I Will Stop Talking About Camping Any Minute Now

We are going to our friends' cottage for Labour Day weekend, which is obviously wonderful, but it's also giving me a tiny bit of camping PTSD. For most of the weekend it will be camping numbers of people, with one bathroom, and we're bringing the tent, although I might not end up sleeping in it - it's just getting so confusing trying to Tetris all the sleepers into a viable arrangement that we're bringing it just in case.

I have an unreasonable need to wash my hands and face several times a day. I mean sure, good hand hygiene is important, and my skin is oily so face washing needs to happen too, but there is a disturbing element of compulsion. I can touch something that I anticipate being oily and find that it is not oily, and still have to wash my hands. At bar night last week Collette didn't finish her chicken wings so she offered them to the table and three people each took one, but there were no wet naps left so I found one in my purse to offer them and none of them used it! They ate a chicken wing and just sat there with chicken wing hands for the rest of the night!

Anyway, at camp I have a basin at the end of the picnic table with water that I change several times a day, plus a big water jug with a spigot and liquid soap so I can wash my hands and face the same stupid number of times a day I do at home. Before I get in the tent to sleep, I basically do a comprehensive sponge bath before changing into my pajamas (it's generally two a.m. and very dark, so I am not traumatizing the campground), but I have to just be in denial about the fact that I have feet and lower shins for the entire time, because there is just no way for your feet to be clean unless you're actively in the water. 

Earlier this year Matt made some noises, as group members sometimes do, about finding a way for us all to do something together in the summer that doesn't involve quite so much heavy labour. Collette told him to go ahead and organize it and she would be in. A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine posted some gorgeous pictures from a rental cottage in Quebec where they saw whales and it looked beautiful. I did a bit of investigating and at bar night told people that we could rent a cottage there that slept ten for a few days for not that much more than camping ends of costing. People were very interested, and then we talked about it some more and it seems to have ended up as this being something we could add in to our regular calendar of annual events, which includes a Robbie Burns dinner in January, a Guys Cook Valentine's Day dinner in February, some kind of St Patrick's Day party in March, birthday barbecues in April and June, brisket at Tony's for Canada Day in July, A Halloween party in October, Christmas and New Year's parties in December, AND CAMPING. *weeps* 

There is running water at the cottage, but twenty people presents a not inconsiderable threat to the septic system, so .... *packs basin, water jug and wipes*

It was Tony's birthday earlier in August, but we were all recovering from camping still, so we celebrated this past weekend by confirming what was a pretty solid suspicion that we are, as a group, remarkably accomplished at drinking cocktails on tiki boats and really really bad at solving escape rooms.

Birthday boy!

Espresso martinis, which were supposed to help them focus for the escape room.
They did not. 

In our defense, the more we talk about it the more we think the escape room was really badly designed, and even if we had tried it before all the drinking on the tiki boat we probably wouldn't have been successful in escaping. One crucial difficulty was that there were almost a dozen combination locks that had to be solved to open drawers or doors that contained clues. We actually managed to figure out many of the combinations, but we were a group of fifty-somethings, and no one could see any of the fucking numbers. We weren't allowed to have our phones, which, fair enough, but we told the perky twenty-somethings running the place that they needed to provide flashlights. But I might just be bitter because there was a cabinet we never got open that apparently had six heads in it, and that would have been cool.

At the end of the night we went back to Tony's because why wouldn't he want to end his birthday night making complicated and labour-intensive drinks for all your friends? 

Also, we took drugs. 

I was back in the library starting a couple of weeks ago. Everything is still quiet and neat, awaiting the onslaught. There are new autism classes at my Wednesday school, and they are both in my library time slot, which I am happy about because I used to have the autism unit at the very first school I worked in, and I really enjoyed working on the simple, concrete goals like getting each child to say their name and learn the procedure for borrowing books. There was one little girl who would only cry every time she approached the desk at the beginning of the year and by the end she would say "Emily!" happily when I asked her name, and it was unspeakably gratifying. This made up for the fact that there were two blonde teachers with that class who were almost identical and one really liked me and one seemed to dislike me strongly and I was extremely confused until I figured out they weren't the same person. 

Reading (and being idiots) at Camp

Please trust, dearest darlings, that I am in no way trying to convince any of you to camp. I can barely convince myself to camp. Half the reason I camp is to get funny blog stories about stuff that was not that funny while it was happening. 

Okay, this was very funny while it was happening, though. When we got back to camp, about four of us (not me) got to work tarping the campsite where dinner was supposed to take place that night. The rest of us (including me) stood around gawking and eating chips. Our campsite was directly across the road from the dinner campsite, and gradually a line of chairs was set up in front of our site, and another line of chairs set up in the dinner site facing the other line. 

 

This was the perfect set-up both for heckling the tarpers, and each other, and then interacting with anyone who drove or walked by on the road. Some people looked scared. More people looked charmed. When people walked by and asked where the water tap was, we all pointed and chorused 'there' like Stepford children. Then we applauded the woman who got water. And the park employee who came around weed-whacking around the campsite posts. Then the kids playing football. They all seemed to appreciate the validation (yes, we are obnoxious assholes as a group, but we mean well). 

Pictures of group dinner at Mark and Collette's - short rib chili, corn and bread that was supposed to be homemade over the fire but ended up being sourdough from Loblaws. 

I asked everyone to send car selfies while driving back to camp. 

This one was the winner:

Dumping the water out of the tent, or, oh no! The tent is eating Jared!

Tony's bespoke drink on his dinner night was concocted after he had a dream about making a drink out of carrot water. It was dark rum with carrot, clove, cinnamon and nutmeg and simple syrup and lemon juice, called the "What's Up, Doc" and it was delicious. 

The ridiculously big campfire circle we have now. 

The Books of Camping

 Vivian: Fantastic Land by Mike Bockoven. Haven't read it.

Jacob: Dunkirk to Belsen: The Soldiers' Own Dramatic Stories by John Sadler. Haven't read it. 

Ben and Melanie (who, since our last camping trip, got engaged!): Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky and Morning Star by Pierce Brown. Haven't read them, but I also had an Adrian Tchaikovsky book.

Collette: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. Haven't read it, have had it on hold with the library forever, I think they've lost their copy. 

Logan: Classic Tales of Horror (on brand). Have read some. 

Jordan: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if You're Life Depended on it by Chris Voss. Haven't read it, hadn't really paid attention to the title before now, and now I might be a little scared of Jordan. 

Jared: Dammit, I can't remember - Predator Something?. It is crucial for me to be able to take the title FROM THE PHOTO, Jared!

Margot: Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune. Haven't read it. 

Alina: Holding Reins by Paisley Hope (I initially read 'Hope' as 'Whore', that type really fades into the background too much). Haven't read it. 

Me: Tender by Sofia Samatar (short stories - amazing, although one smashed my heart into little pieces and then crushed up the pieces in a blender and poured them down the garbage disposal) and Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky (bought in San Francisco because Steph recommended it and my eye fell on it the minute I entered the bookstore. I loved it - thoughtful and melancholy. 

Relax, You're Two Tents

Camping is an objectively nutty thing to do, I know, I KNOW, I fully agree. Let's pack a bunch of shit in the car and drive away from our lovely, carefully-chosen, hard-won house (so wall-ish and roof-having!) so that we may set up a ridiculous sham of a living-place and then spend the next few days doing all the stuff we normally do except at much greater inconvenience. 

I spent YEARS also saying I was just not a camper. I'm still not entirely sure how the change came about. Well, I guess I do kind of know. Chiefly, I had kids, and I would take the kids and hang out with our camping friends and then retreat to a hotel room at night. The kids loved camping, and the getting to the hotel room became such a pain in the ass that we decided we might as well try actual camping. My husband is practically a professional camper, having spent years camp counselling and canoe tripping as a teenager, so in all honesty I don't do the majority of the work either. And I love my friends, and my friends, for some reason, love camping.

At this point in my life, I spend a probably excessive amount of time trying to achieve a balance between "it's good to challenge yourself sometimes" and "I'm too old for this shit", the same way I try not to surround myself with people exactly like me (because I think I shouldn't be in a bubble and I should be aware of other viewpoints and experiences) but also realize that at some point I need to extricate myself for some relationships because, well, I'm too old for this shit. 

I am very nearly too old for this camping shit, probably. And yet, and yet....I know I need to be pushed out of my comfort zone periodically because my comfort zone, she is not big. 

There is something very gratifying about producing a meal for twenty and having it go well, and then not having to make dinner for the rest of the trip. 

There is something satisfying about getting up and making two sandwiches for the beach bag and going to the beach with nineteen of your closest friends and their children.

Chips eaten while camping don't count. 

Snack photo gallery

I have a double-height air mattress now, which makes it possible to get up in the morning (or the middle of the night to pee) without completely abandoning all pretense of dignity.

There is something really special about a campfire.

Photo credit Matthew's girlfriend Jessica, whose last name I forget

When I get home I REALLY appreciate flush toilets and showers being less than 500 meters away.

The campground we've gone to for the past decade is three hours away, but has the most spectacular beach in the province. It's always hard to get enough sites, but we've always managed somehow. This year they closed an entire campground to upgrade the facilities, and since everybody's kids want to come now, we practically NEED an entire campground. So we were temporarily flummoxed, until Margot suggested a provincial Park an hour and a half away - the beach wasn't as nice, but we could get a bunch of sites really close together (usually impossible at Sandbanks) and all sites were electrical, which is pure luxury. 

We did miss the beach, but everything else was pretty much as nice or nicer. I was perhaps disproportionately enchanted by the water taps, which, at Sandbanks, are set in sand which quickly becomes mud, and you have to put your container on the ground and then bend down to pick it up (and water is HEAVY). Here there was a lovely wooden platform, and it was all set in gravel. I was ridiculously delighted every time I got water. 

A thing of freaking beauty, if you ask me

The comfort stations were nicer and cleaner, and the toilets were automatic flush, which is so smart, because at most places people don't want to touch the flush handle so they use their feet and it damaged the mechanism (I know, I KNOW, people are savages, but this is the obvious solution). It's almost like Sandbanks knows everyone wants their beach, and they slack on everything else as a result. 

The fact that we were only ninety minutes from home was also extremely beneficial when, on Sunday, it became clear that waiting out the rain was no longer a viable option. We chucked everything that wasn't a tent in our cars, drove home, had our group dinner at Mark and Collette's, showered, slept in our own beds, then headed back the next day. We went in the morning, which seemed questionable to me because it was supposed to keep raining until 8 p.m., but you know, I love my friends, it's good to be uncomfortable sometimes, etc. etc. As it turned out, the rain stopped right as we got there. We dumped the water out of the tents and threw them open to the sun, dried out the air mattresses on top of our car, had a great day and great campfire, and a perfect beach day the next day. Sometimes blind faith is rewarded?