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Camping Schnamping
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Thursday, August 6, 2020
 

BY MARY MOTT

PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Camping.

This is an activity I really don’t get.

Recently, I experienced my first backpacking overnight. We headed for the central Idaho destination with the bang-up name, Fourth of July Lake. Reasonable walk. Acceptable elevation.

However, when was the last time you strolled two thousand feet up wearing a 25-pound pack? I’m not wild about walking to my bathroom in a 25-pound pack, let alone four miles uphill.

Plus, those backpacks are made for someone with a long, tube-like trunk. Not for someone 15 inches from collar to belt. So, physically incompatible, I nonetheless had to stoop slightly, keep my hands under the shoulder straps, elbows at nine degrees and be cinched up. While still breathing.

I’m convinced it is impossible to be a successful camper without having served two to four in the armed service of your choice. Camping is an organizationally intensive sport. Second only to rigging a sailboat.

Every item you bring on a camping trip must meet these criteria: Be lighter than a green bean, able to perform a minimum of three high tech functions and fit in a stuff sack. We had 17 on one overnight. Virtually everything is rolled into a stuff sack. Barbeque forks, stove, underpants, ibuprofen, collapsible doggy bowl. Color coded. By category.

The only thing that defies admittance to the stuff sack, is the air mattress. What a useless thing that is. About as comfortable as sleeping on a large Pop Tart and, even under the helpful weight of a 700-pound grizzly, incapable of losing enough air to get even its little valve in a stuff sack.

The tent is perhaps the most organizationally intensive. Poles are awarded their own sack, as are ground pins. Both are rolled inside the neatly layered ground tarp, tent and fly sheet. And, if you attended M.I.T., all fits easily into a you-know-what roughly the size of a large sausage.

Of course, no level of tent organization overcomes the critical nature of site selection. Now, I looked for a flat spot, but lakes are surrounded by hills. Otherwise, if the surrounding land were flat, they’d be swamps. So, my site had a bit of a slope. Perfect for a good soapbox derby; lousy for sleeping. All night I kept skidding down to the bottom of the tent.

Now my sleeping bag is one of those human cornucopias so, if two-thirds of your body is forced into its depths, your knees get stuck sideways and extraction is virtually impossible. Even if you’re an extra with Cirque du Soleil. Plus, there’s the clothes as a pillow thing. Now, if you’re snow camping and can roll up an eiderdown snowsuit, that’s ok. But trying to get proper head and neck support on a tank top and nylon shorts? I don’t think so.

Let’s see where we are here. You’ve put up the tent, hauled rocks for the fire safety circle, purified water for the night, destuffed the stuff sacks, and now it’s time to gather wood for the fire. In the abstract this seems almost romantic; Hansel and Gretelesque. In reality, you are on a hill in a western Idaho conifer forest. The wood is either wet, decayed or petrified to the tree. And, remember, the hill thing is like living in a fifth-floor walk-up, with your chord on the first. Tiring. I gathered a stack of wood the size of a gold miner’s lean-to. Gone in under one hour.

But work and organization cannot out-poop the real party poopers. Those flying, sucking, skreeing spoil sports I assumed were busy at sea level in 90-degree east coast humidity. No amount of B-6, citronella, Skin-So-Soft or frogs in your underwear can handle the high-altitude mosquito. So, I slathered myself in one of the 10 early warning signs of cancer--100% deet.

A friend said if you taped that little screech they make and slowed it way down like on “Abbey Road,” it too would say, “I buried Paul.” I’d like to rip their vile little vocal cords out.

Maybe camping is okay if you get through all the set-up and reach the point of sipping a great Silver Oak, searching the star-laden sky for life beyond Orion’s Belt, and being quietly given a DeBeers brooch wrapped in a dewy leaf.

Maybe.

But I don’t think so.

Hike up to Fourth of July Lake, sit on a log, eat a Power Bar. Jog down. Check the moon out as you drive to your favorite restaurant in town. Sit outside on the patio, bond by the fire and go home to your soft, squishy queen-size bed with real cotton sheets.

And, if categorizing yourself as an outdoor person is important…leave the door open.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Sun Valley’s Mary Mott, a woman of many words, loves to write about her experiences and observations on life. If you’d like to share your own experiences with camping…or anything else for that matter, feel free to drop her an email at https://marymottwrites.com/contact

 

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