Mom Hates Camping
He maketh me to lie
down in green pastures;
he leadeth me beside
the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
. . .
— Psalm 23:2, 3b
Over the years, my beloved has occasionally expressed a yen
to go camping. Oh, to be as one with Nature! To live off the land in
self-sustaining, low-carbon-footprint (hint: low-cost) style.
As a card-carrying High-Maintenance, Low-Tolerance-For-Squalor-Outhouses-and-Mosquitoes
Wife, to date I've successfully stifled the camping urge by telling him "the
call of the wild" he's feeling must just be gas.
But the other weekend, we went camping. And even though I
have to admit I loved it, especially seeing the bald eagles and herons and
pelicans and the peaceful pleasures of sunny days on a big, blue lake, overall,
on principle, because it was camping, I hated it.
See, there's this guy he knows. He has a sketchy past, but a
heart of gold. He has about 15,000 tattoos up his arms, and has been known to tote
the odd bottle of schnapps. But the bottom line is, he's a really, truly nice
guy, and my beloved has known him for 10 years with nary a problem. The main
thing is, they share a big love for fishing. They agreed that one of these
days, they were going to go fishing together at this friend's special,
top-secret spot, out in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota.
Finally, the jig (literally!) was up.
And, naturally, the place has no posh resorts or motels or
even bed and breakfasts. No, you go there, and you camp, or you don't go there.
So my beloved wanted to take his high-maintenance wife and chip-off-the-high-maintenance-block
daughter to this hellhole, where there were no Jacuzzis or room service or
Internet access for 100 miles in every direction.
Would we try the adventure of sleeping in a tent? BAH!
Rent a trailer? HUMBUG!
A high-tech RV? What, and be "SPAM IN A CAN?"
Wait a minute, he proclaimed. They have these cute little
"camping cabins" you can rent, right there on the water's edge!
Ohhhh! That's different! "Cabin," eh? Antlers over the front
door, a sprawling stone fireplace, and Ralph Lauren linens on a four-poster log
bed. Cabin, I can do.
So he made the reservations. Major red flag: $37.50 a night.
Oh, well, high gas prices must be making things tough for tourism, so we get a
big bargain for our picturesque cabin, like, 90% off.
And then we got there and saw it. This was no picturesque
cabin. This was a TUFF SHED!!!
Promotional photo
supplied by the State of South Dakota . . . notice it's a guy in the picture,
not his high-maintenance wife - she's still in the car, shaking her head "no"
and sobbing.
There was no bathroom, though my beloved announced proudly
that there were "flush toilets" just 50 yards away, past those Hell's Angels
guys and that scary-looking couple with the yappy Pomeranians.
There was no sink.
There was no cooking equipment, other than a rusted firepit
outside.
The furniture was one set of bunkbeds and one other bed,
with plastic mattresses . . . and a window air conditioning unit circa 1939.
From the "less is more"
school of interior design;
this unit had no air
conditioner; ours must have been "a cut above."
I was just absorbing this reality when my beloved announced
that he only had time for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before he had to
meet his friend to go fishing.
Fishing? At night?
I had imagined they would leave before dawn and we could
sleep in and then enjoy lake sports all afternoon. But ohhhh, noooooo. If you
want to get catfish (ew!) you have to go in the middle of the night (eww!) and
fish below the hydroelectric dam (sparks! high voltage! ewwww!) since a few
dumb fish from up above get caught in the turbines and cut up into pieces and
then the big catfish come at night to feed on their now-chunky-style deceased brethren
(EWWWWW!).
Now that tears were spurting out of Maddy's sympathetic eyes
and making our pb&j's soggy, I recalled that it was only a few months ago
that my beloved and I were on our last vacation on Maui, Hawaii. We dined in
real restaurants on actual chairs with gourmet food that didn't come straight
out of the jar. There was a flower on your pillow every night, the swank
oceanfront hotel didn't look like a Tuff Shed, and if you so much as hiccupped,
14 hotel maids and valets were at your side serving your every need.
HOW FAR WE'VE FALLEN!!!
Now here came the friend with his ancient, metal,
flat-bottomed johnnyboat with a powerful six-horse motor on the back, and off
they went into the gathering dusk, all smiles.
Then it was just Maddy and me, armed with a flashlight and
bug spray against the coyotes and hoot owls. We went to bed early, she in the
top bunk, and me down below. I was like a big slice of Baked Alaska: inside the
sleeping bag, I was boiling, but body parts outside of it were freezing on
account of the window air conditioner, which sounded like a Boeing engine right
in my face:
AHHHHHHHHNNNNNN!!!!!!
My beloved was out in an iffy old boat with a guy with a
sketchy past. Who knows? He could be planning to tie him up, push him
overboard, come back here in the dark, and steal our pb&j and bug spray!
What's worse, the CAR KEYS are in my beloved's pants pocket! If he's tied up
and thrown overboard, how will I get HOME?!?!?
What was taking them so long? Why weren't they back?
I tossed and turned. It was so humid in there that each time
I shifted my bare arm on the plastic mattress it sounded like someone was
removing a Velcro strap: RRRRRIP!!!!!
Of course, in the window unit's rare quiet periods, there
was one pesky mosquito buzzing around, one hop ahead of my smacking palms.
The hour passed midnight, then 1 a.m.
AHHHHHHHHNNNNNN!!!!!!
BUZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!
RRRRRIP!!!!!
Simultaneously, I became aware of (1) strong lightning
moving in from the west, and (2) the natural consequences of drinking several
bottles of water that evening. Nature was calling, all right! Maddy slept
peacefully in the upper bunk. I didn't want to waken her and take her with, but
neither did I want to leave her alone while I braved the Hell's Angels and the
Pomeranians.
The minutes passed and the lightning flashes and my bladder
alert became more intense. Where WAS my hero, my provider, my champion? Oh,
yeah: out with a guy with a sketchy past in a tin boat in a lightning storm
near a hydroelectric dam!
Finally, I un-Velcro'ed myself off the plastic mattress,
groped in the dark for a large plastic cup, and, as our older daughter
ceremoniously calls it, "popped a squat" in the corner of the "cabin," all the
while mourning for our luxury accommodations in Maui.
I'm sure the coyotes and hoot owls got an eyeful of me in
that ridiculous posture through the tiny window because of the intense
lightning strikes, and ran away in fright instead of savaging us, but at that
point, I was so far gone, I didn't care.
Well, hey! They SAY camping is an adventure!!!
Bah, humbug. After all that drama, I fell fast asleep,
though I'm sure I twitched all night.
In the morning, even though my beloved evaded electrocution
and still had our car keys, and he hoisted aloft an icky-looking catfish and a
tiny walleye as if they were a 14-feet marlins, I gave him a wan smile,
scratched my mosquito bites, and said I was ready to go home.
Now.
Right now.
Why?
Because . . .
MOM HATES CAMPING!!! †
