Camping and Memory

 

Ever tried to return to a particular place and time in your memory? Some events you can't forget. Whether for good or for ill, they stay in your mind forever. Other occasions ‘not so much’ as the phrase is used today.  

 

Today I tried to remember a specific camping trip but couldn't.  There were so many outings to “the wild” that they all blend together. Thinking about life on a grand scale, having that many experiences in the woods with good friends (and these trips were always communal), was not really a bad thing.

 

Most of the camping trips I remember were trips Up North. Up North for people who don’t live in Michigan is any place at least 5 miles north of your home and preferably on water be it a pond, creek, lake or one of the inland seas that touch northern Michigan (Huron, Superior or Michigan). For me Up North meant you had to pass Grayling before putting tent stakes into the dirt. Up North was either an old CCC camp site or a state forest campground. Up North was synonymous with a strong pine smell and the sound of moving water. Up North meant tents, camp fires and canoeing. Up North was a place to make life-long memories.

 

I did not camp as a kid. As a result a trip camping was initially foreign. Regular camping trips for me began immediately after I moved back to Lansing after law school in Detroit. On any given weekend in the summer, we could jump into a car and head up north. It was a ritual that truly belonged to Michigan. New Jersey has its day trip to the shore. But Michigan is so big a trip to get out of the house  requires a weekend to do it right. Camping was and is an ideal way to relax and escape real life. 

 

Our camping tools evolved. Initially we slept inside a pup tent just big enough for two sleeping bags. It was only a couple feet tall and you couldn’t sit inside. The tent was a leftover from our across America trip in 1978 in a car named Thunder Road. We went to Oregon to find America. We still have that tan non-breathing nylon fire trap stashed in the garage rafters. Bought it at Woolco, remember Woolco? 

 

We also had padded cotton batting sleeping bags. After one too many chilly nights, those were replaced with LL Bean sleeping bags. Just because something like a road trip is a spur of the moment decision does not mean it has to be uncomfortable. When you have the right equipment and the right attitude the outdoors can be wonderful.

 

From the pup tent we migrated to a Eureka dome tent for our accommodation. The dome claimed to comfortably sleep five. Three was more honest. The claim of five was only true if your idea of comfort is that everyone has someone else’s body parts stuffed up near their face. I would draw a diagram but this is being created on Word and I don’t know how to do that. Instead I will describe the situation.  

 

Imagine a circle. Place four bodies in it, the shortest on the outside and the tallest on the inside. Running atop these four bodies curved to conform to the top edge of the circle is body five. Routinely body five would be at everyone’s heads. If this camper were at the foot of everyone they would get kicked repeatedly during the night.

 

Configured like this for sleeping the short people on the outside get zephyrs of halitosis or foot funk odors respectively. On camping trips personal hygiene standards are lax and generate these kinds of smells. People forget tooth brushes. Meh. Feet get wet because it always rains during camping trips. Let me repeat that, it invariably rains on a camping trip in Michigan. One of the two middle sleepers gets a strong intermittent methane breeze.  Camping trip cuisine such as BEER, and BEANS elevates the chances of GI distress and gas production. Only one or maybe two campers (depending on how drunk the smelly person sleeping on that curved right angle from everyone else is) achieve a decent night’s sleep.

 

Finally we bought a tent that was huge with poles that created a big rectangle. I don’t think we have used it more than a handful of times. But the mega-tent fits four cots.  This refugee from a revival will also allow for a greater distance between all campers. This concept of personal space is a much diminished one when you are out on a weekend in the wild. On a camping trip you take what you can get. 

 

There are common elements to all camping trips.  Beer. Rain. Mud. Campfires. Boom boxes (first cassettes, then CD, now streaming). Also there was usually a purpose tied to the trip most often a canoe excursion down one of the many rivers in Michigan. Every so often we slept out at the end of a small spit of land and make our goal a winery tour on the Leelanau Peninsula. These events were limited because they always ended in a prolonged state of stupor. Wine and cheese and a long and winding road back to the tent didn't mix well.

 

Before any trip we had planned more than an hour in advance and we did some prep work. On Thursday night the car got packed. A large Coleman cooler, a small Coleman stove, Coleman lanterns and some Coleman fuel would get smushed into the trunk. In addition, sleeping bags, pillows, shorts, t-shirts, jeans and leather jackets got stuffed in there too.  

 

If there was time we made a quick trip to Meijer and bought some food. Initially it was hotdogs and bags of chips we would grab as food. Later it became chicken breasts, greens for a salad and dried cherries to pair with each. On Friday as soon as work was done we would jump into the snaking line of cars heading north on the only freeway from here to there, U.S.-127. We would stop about 20 miles up the road and grab a burger, fries and a pop and we would boogie on heading north.

 

Depending on where you were heading, you passed a number of landmarks. My favorite was Woodhenge. It was just a stone’s throw from the trip start. This was a barn that somebody started (I have been told) and never finished. A number of warped and twisted but tall poles stood to the right of the highway. There was a marker for the 45th parallel indicating you were halfway between the equator and the North Pole. There was the Big Buck brewery which was one of the first microbreweries to make a splash in Michigan. If you head off to Lake Michigan you could pass the gas station where the guy had the bear chained out back as a tourist attraction.

 

In early summer it doesn’t get dark Up North until 10 or later.  If you got off right when work was over you set up your tent in the fading light. If you got there slightly late someone else was already making the fire. Hopefully this time they wouldn’t burn their eyebrows off when the white gas that soaked on the firewood caused a fireball.

 

You swept the ground where you pitched the tent with your feet to ensure stones and sticks wouldn’t poke you all night. The tent was put up easily when the magically connected tent poles snapped together. They slid through the little nylon flaps on the outside of the tent. You unrolled your Thermarest mats and let them inflate. You slung the mats and your sleeping bags in. Next you grabbed a beer and pulled up a stool and sat around the fire.

 

Ah the conversations that would build around the fire. As the boom box played Joe Cocker, Tom Waits or something a little more esoteric like the English Beat the talk on the first night was of the chance of rain, which canoe livery to use and where might there be a party store that had some ice, meat and some tasty beers. (For non-Michiganders a party store is a beer and wine selling convenience store carrying basic food stuffs, i.e., Pringles, hot dogs buns and pop. Good as we applied the term to beer back then was a relative term. Labatt Blue was an early favorite and then we moved to Harp and Guinness. Eventually everyone had their own microbrew of preference. Sometimes if we ventured far enough we would go to the Beer Store in Ontario and grab some of their exotic brands. Labatt’s Velvet Cream Porter stands out as a preference.

 

Labor on these outings divided easily.  Some walked and got firewood or brewed coffee. Some tended the campfire while others cooked. Everybody helped with cleanup by pumping water into pots to make hot water on the Coleman stove to wash the cooking and eating utensils.  

 

Some trips took us back to the same campground repeatedly. Other trips were one off and long, such as the time we circled Lake Huron. Truly I once spent a Sudbury Saturday night. Another year we drove across the top of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay and the Valhalla Inn. It was there that I learned you shouldn't drink a beer in a hot tub when tired. It was also there where we visited the birthplace of the real Winnie the Pooh.

 

Some trips endings were pushed to the last hour of sun on Sunday ‘cause you were having so much damn fun. Some forays were scuttled by rain early on Saturday. Michigan tent campers all have clear olfactory memories, one in particular. It is one of pulling a damp hoodie out of a black garbage bag that served as your dirty clothes hamper for the weekend. The odor is stale and going on mildew. There are equal parts soggy wood smoke and Harp beer scents rising from the hoodie. Yup rain was the enemy.

 

Some trips were cosmic. Ain’t nothing quite like watching the northern lights kick up as you stand on a lake shore looking out through the blackness at a now growing into surreal green light. The dancing green/green blue curtains sweep across and keep you staring upwards for hours.  

 

A camping trip made you drop the phone. A camping trip makes you step away from the computer. A camping trip puts you in touch with real people. Sitting down on those small aluminum stools around the fire on the second night of the weekend you talked about jobs, life, love, hopes and aspirations. Connections were restored by the dancing firelight and the clinking of beer bottles.

 

Honestly, I was trying to remember one camping trip. In the end I remember a lifetime filled with fun and joy.