How we learned to love camping

Honestly, we never thought we'd be interested in camping. It wasn't that the idea of living in a tent bothered us; we were young enough for that not to seem utterly insane. No, what bothered us was the idea of packing up and going somewhere on the weekend. We had friends that did that regularly and we just couldn't imagine how, never mind why.

We had things to do on the weekend! There was grass to cut and plenty of stuff to do around the house. Pack up a car and drive off? Ludicrous.

Yet as we got older and the kids found their own weekend activities, there didn't seem to be as much that really needed to be done. We'd taken the kids to the beach now and then when they were younger and going off with the 'rents was something to enjoy more than something to be endured. That had certainly been fun.. why couldn't we just go by ourselves?

The beach

So we starting going to the beach on nice summer weekends. We'd cram all the chores into Friday or very early Saturday morning. We hired someone to cut the grass. We'd pack up the car with towels and umbrellas and a cooler and off we'd go.

It wasn't every weekend, because sometimes it would rain or be cold. But we went often and it became an important part of our lives. It was a break from work, sure. It was a break from household chores, a break from all that was familiar and, well, boring. A change of scenery. We looked forward to our weekends at the beach and were disappointed when we couldn't go.

It wasn't long before we hated coming back. It was more than an hours drive to our beach and traffic could make that much more. Could we stay over? Well, sure we could, but that meant a motel bill. That seemed wasteful and it would certainly add a lot of expense.

We also were starting to realize that it wasn't really the beach that was attracting us. Sure, the cool ocean breezes were nice, but really it was about getting away more than where we went to.

We were also thinking that having sand in our shorts was annoying.

The mountains

My wife always had a love of mountains. New England really only has worn down nubs that no Westerner would think of as anything but hills, but we had geologists on our side. Our mountains may have been diminished by time, but they are officially mountains. We liked to drive up into New Hampshire and Vermont to marvel at them.

We'd sometimes drive back by way of the Massachusetts Berkshires. This is a tourist area in Summer and full of skiers in Winter and we enjoyed the area.

Friends told us about a camping resort on a mountain (large to medium sized hill in the rest of the country, yes) that straddled the Massachusetts/New York border there. We could buy a tent and spend the weekend. They had a pool, a Saturday night dance and there were other people we knew who also went there regularly. It would be a long drive (the speed limit on the Mass. Turnpike was 55 then), but with the tent, we could stay over. Why not?

Tenting

So we bought the tent. I might still have it here somewhere, though we only used it a few times. No, I must have given it away - tenting did not go well for us.

You have to learn how to put up a tent. I suppose old time campers are snickering now, because I've seen that they make it look easy. It isn't.

I did practice in our back yard before we headed for the mountains. It was a little tricky, but I didn't anticipate major problems. Silly me.

Putting up a tent in your level, grassy back yard is one thing. Putting a tent up on a stony mountain where you can barely get the tent stakes into the ground is something else again.

The ground isn't necessarily level. Of course you will look for a level spot, but you won't necessarily find one, especially if it is a beautiful and very busy summer weekend. You see, some people live closer to the campground than you do. No matter how early you get up, they get there first and they get the best spots.

The ground might be too soft to hold your tent stakes or it might be too hard. You'll need a selection of stakes for different conditions and you'll need extras because you will break them and lose them.

Smarter and more experienced campers will have extra stakes and extra tent poles (who knew they'd break too?) and will usually be nice enough to help you out, but it's best to be prepared anyway.

We bought an air mattress to sleep on. We aren't completely clueless - we realized the ground would be lumpy. What we didn't realize was that it takes a long time to pump that up, even with the car cigarette lighter powered compressor we also bought. I still have that compressor. It still works. The air mattress leaked the very first night. Not enough to have us sleeping on rocks, but enough that we thought we might be.

Taking down the tent the next afternoon was also an adventure. That's when I broke my first tent pole. We were disgruntled and a bit sore from an uncomfortable nights sleep - it gets COLD at night in the mountains!

I think we tried it two more times, but it might have been only once more. Our first over night had been on level, though somewhat wet ground. Our second weekend was on an extreme slant, which made sleeping even more difficult. We decided we didn't like tenting.

The Travel Trailer that didn't

As it happened, some people were selling a travel trailer that summer.

"Travel" is a bit of a misnomer. That trailer hadn't traveled anywhere in years. Like most trailers at that campground, it had been left in place every winter. Why haul it? For a very small extra fee, you could leave it right there on the grounds. It would need to be "winterized", but the park provided that service for another small fee.

We also looked at a "pop-up" trailer that was for sale on the grounds also, but that seemed uncomfortably small and reminded us too much of tenting. The little travel trailer was small, but it had a kitchen table, a refrigerator, a stove, a bathroom, a heater and two doors - one of which was rotted away and couldn't be used except in an emergency, but compared to tenting, this was luxury.

We bought it, paying more than it was worth because we were also paying for location and this trailer was well located. It overlooked a large field and was close to the community campfire and not too far from the community bathrooms. It also had a medium sized wooden deck and a very nice wooden table and even an awning. We loved it.

It did have some issues. Although the heater worked, the hot water part of it had rusted out. We felt we could boil water for small needs and use the community bathrooms for showers. As the heater was old, we didn't dare run it while sleeping, but we had our comfy bed warming pad, and the trailer did keep in a bit more heat than a tent, so we were happy enough.

The awning was horrendously difficult to put up and down. It had been slightly damaged by a windstorm at some time in its long life, so I had to struggle with that every weekend, but I eventually became pretty good at it.

The trailer also came with a "blueboy". In most camping parks, you'll park next to a "sewer hookup" that will collect your waste water. This camp had those, but not in the lower field where our trailer was sitting. I'd have to dump our waste water into the blueboy (a little wheeled tank, usually colored blue) and haul it to the dumping station.

Most other people with that need had trailer hitches and would haul that rather heavy tank behind their car. I wove a rope handle from nylon string and hauled it with the muscles in my legs and back. The dumping was the worst part, especially the first few times, but you can get used to just about anything and I did.

Packing the car became an exercise in logistics. Food and clothing for a long weekend. Tools. Books, magazines. Raincoats. No longer was the prospect of rain a deterrent to our weekends away.

The Park Model

After five seasons in our travel trailer, a "park model" unit became available farther up the mountain. It had a sewer connection, two slide-outs, a real refrigerator and a real toilet. It had a bigger deck and a bigger awning that was easy to put up and down. It had a satellite dish!

It even had a telephone hookup and for a little extra money we could get DSL for Internet. Add a computer to the list of things to pack every weekend.

The view was incredible. We could look down over half the camp and at night we'd see the lights from the ski resort on the next mountain.

The slide-outs were jammed open but as it hadn't been moved in years and we certainly weren't planning to move it, we didn't see that as a problem. We sold our old trailer for a good price and moved on up.

We had learned a few things from that little trailer. It had some small roof leaks and places where mice got in our first winter. I had become an expert at finding and sealing off small holes where mice can sneak in. Here in the new camper, I also stuffed extra insulation around the slide-outs. It's cool early and late in the season and not just at night.

The roof was large and it soaked up heat. I bought vent covers at a nearby camper supply place and had them installed. That helped because we could leave the vents open without caring about rain.

The larger roof was a potential winter problem. If we had a tough winter, too much weight could build up from snow. Fortunately, we had friends with a roof presenting the same problem. They lived close by and offered to check and shovel ours if needed in exchange for a few cookouts and beers that we would have invited them too anyway.

Campers are often very nice like that. Perfect strangers become perfect friends.

Because we had so much space and comfort and DSL so that I could do work there as easily as at home, we started staying longer and longer. Unless I had a customer to see, we were only going home on Tuesday nights and usually headed right back up on Thursday afternoon.

We loved our summer getaway home. From late May to early October, that was where we really lived for years. Happy years. Fun years.

A time for every season

Eventually, we had to give this up. My wife's illness made it hard to endure the travel and, once there, she could no longer walk the bumpy trails. She couldn't go to the dances and that disappointed her greatly. It slowly began to sink in that this no longer made sense.

With great reluctance, we gave up our home away from home. We sold it at a bargain price to friends who had long wished they could afford something that large and comfortable. We could have had much more from other buyers, but we wanted to do that for our friends.

The picture at right was from the winter just before we left. It was taken by our roof-checking friends, though there was no risk from snow just then.

On the day we finally left for the last time, I am not ashamed to say that I wept openly. So many memories, so much beauty, so much fun, so many friends. We lingered after we packed, not wanting to actually go. We had stayed into the week, and had said goodbye to friends on Sunday. The camp was mostly empty, though a wisp of smoke from down the hill told us that someone was at the campfire.

I stood on our deck one last time. I breathed in the mountain air. My wife was wordlessly staring at the decorative plants she had so lovingly planted all around the trailer. We knew the folks who bought it were not gardeners, so (with their consent) we had offered some of the plants to other friends who would transplant them after we were gone. They'd have good homes. That was important to my wife and I guess it also was to me.

We drew in memories, willing them to say in our minds forever. We had no more reason to stay, though I checked the camper yet again and then left the keys where I said I would. A few minutes later I took them out again because we both wanted to go back inside one last time. We stood at the sliding glass door, looking down the dirt road we had walked so many times. I reminded my wife of the night I had to carry her up that road after the dance because we had danced so long and hard that her feet hurt too much to walk. We both laughed and kept looking down the hill. This was the end, but we wanted to delay it as long as we could.

The sun began to set. Shadows crept across the ski resort below us and a few lights winked on.

We sighed and got in the car. We thought about swinging down to see who was tending that campfire, but decided not to. Our throats were already too tight, our eyes too misty.

We were mostly silent as we drove out the gate and started down the two mile road to civilization. We stopped on the way at what remained of an old farmhouse where cows and bulls and sheep had once roamed the fields. We remembered how, fifteen years back, a sleeping pig in the road might have blocked our way. The pigs and other animals were long gone and soon enough, we would be too.

That picture of our camper is in our bedroom. Sometimes one of us will find the other just standing, staring at it, lost in some long ago summer.

It's all right - we had our seasons. We do not forget.