Suddenly *Not So* Single Journey

Why I’m not a camper…

Author: thenicknick

I was reading Keenie Beanie the other day.  She had shared her camp experiences.  And…it brought back tons of memories.  It also made me realize that I needed to explain, or made me feel compelled to explain why I now consider camping to be a hotel without a pool.

Sounds really snobbish, right?

Indulge me.  I spent years roughing it to varying degrees in the Adirondacks .  Our church youth group was very active.  And I spent tons of time from seventh grade on traveling.  I was lucky.  I know this.  I had a ton of experiences that my kids will never have.  It is because of these experiences that I have developed the problem solving skills I have today.  It is because of these experiences that I know how little I can survive on…sunshine included.

See, I used to go on a retreat one April weekend every year.  On this occasion we were housed in cabins.  These were pretty much one room shacks with built in bunks.  In the really fancy ones…we had a fireplace.  In the rest, we learned to sleep in sweatpants and sweat shirts, and hoods and hats and completely mummified in sleeping bags.  And even then…my nose would be cold.  I was always popular, if only because my mother packed my Friday night meal like she was feeding fifty people for a month.  I would have a bag of apples and economy size bags of chips and all manners of snacks galore.  Is it any wonder that caring is food and socialization is catering to this day?  Duh.

Then there was the two summers when I went on the canoe trips.  The first year, I was the newbie.  I was so green that I managed to get wet before I even left the dock.  I was really tentative about getting in and the kid at the back of the canoe shoved off before I was in completely.  I went into a split as I tried to decide whether to try to hop back onto the dock or into a canoe.  Suddenly the decision was made for me and I landed in the lake.

That canoe trip was the worst week of my young life.  I was wet for six solid days.  My skin was pruned.  Firewood was scarce.  Meals were freeze dried and barely edible.  Bolten biscuits were a culinary curse, the consistency of dog biscuits and the flavor of cardboard.  Yum.  I lost weight.  Only then I didn’t need to.  Bathrooms were an outhouse if we were lucky, a hole if we weren’t.  I lost my glasses the second day of the trip to a raging river.  They were knocked off my face when I tried to switch sides with my paddle and veer away from the river bank.  (Some idiot put me in charge of steering.)  They bounced off the life preserver and promptly sank out of sight.  So, I completed the rest of the trip blind.  There were two portages, where we carried our packs, the canoes, tents, food, everything; each was at least a mile long.  I had never been so cold and dirty for so long.  And I would have challenged you to find a spot on my body that didn’t have a bug or spider bite.  Misery at its finest.

Because I survived, because I felt all tough, and because most of my friends wanted to do it again the next year, I was convinced to go one more time.  And that was enough.  I didn’t lose my glasses.  There was a lot more sun.  I came back tan and fit.  I had been able to organize the trip that year, at the age of fourteen, with the leaders.  I made sure they packed better snacks, like granola bars, and beef jerky, and bags of nuts.  We ordered better freeze dried food.  We steered clear entirely of Bolten biscuits.  I selected the route according to where there were known outhouses, since even in the dark they are a lot easier to navigate than a hole.  And with that success under my belt, my work there was done.

On to the next adventure.

For that we traveled across the country by van to Wisconsin , where we attended a session at Green Lake .  We drove through Canada on the way there, staying two nights in churches in Canada and Michigan along the way.  I experienced the Sioux St. Marie Bridge.  I swam in some great lakes.  And once there, I fell in love with the camp.  We were in dorms with running water and showers and toilets and EVERYTHING.  There was shopping and arts and crafts and gardens and nature trails.  Yay!  By the time we returned home, I had already decided to try and be a counselor there the following summer.

And so I was.  It was an honor to be among the few selected from such a large pool of talented teens from across the country.  I flew across there all by myself, changing planes at O’Hare.  I was so big!  My ride never picked me up when I reached Appleton , Wisconsin , but a quick call to my mother remedied that.

me: Mom, can you call the camp and have someone pick me up?

Mom: Nicki, stay right there.  Don’t get lost.

me: Mom, the airport has two gates and I can see both of them from here.  I think I’ll be just fine.

And I ended up rooming with and becoming good friends with one of the other counselors: Taryn Curtis from Bloomington, Indiana .  I often wonder what happened to her.  She was my hero, a combination of Kim Basinger and Jessica Rabbit.  She was all-natural, unapologetic, and completely ignorant of the effect she had on all the guys.  It was a great experience.  An amazing experience.

Then the final camp experience came the summer after that.  I was selected to be a counselor at the big national youth camp being held in Estes Park , Colorado .  I flew out early to stay a few days with my cousin and her kids.  I woke up to my young cousin Keith staring at me, willing me to wake up so he could play video games.  (That’s how I like to remember him.)  I saw the beauty of the Rockies .  At the same time, I knew I could never live there.  It was too brown and red.  I will forever be in love with green and blue.  I like walking around barefoot.  There are baby cacti there that prevent that.  Still, I met a boy and fell hard.  I hated to leave him.  And Taryn was there, though I hadn’t had much time to spend with her in a camp so large and us in dorms nowhere near each other.  I missed my flight home…unintentionally.

And this is why I’m a little nervous about flying home from California .  I had to leave for the airport at 4am.  I overslept.  In fact, I woke up as my flight was taxiing down the runway.  Oh, and when is my flight from California in a few weeks scheduled to depart?  Same time.  I’ll need to leave for the airport…*gulp*…at 4am.  Let’s hope I do better this time.

Maybe that’s what this trip feels like to me, summer camp for adults.  It’s going to be a fast trip.  I’ll leave on a Thursday and return on Saturday.  I’m excited.  I’m nervous.  I don’t know anyone.  I’m less worried about that than I might have been in the past.  I have years of experience making new friends and flying solo.  I have years of experience traveling and soaking in new experiences.  Short trip though it may be, I plan to make the most of it.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 2nd, 2010 at 8:06 am and is filed under Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.