The question "Why camp?" usually presses my mind about halfway through packing the van on the day of departure of a camping trip. "Is it worth removing myself from an embedded work project?" There will be at least one phone call, a couple texts and some e-mails that will be "urgent!" I dread them and the pile of work I will find on my desk that did not get done while I was out. Part of me thinks I should flatten the curve by letting the system completely take over and let the schedules, production meetings, spread sheets and oil field type confrontations take my life over. It would be the easier path.
"No." I say to myself, "I'm not giving in. I am taking a break from work." Then I think...maybe we should stay home, still take a break and sort of flatten the curve. Out loud I ask "Is all the gear going to fit in the van?"
Then Dottie lovingly assures me it will, and we continue. This is an example of "the wall." Sometimes I hit the wall, sometimes it is Dottie. Fortunately we always push on through to the other side, together. We persevere. But in those dim moments, I see camping as self-imposed frustration, intentional homelessness and potential emotional and physical misery. Why, we are merely redressing our daily domestic chores and habits!
I can see why some people are not interested in camping. I say these same things and I am comfortable outdoors!
If you find yourself on this side of camping it might not be your failure. Something is on the other side, but it may not be a quiet mind or some other imagined "higher existence." It is worth the effort. I have found perfect weather and other conditions help, but they are not required.
I came to confidence in my answer to "Why camp?" after an extended camping trip in 2018. I know all the pat answers society wants me to write: the ones about being in beautiful, quiet places; where I tell people about how I un-jangled my mind and found inner peace. Yeah, uh, that's not me.
Sometimes these Zen moments do come true for me while camping. When they do it has more to do with the planets lining up and things going my way than all that inner peace ninja $#!@. I knew there was an deeper answer, other than controlling the narrative or events, to that haunting question. I know, because in camping there are mosquitoes, fire ants, venomous snakes, spiders, ticks, rain, colds, sunburns, warm weather, cold weather and flat tires. These normal camping ingredients are not components to the "inner peace" recipe. Even if images from those trips look like a calendars or screen savers, I recall in the moment of reality it didn't feel like my enclosed, climate controlled office...
In me there is the mildly manic need to temporarily escape the rat race. Sometimes I return from camp the calmer person who now readily embraces the normalcy of mediocre, corporate and domestic life. Other times, returning from a good trip highlights my day to day dissatisfactions. People are more complex and deeper than the greeting card levels of self awareness and realizations; I know there is more.
And there is.
Sometimes a higher plane is reached by the process of meeting the challenges of goals. Maybe it is to see a certain camp ground, or to achieve a number of nights camped out. Or it could be a level of camp-cooking competency one seeks. Maybe it's practicing bushcraft.
Beyond that there is something to being a family together for a week at a time, the packing up, the trip out of town, and pitching of camp. Then breaking camp, repacking and the return trip. Of course there is work to be done after returning home...but between the beginning and end is a middle that seems like a dream. I don't mean "dream" as in perfection, or unmet desire.
For example, in a real dreams, have you noticed dreams don't have a beginning or end? I mean, suddenly you are there and it has been going on for a while. You emerge in the middle of a dream. You could say the dream ends when you wake up but...the dream has only stopped. It did not have an ending. So in camping, the structure and order of Aristotle fades; there doesn't seem to be a beginning or an end, there is only a broad, endless middle. That middle stream of consciousness does not end when we break camp. We leave it, as in when we wake from a dream, but the Middle exists without us.
These days, one can jet around and drive to the remote regions of the world; spend a few hours, and return back to the city in a days' time. In doing so the thinly layered beginning, middle, and end...are disjointing to us. I am not sure the mind can adjust and perceive well in the hustle and bustle. There is too much beginning and ending, not enough middle.
My favorite trip was a three night trip that we stretched an additional two nights: we extended the Middle! For about a week we were an encapsulated family unit that did everything together. We ate, slept, canoed, swam and hiked together. We drove into town to wash our clothes and replenish our food supplies, then re-submerged into the Middle. My notions that eating, sleeping and "being" in a middle place are what make the deepest impression, were confirmed on that trip.
For me camping renders life to a momentary, more basic, and direct connection and exchange through the activities of adventurous sleeping, eating and being. The peace from that makes living out the moments of the day all the deeper and richer.
Thanks for reading!
MSM
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