On camping with a family
Melanie only wanted a utensil to make tortilla S’mores, and I said no, then blew a top and held forth on the evils and excesses of modern camping. Taken aback, she was; she only made a comment and here we sally into a full-scale camping philosophy built of Thoreau and George Washington Sears, plus a few reactionary observations. Strong feelings for such an obscure topic, she said.
Whelp. I found my stump, and I had my sermon fully prepared. We dislike messy campsites, which included almost every campsite we visited or participated in, even our own. Chaos is exhausting and there is no reason to let it rule. I had some ideas, and one of them included eliminating unwieldy and ridiculous items such as utensils to make tortilla S’mores.
There is freedom in having the skill and willingness to camp. We wanted to do it now and again if only so we can appreciate our comforts and conveniences a bit more. Also, if you can do a road trip with your family and camp for the nights, you have a budget friendly-skill, which means you will not have to wait until you are old and rich to travel. Anybody can sleep in a motel, but not everyone can camp well.
But you know how it is. There is all the food to get around, and those crusty roasting sticks, and then those tube-and-fabric monstrosities known as camp chairs that don’t fit anywhere or in anything. Then we finally get out there, already half grumpy, probably forgetting something, and here are paper napkins and plates kiting away on the breeze and those red plastic cups sapping the wildness from the landscape. It’s horrible.
There are a couple problems here. First there’s an expectations problem. People go camping to “relax” or “get away.” Let’s get this straight—you’re going to leave climate control, mattresses, and refrigerators behind, and go sleep among bears, mosquitoes, and smoke and relax? Seems like a basic math problem we get wrong every time. It’s going to be miserable. That’s the whole point. Some experiences can only be had by embracing misery.
Secondly, many people do it so badly. Camping is a skill and an art as much as it is an opportunity, and especially with a family it becomes a dance between school, fun, and chaos. A typical American camper throws everything he might need or want into the car, skids into the pay-per-stay camp site, then opens the trunk out of which flows all the Walmart vomit. Disney themed sand shovels, plastic tables, pillows, subpar and unnecessary gear, disposable plastic and paper in search of a breeze. Nobody knows what the plan is, who is responsible for what task, or even what tasks are necessary. The understandable result is sure to make camping unappealing.
Why would anybody go camping at all? I don’t know why anybody would, and people don’t often tell us. So I aim to tell why we go camping, or at least to tell why try to make it a matter of thought.
I think some of us go to the woods to participate in “nature,” or at least, the alternative to our daily life of convenience, plastic wrap, and cleanness, and the first thing we do is pull out some mass-produced plastic gadgets that separate us from the very thing we came to experience. (Toys for the children and phones for the parents.) We took the selfie. Time to head home.
Melanie and me, on the other hand, would develop a system to our camping. If everyone knows what is expected and the chores are clear, everything would be little less chaotic. We would know how to plan.
We would use enamelware. Everyone gets one tin plate, one tin cup, and a set of utensils. You wash your own dishes. No plastic ware or paper products, excepting paper towels. No hot dog sticks; whittling a roasting stick is bushcraft skill level basic and they are disposable. No camp chairs; Better to develop the skill to sit on the ground, because then everywhere becomes a chair.
(I capitulated on the no-camp-chair policy. I tried leaving the camp chair behind once on a multi-family picnic, but finally sat on one to ease the social tension because no one sits easy until everyone does. We can call this the Tyranny of Comfort.)
First, I would build a box. It would be no mere box, but a wanigan, which would separate it from all other boxes merely mortal. A traditional wanigan is a wooden food locker designed to fit into a canoe for extended camping trips. This particular wanigan would stretch the definition a bit, it rarely going into a canoe, but the idea held.
This box would embody our camping philosophy and stow our gear. It was totemic as much as practical. I would be personally responsible for this wanigan to relieve the pressure and make the excursions more seamless for the rest of the family. Second, we would alter our expectations for any given outing. We don’t need fresh fruit, S’mores, jelly-filled mountain pies, and soda. We need baked beans, biscuits, hot dogs, tea, and coffee. Food we can eat right off the fire. Listen: this is not civilization. Camping is an opportunity to go briefly feral.
The wanigan would stay stocked with the basics: knife, axe, matches, two trash bags, some squares of tinfoil, a set of tin plates, cups, and utensils, backpacking stove, a percolator, some salt and pepper, a pan for the stove and a cast-iron pan, some tea and coffee.
After each outing, I, the self-designated janitor of this box, would restock and clean all the gear, so if in some future moment we were struck by a notion to go picnicking, we would only grab some victuals and the wanigan. In our campsites, the dry food goes into the wanigan, the cold food goes into a cooler. Then we would carry the tent, our blankets and sleeping bags, and mats in another backpack or tote, and then a big backpack with clothes and miscellaneous. Two neat boxes and a backpack or two. It could fit into the trunk of a car. Camping chairs do not fit in the trunk of a car. Have I mentioned this before?
We tried out our program on a three-night/four day road trip. I have a service topper on my truck, and what everyone took for the local plumber was actually a tourist on an anniversary trip. We had four boxes in the back of the truck: one tote of wood, one tote of sleeping bags and blankets, the wanigan, and a cooler. And it was the best camping experience to date. We had the wanigan with gear and dry food, and a cooler with water and cooled food. We ate well: pancakes, eggs, steak, asparagus. Meals were simple, cooking was easy. Campsites were minimal mess and thus minimal cleanup. Everybody was happier, and we never missed the S’mores or Mountain Dew. We did take one monstrous camp chair, and it wasn’t for me.
I built this box out of some leftover spruce, which is lightweight but soft. It turned out to be about 13 inches wide, 28 inches long, and 12 deep. It fits perfectly between the gunwales of the canoe. Inside, I screwed some hooks and eyes into the corners so that plates and pans and a tackle box with all the utensils and miscellaneous items could be strapped against the side. I finished it with linseed oil to help protect it from grease and grime. It is a little unnecessarily fancy, and I took some ribbing for the ridiculous woodwork. But one thing you might say for it is that it is not Disney themed and nobody will mistake it for a consumer product.
Admittedly, camping is still hard. With an infant and a two year old, I have abandoned any hope of “relaxing” on a camping trip. What a joke! And reality is never as clean as the philosophy; sometimes we simply eat a freeze dried meal or take something unnecessary or even take a toy and a change of clothes. Not very many people really care about getting camping right, and it’s not worth sacrificing social ambience to be a village micromanager. There are a hundred little tips and tricks that can make camping a skillful and easier affair. So far, I know two or three of them, and even those are not accepted by the camping public.
Camping, as I mentioned earlier, is an opportunity to go briefly feral, and so you have to accept a level of dysfunction. My goal is to systematize the unfun parts so that it not such a Herculean task to go camping, in which you have to spend half a day rounding up all the disparate gear and then another couple hours putting it away, some of which you never used, or did not improve the camping experience. Easy to set up, easy to take down, easy to put away. You might even do it more if everyone remembers the process from last time.
Then why do you camp and picnic when it’s neither relaxing nor entirely fun? You can ease the process by systematizing, as I am trying to preach here, but it never completely fixes the inconvenience of no conveniences.
Oddly, it doesn’t really matter I don’t have the opportunity to fish or reflect or glass for animals on the mountain. Relaxing never was the point. It is good to see the stars from a tent, and live in bit of vulnerability. We can throw rocks in the water and build forts in the woods, learn to see the woods and water not as something that makes you cold and wet but as the raw material for physical and spiritual life. To do that, we have to create a forced dependency, an environment where one is out of things to do and ways to do it, something to break him out of his normal framework of convenience and ease. We can play with toys or recline at home. It’s an experience, not just something to do.
We remember these times, and I suspect that one day memories will be all we will have.