The Camping Disorder
(Published in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin—November 26, 1995)
The lumbering vehicle pulls off the highway, its labyrinth of rope and twine creaking, and groans to a stop at a toll booth occupied by fresh-faced youths called “rangers.”
Their job is to collect money. After all, the state of California is broke and this is a state campground.
Once the fees have been paid, including those for extra people, extra vehicles, extra dogs and extra breathing, one enters a makeshift village of fellow escapists. The air is festive with flying Frisbees, laughing children on bikes, and canned music.
This is camping in the nineties.
It’s a peculiar ailment of our culture that compels people to abandon perfectly decent homes and travel great distances to live in the dirt. (In other cultures, this is called normal life, and is not generally sought after.)
My family has accepted this malady as inescapable, and we do our part to keep tradition. This summer we chose a beach campground—a clever idea apparently shared by 30 million others.
That’s another thing that will surprise you if you haven’t been camping for awhile—the sheer numbers of people. You thought this was about getting away from it all? This is city life, only without a microwave.
My wife had prepared a pan of brownies to celebrate our return to the outdoors. This was no sooner placed on the picnic table than it was set upon by a band of marauding squirrels and consumed. To do this, they had to get through the sealed plastic lid and several dishes placed on top.
This was our first trauma. It only made things worse to realize we had squirrels that could bench press a small child.
Camping does offer glimpses of the dark side of human nature—the side that causes people to stuff bathroom sinks with paper towels and leave garbage of indeterminate origin all over the floors.
I had occasion to ponder this as I performed the getting-dressed-in-the-bathroom dance. This is a camping ritual which, though immensely entertaining, is best performed in secret. One must get dressed using one hand, while holding all one’s possessions in the other, being careful not to drag any clothing through the inch-deep water on the floor.
The rangers have become jaded by their prolonged exposure to human carelessness. I saw a knowing smirk on the face of one, as I emerged from the bathroom. Hers was a cynicism born from years staring into the abyss of human depravity. I wanted to say, “It wasn’t me! I’m forthright, responsible. I mow my own lawn, pay my own taxes!”
She probably would have said, “Sure,” and walked away.
By our last day, we’d finally become comfortable in our temporary dwelling. We stretched out on our aluminum beach chairs in the dirt, and breathed a long sigh. The squirrels watched passively from a stand of shrubs, twirling nuts around in their little hands. They would wait. They knew that time was on their side. In the end we would retreat, bewildered, back to our civilized refuge, leaving the land to the squirrels, the gulls, the coyotes and the wind.
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