I Love Camping

I've camping twice this summer. The first time was at Rampart Reservoir with the Yellowstone crew (Recycler, Chemist, Sojourner). After we'd gotten settled, I went on a hike alone, during which I failed to ford a stream, regrouped, then actually forded it a little while later, slipping once, which resulted in my right pant leg getting soaking wet and my left pant leg remaining totally dry. It was a sort of harmonious Yin Yang duality, which I appreciated. Then, barefoot, in a thicket of tall grass, no trail whatsoever to be seen, I heard the most convincing rattlesnake rattle I'd ever heard in my life. I eventually learned that rattlesnakes didn't live at our elevation, and what I'd heard was actually birds. Apparently they'd evolved to mimic the rattling sound. The bastards.

The hike lasted well over an hour, probably over two. At the end of it I reached a rock outcropping with a picturesque, panoramic view of the lake and forest. The precise boundary where a devastating fire had been extinguished was clear to see -- on one side, ashen skeletons, barren of any foliage; on the other, thick, luscious greenery. Sunlight sparkled, crystalline on the bright blue water. I sat there, took a deep breath, and let the serene stillness of nature wash over me.

Camping is Zen. There's something about being outdoors that strips away all of my past regrets and future stresses. The only thing left is gentle presentness, bereft of cravings, urges, longing. It all washes away in the sound of running water, the softness of the breeze.

We eventually made this presentness into a joke: Whenever anyone asked what time it was, we would always respond by saying, "camping time". This response had to be avoided with increasingly clever question constructions: "What does your watch say?" "Approximately how many hours 'till sundown?" "The device on your wrist -- when you look at it, what numerals are the unjoined tips of the two long, thin pieces of metal closest to, and what would you estimate the angle between them to be?"

Another time while hiking, after we'd gone at least an hour down the trail, it started to rain. We had no choice but to head back. It was during this return that I heard the loudest, longest, most aggressive thunderclap of my life. It occurs to me now that that was the first time I'd genuinely experienced a rainstorm. I was cold, wet, and at the mercy of the clouds. It felt simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.

We employed high level cooking strategies on this trip. The Sojourner taught me how to make gravy out of meat grease and flour. It was highly educational, primarily because if you'd asked me what gravy was made out of prior to the lesson, I would've said "gravy", as if gravy were some kind of homogeneous and unbreakable constituent ingredient, an atomic additive, a sort of "quantum of cooking". We also made mashed potatoes, pasta, pork chops, hot dogs, s'mores, bacon, eggs, sausages, PB&Js, and other things. Overall, the food was better than par. (Sidenote: I never understood why "subpar" doesn't mean "good". Don't you want to be under par?)

The other camping trip I went on was even better, primarily because of the addition of stargazing. I doubt I'll ever forget the moment when we were sitting around the campfire, and my friend told us the stars were out, and we looked up, and I literally, physically gasped at how many stars there were. The night sky was cloudless, too -- horizon to horizon, an endless array of twinkling starlight. It rendered me speechless.

We laid, very much Zen, under it all. We stayed there for hours. My heartbeat was accelerated. The photons entering our crude, simian eyes had travelled millions of years to reach us, and we were finally drinking them in. Our retinas would mark, in some anthropocentric sense, the end of their journey through space and time. It still renders me speechless.

The next day, we stood under a roaring waterfall, bearing the immense force of gravity on our shoulders. We then spit in gravity's face by climbing up. We climbed up the goddamn waterfall. I wish I had a word other than "exhilarating" to describe it -- neither it nor any of the words in my vocabulary are extreme enough.

There's something undistillable about camping, some intangible "It" I can only communicate by communicating how -- and when -- It made me feel. I felt It during the drive, as I sang at the top of my voice to the playlist we'd collaboratively curated. I felt It sitting around the campfire, gazing into the flames, as a willingness to be more open and vulnerable with people I love. I felt It when hiking, as a yearning to climb ever higher, to be closer to the sky and the stars.

-Me