Nature’s Unnatural Nature

A few years ago, in a spasm of stupidity, I went camping with my husband Mark and our friends, Matt and Jeanne. Apparently, getting close to nature is good for the soul, but my soul prefers nature at a safe distance, like seeing it at a natural history museum. My experience is that nature is often dirty and filled with creatures you would never invite into your home.

Nonetheless, I was a very good sport and prepared enthusiastically. I packed all the outdoor essentials — a good hair dryer, Lysol, jewelry, and extra antidepressants. I also went to REI to buy half a dozen camping outfits because high style is important everywhere and I wanted to look elegantly casual for the insects and woodland animals.

We left my suburban Chicago home in Matt’s SUV, which was filled to capacity and roughly the length of a bowling lane. Heading north into Wisconsin, we stopped at a really cute small town diner for lunch. Everything on the menu was from 1956, an era in which there was no quinoa, portion control, or Lean Cuisine. This was where all the exiled carbohydrates had gone to live. The waitress thought Pilates was a Mexican burrito and gravy was the universal condiment. We ate until we were food drunk.

About an hour later, we arrived at the drop-off point for the car. That was when I realized, to my horror, that we were going to load all the equipment into two canoes and go downstream to a campsite, where we would cook food and sleep in tents. This was primitive beyond all logic and imagination. I couldn’t grasp the point of it. Pioneers, mountain men, and Indians had to go camping. It was how they lived. But this was the 21^st century and God had already invented the concierge. Why were we doing this? There wouldn’t even be merit badges if we survived.

Pretending that this was a truly inspired vacation idea, but in my heart wondering if Matt and Jeanne suffered from some undiagnosed mental illness, I got into our canoe and started what could roughly be defined as “paddling.” Mark and I splashed large wooden sticks in very shallow water and turned in circles for about 15 minutes. Matt and Jeanne, meanwhile, were gliding through the river waters with a grace and speed I found very irritating. The canoe guide watched us with silent disdain, as if he found such human incompetence painful to his personal ethics. I wondered briefly if bad paddling qualified as irreconcilable differences.

The guide gave us a few suggestions and pushed the canoe out into deeper water. Mark and I managed to find a clumsy rhythm and miraculously propelled the canoe forward until we joined Matt and Jeanne. It seems that the major form of entertainment in the middle of a river is chatting cheerfully, canoe to canoe. Mark and I, however, couldn’t paddle and listen at the same time, so we amused ourselves by fighting.

About an hour later it occurred to me that this was the entire point of our adventure: to sit in aluminum crafts under a hot sky, sweaty, cranky, sun blind, and looking at pretty much nothing.  This was nature in all its splendor — a wide, brown, muddy road of water with uniformly dull trees on each side.  There were no bears or moose or elk or deer anywhere to break the monotony, but I did spot one particularly athletic water beetle.

And then I had an epiphany. I imagined this very same spot 300 years ago when America was new, the cold, clear river shimmering in the afternoon sunlight, and the forests a rich, green, home to Indians who had lived there for centuries. I could almost see and hear them….squaws complaining about not having washing machines, young boys arguing with their fathers about borrowing the canoe for the night, and old men thinking to themselves, “I’ve lived by this same river for 55 years, and I always wanted to see Paris.”

At 6:00 we stopped at a small clearing in the trees, emptied our canoes, and set up housekeeping.  Matt quickly pitched his tent and started dinner. Mark wrestled for about an hour with stakes, nylon, rope, and canvas, ultimately creating something like a Dr. Seuss house on steroids. I looked at him with wifely disapproval. “Jews don’t camp,” he snarled.  “It’s in the Torah.”

After five hours in the summer sun, my body had a smelly stickiness not unlike fly larvae in a bad mood.  I waded into the river to wash off because even in the wilderness, you never know who might stop by after dinner. I tried not to think about slimy, squirmy things swimming near me. Not because I thought I was in danger, but because I have always been particularly modest in front of tadpoles and codfish.

I discovered that night that dinner in the wild is delicious, especially when you are so tired you can’t remember if you have children. Mark and Matt could have served fried rats and sautéed tree leaves and I would have gobbled it ravenously. Something about the long hours paddling in the sun makes the simple act of eating a sacrament, and I consumed everything.

After dinner, Matt gave us a short lecture on wilderness bathrooms. Apparently you select and design your own. I chose a soft patch of dirt surrounded by shrubs. Under different circumstances, I would have chosen a wallpaper with subtle mauve flowers and added glass shelves, but our time was limited. The concept of flushing didn’t apply here, but there was one luxury: Jeanne had brought something called, “outdoor toilet paper,” which was very much like using tree bark on your skin.  I also discovered that mosquitoes have no shame and bite any body part that is exposed.

Mark had unknowingly pitched our tent on slightly sloping ground, so I woke up the next morning in a cramped ball at the bottom ten inches of our tent. I unfurled with desperate screeches from my muscles but straightened out in just an hour and a half. I decided to bathe again and in the middle of lathering up,  I remembered washing the dinner and breakfast dishes in the river. This was the first time I had ever shared a bathtub with scrambled eggs, coffee grinds, and leftover string beans.

At about 9:30 AM we set forth on the remaining five hours of our adventure. Matt warned us, in customary understatement, that “the river levels might be low in certain spots.” What actually occurred was that the river disappeared altogether,  and we needed to carry our canoes over a long, wide sand bar. It’s not that I mind carrying 45 pounds of canoe and cargo for 1/2 mile; it’s that what I normally do on a Sunday afternoon involves HBO, a platter of brownies, and my couch. I appreciated that adversity and physical challenges are productive enterprises for the human spirit, but my spirit had withered into a frail whimper and was babbling in an exhausted stupor about plumbing and my iPad.  If I had set forth from Concord, Massachusetts on the Oregon Trail, I would have gotten as far as downtown Boston.

Shortly after lunchtime, we paddled into a small bay. Parked on the grass surrounding it, Matt’s car glistened in the sunshine. I have never been so deeply moved by the sight of a 2008 Chevy Suburban. We piled our supplies and ourselves in and headed back toward Chicago. On the way home, Matt and Jeanne chattered about our impressive wilderness skills and suggested we make this a yearly event. I looked at them, dumbfounded.

Had we gone on the same trip? Did they think we were even remotely like them? Matt was an avid outdoor enthusiast. I flunked Girl Scout Camp. Jeanne thought the tents were cozy. I think roughing it is sleeping on sheets that are less than 600 count. They like a roof of stars over their heads. I like ceilings with chandeliers. Were these two people really our friends? Could our friendship endure the fundamental differences exposed on a camping trip?

But at the same moment, something very profound occurred to me. I realized that once you’ve shared a squatty potty with someone, you’re pretty much friends for life. So the four of us are going camping again. When hell freezes over.