that it was our friends’ tent that had snapped in half and flipped over. They spent the remainder of the weekend sleeping in the truck.   Though on our final morning we woke to find a beautiful sunny day for the long drive home.

Now I sort think of camping as a string of days that after which I’m really going to enjoy a shower and will never again take my immediate access to a toilet so for granted. It’s a weird thing to call a vacation, I see that now. It’s like a vacation from anything you might like to do.

I spoke to a girlfriend before I left and realized that I’d never heard her talk about camping. “I don’t camp,” she said decisively, as if it would never be up for discussion. She then recounted a story in which she and a bunch of her co-workers had drunk a bunch of gin and slept outside, though there had been no initial plan to do so. “I recall some sort of outdoor structure and falling asleep under it, so… camping.”

“I don’t know if that’s camping so much as falling asleep under a bridge.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, I think there has to be planning and intent,” I explained.

“I intended to get drunk and didn’t care where I fell asleep,” she told me. And I couldn’t just then tease out the difference in these things or if there really was one.

My partner keeps going on about how next time we should buy some sort of rig and sleep in the bush in style. I however, have decided that next time I’ll just build a fort in the living room and tack some glow in the dark stars to the ceiling. It was good enough for me as a kid, so why not now?  

Tube sock coffee anyone? We forgot filters.