Camping - Right Up There With A Root Canal

June 26, 2009

It’s that time of year when people start enjoying their long-awaited summer holidays.

Some will take a leisurely boat cruise of the magnificent 1000 Islands. Among these seafarers, some will find it necessary to videotape the entire four-hour experience. Maybe they aren’t able to take in the beauty of it all, or maybe they’re counting to make sure there really are a thousand islands. I actually heard one man say to his wife as he videotaped, “We really should come here some day.”

Some tourists are nostalgic for days of yore, and plan a visit to Fort Henry. I’ve been to the Fort many times, and I wonder why the only thing I can remember is how short the people were in the 1800s. Of course, years from now, people of today will be remembered for having mutilated their bodies with eyebrow rings and tongue piercings.

I, personally, go to the Fort and look at those gorgeous military cadets during the tattoo and get a strange hankering for fudge. The only other time I think of fudge is when I’m visiting Niagara on The Lake. They have a plethora of fudge stores. In fact, I went into one store and they had peachy orange fudge named Mildred Roswell. It’s been my personal goal to have a fudge flavour named after me.

The heat of the summer causes us to do crazy things. A friend of mine called me last week and asked me to go camping. This is a new friend, one who doesn’t know my stance on camping. She obviously didn’t get the memo. I don’t know what I expected from her. She’s the fitness type - does hot yoga four times a week. You know hot yoga, where they crank up the heat and you’re forced to do the downward dog in 150-degree temperatures. It’s like paying for a hot flash.

See, this yogic friend thought I was an outdoorsy person. I look the type. I have a Kellogg’s Cornflakes face. People take one look at me and want to take me on a hike. Living on an island doesn’t help. People think that if you live in the country, you must like gardening and baking apple pie. They’re half right. I like to watch people garden while I eat pie I bought from The Big Apple.

I hate camping. Let me say it in a more subtle way. Camping is evil. It’s called camping when I check into a hotel room and discover there is no room service.

My family knows I hate camping - my nieces and nephews, in fact, know me as “Aunty Camping - but I have never “outed” myself on this subject before, mainly because camping advocates are like golf advocates. They think you’re kidding when you say you have no desire to walk around an 18-hole golf course in the heat of the day, trying to get a ball into a little hole. They consider it their personal mission to convert you.

The first lie camping advocates tell you is that it’s so peaceful out there in nature. Well, nature is bloody noisy: all that wind, the grackles and crows getting up at the crack of dawn. Why is it that the ugly loud birds get up early and squawk outside my tent?

And sound carries near the water. You can hear everything people are saying and doing. A bunch of gassy people packed together like sardines. It’s like going to the suburbs -but with a longer commute.

The camping aficionados try to put a spiritual spin on it by saying it’s good for the soul. Not my soul. I can assure you, you will not find camping mentioned in any of the world’s good books: The Bible, The Koran nor the Talmud. Not one of these books mentions camping as part of the soul’s development.

Don’t think my soul didn’t give camping the ol’ college try. I have kept diaries illuminating the many times I’ve attempted to commune with nature after nightfall.

Take this excerpt from my diary, when I was age nine. “Dear Diary: Beneath the twinkling stars, as we picked gray ash off our marshmallows, Mom gave me heck for using starter fluid to light the campfire. She then reassured me my eyebrows would grow back, eventually.”

Or how about this one at age 13? “Dear Diary: During daylight hours, the Girl Guide tent seemed to be pitched on flat ground, but as the night wore on, I found I was on the wrong end of the slant. The blood rushed to my head; the air mattress slowly leaked air until it was one flat pancake. And there, at the Sandbanks, was that one and only rock, which lodged itself in my back, doing permanent kidney damage.”

So around 28 years of age, I stopped trying. I hit bottom. I got married, had kids, then one summer day, my husband said we should go camping; it would be a fun family holiday. He knew about the tent ban; it had been part of our pre-nupt agreement. It was written in that we would never attempt wallpapering or shopping at Ikea together, but somehow, because he is very convincing - he’s a golfer - I agreed. We made our way to the wild woods, this time renting a tent trailer. What is it about a musty smell and centipedes that get a man in the mood to try something exotic?

In the throes of passion, he started spanking - himself. Don’t think it didn’t ruin the mood when he started screaming, “For God’s sake, get the mosquitoes off my twinky!” As we sat basking in the glow of calamine lotion, he wondered if the neighbours had heard us through our soundproof canvas walls. “No honey, I am sure it was sheer coincidence that those nice men came by on their four-wheelers singing the theme song to Deliverance.“

I know it may sound a bit grandiose, but I believe I am the chief activator of violent climate change. On a beautiful sunny summer day I would camp, and then surprise tornados and flash floods would appear out of nowhere and devastate a provincial park within minutes. So I have stopped camping, for my sake, for your sake and, like a bad lover, I’ve given camping one too many second chances. The only sole-full thing I have ever experienced while camping was cleaning the doo-doo off the sole of my Crocks, because apparently bears do sit in my neck of the woods.

P.S.: There have been many studies linking people who like taking boat cruises and visiting forts with people who go camping. OK, there is one study. Mine. I am applying for a grant at the Trillium Foundation but the lady is on holidays. She’s gone camping in Barrie (the tornado capitol of Canada). When she blows back into town, her personal assistant said she’d get right back to me.

Besides being a humorist, Deborah Kimmett is a motivational speaker who inspires groups with presentations through her company, Wit with Wisdom. She is also an author and a regular performer on CBC Radio.

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Categories: Exercise, News..., You're Entitled to My Opinion |

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