Smells like camping

For the first time in about three years, LOML and I have decided to go camping. I’m talking about sleeping on the ground, in a tent, in sleeping bags. We’ll be cooking on a 52 year old Coleman Stove and keeping our food coldish in a cooler. I wouldn’t say we’re harkening back to the pioneer days of Laura Ingalls Wilder with the dried buffalo and a dipper of switchel to keep our thirst at bay, but there won’t be heating or air conditioning and a trip to the toilet at night will be an adventure. Today, Sunday, we’re in the throws of finding all the gear, checking to see if it’s in good nick and planting it in the front hall. Yup, stowing our gear in the front hall which now looks a bit like an MEC loading dock. It’s hard to believe it has to fit into the Rolls-can-hardly.

Neither of us is new to the insane sport of camping. During our younger days, his family and my family spent many summers on camping adventures. His family travelled cross-country, moving from one Air Base to another. For them, the simplest (and least expensive) way to get from Alberta to Ontario was by loading up the Merc and camping in farm fields and lanes. They cooked over a small camp stove and spent their nights in a canvas tent. The washing-up was done in creeks and streams along the way. My family’s first trip was to Sibbald Point just outside of Sutton, Ontario. My parents were both over-prepared and hopelessly underprepared for our very first three week trip. At the time there were nine of us (my parents, my Dad’s brother and six kids). We had one nine-by-nine canvas, tourist tent, in which to spend our nights and the rainy days. We didn’t have air mattresses or camp cots or foam pads to sleep on. We didn’t even have sleeping bags. Dad had two ancient kerosene lamps for our nighttime adventures. My Mom had packed just about every scrap of food we would consume in those weeks and only planned on going into town for perishables, as needed. To this day, canned potatoes have a special place in my sodium soaked heart. How either LOML or I managed to see those family trips as inspiration is beyond me but we do look forward to our first trip of 2018 and to turning the rest of the world off for a few days. He and I look forward to the first cup of coffee in the morning as the sun rises and begins to burn the chill off the ground. There’s something magical about drinking bad, hot coffee in a campground. It’s hard to put that feeling into words, except to say, it’ll be bad, hot coffee being consumed in a damp, chilly campground while we try not to laugh at each other for being foolhardy old farts.

Camping is how LOML and I were able to afford a trip to “Soixant Sept Expo 67”. We took off with his family’s ancient tourist tent (same tent they’d used cross-country) and my family’s arthritic Coleman Stove. My younger brother joined us for the fun and as it turned out, it was a riot. Later, camping was how LOML and I took breaks from working and school. Camping featured in our “honeymoon” trip and camping was how we spent many of our summers with our children. Our camping equipment has changed over the years since our first adventure together. We have had a succession of canvas and eventually high-tech nylon accommodations. We’ve slept on cots and air mattresses, had a hard-top tent trailer for a few years and now have settled down with a tent we elderly adventure seekers can handle without aggravating our gout, tennis elbows, backs or hips. The Coleman stove we purchased with our hard-earned savings in 1968 will accompany us on this trip.

Did you know many provincial parks have hot showers, flush toilets, dish-washing stations and wifi? Sheesh, eh? Where’s the roughing-it challenge with all of those amenities? You just aren’t camping if you don’t smell like burnt marshmallows, bug spray and woodsmoke. Am I right? You know I am.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca