REAL CAMPING!!!

One day while my husband was outside working on something on the motorhome, a young man walked by and started a conversation about RVing. Then as he was walking away he remarked, “We don’t have an RV. We do real camping.”

We had a good laugh over that, because we had at one time also been so-called "real" campers. Too real! But we got over it. We began to reminisce about our early camping experiences.

My first was with my aunt and uncle, and possibly their oldest daughter who would have been about three at the time, my mom, sister, and me. No tent, no amenities of any kind, and the nearest toilet was about a quarter of a mile away. We spread quilts on the ground, and that’s where we slept, lined up side-by-side like toy soldiers.

I was probably about eleven or twelve then and my sister a year younger—that age when we didn’t like each other very much. But we did have one joint concern. Since our mother was all we had, we didn’t want anything to happen to her, so we slept on the outside and made sure she was safely tucked in the middle next to our aunt. Our uncle was on the other end of the lineup. Of course, my sister wiggled her way in next to mother because she was the youngest. I was not happy!

We were in the woods in a State Park, a place where I was certain wild animals roamed, and there I was exposed like raw, fresh bait in a trap, on the edge of the group. I lay awake imagining the humongous bear that would come out of the woods and carry me away. After my sister got to sleep, I tried to climb over her and shove her to the outside edge, but she promptly woke up and screamed her lungs out. Geesh, could she be annoying! That was one long night of sheer terror for me, and one I wouldn’t ever repeat.

Fast forward about ten years and my sister and I are grown and married, and by now we’re also good friends. We decided to go camping at the same State park with our mom in a roomy tent loaned to us by my aunt and uncle. My husband wasn’t with us because he was on duty defending our country against commies, but my sister’s husband was along to carry heavy things and protect us from wild varmints.

We arrived in late afternoon when the temperature was around 100 degrees with humidity to match. The Congo jungle couldn’t have been more unbearable. We unloaded the car and started pitching the tent. Now in that heat and humidity, this was no easy chore and required some liquid refreshment. Actually, lots of it! Neither my mother, sister nor I liked beer, but we were desperate to cool down and finish the task at hand before we could eat and go to sleep, so we drank sodas until we reached sugar overload, then in desperation tried the beer. Pitching the tent took an incredibly long time!

My brother-in-law had been a big, tough Marine, but obviously he was absent the day they taught tent-pitching. We weren’t having much luck getting it up. We each took a corner and tried to get our side to stay up long enough to stake it, but the tent kept tumbling over. We struggled with it, and giddy by this time from too much cold wet stuff, we kept falling into the center, howling with laughter each time it caved in once again. By the time we finally got the tent to stand on its own, it was late and dark. I’m sure our neighbors were as anxious for us to get the tent up and get in it as we were, but rather than offer to help four obviously camping-deficient folks, they had quietly slipped away to another site.

After eating, we all crawled into the tent and realized there was no way we could sleep there. Four of us huddled together inside that high-humidity, sweaty atmosphere was unbearable! So we crawled back out and made beds on the picnic table and benches. Just then, an army of mosquitoes discovered our fresh, tender flesh and mercilessly began dive bombing us.

We had just managed to adjust to them when we heard thunder and spotted lightning. Within seconds a rip-roaring thunderstorm was on top of us, dumping Arkansas River-loads of rain. It didn’t take much discussion before we grabbed everything and threw it into the tent, which to our amazement was still standing. We crawled back inside, soaked to the bone, and tried to make sleeping nests out of the mess. We just about got settled down again when one of us noticed mud oozing under the edge of the tent.

Okay! This was the moment we knew “Someobody Up There” was trying to get our attention. So even though it was by now close to midnight and we were desperate for sleep, we grabbed everything and chucked it into the trunk of the car to make the two-hour drive to my sister’s home.

I vowed never to go camping again, but a Volkswagen bus would convince me that there were easier ways to camp out. A mattress in the back, a fully stocked ice chest, and we were in tall cotton, as they say in Arkansas. Compared to “real camping,” a Volkswagen bus was heaven!

So would I go “real camping” again? Not on your life, or mine! Not even if I was twenty-two again, or even twelve!