My Camping Firsts

Camping

I went camping about a month ago. I am not cut out for camping. I did experience a lot of firsts though:

• First time riding as a passenger in a minivan.
  
• First time having my bags stored in a storage canvas strapped to the top of the roof of a minivan.
  
• First time sleeping with my brother in a twin sized bed.
  
• First time pooping in an outhouse.
  
• First time paddling a canoe.
  
• First time portaging a canoe.
  
• First time sleeping in a tent.
  
• First time sleeping in a tent with my brother.
  
• First time pooping a hole in a forest.
  
• First time drinking water from a lake.
  
• First time sleeping in complete silence.
  
• First time having mice and chipmunks run over my tent at night.
  
• First time guiding a canoe in by lamplight.
  
• First time seeing a guy almost start a forest fire because he burned all of our kindling at once.
  
• First time traveling with a chain smoker.
  
• First time I've sat in a car where someone was smoking in it.
  
• First time I went to Minnesota.
  
• First time I've been to the Boundary Waters.
• First time being chewed alive by horse flies.
  
• First time wearing knee length wool socks with sandels to stop being eaten alive by horse flies.
• First time dehydrated while paddling a canoe.
• First time I saw more than one shooting star at night.
  
• First time living off a sack of desiccated food. (It was heavy.)
  
• First time I've stopped every 45 minutes on a 10 hour car trip.
  
• First time riding 25 miles on a gravel road.
  
• First time petting a one-eyed dog. (Ruby was sweet.)
  
• First time I played with a forest cat. (She looked like Misty if Misty weren't Persian.)
  
• First time I saw two men sleep together in a minivan.
  
• First time I became angry with someone for his being able to kill a frog.
  
• First time I have vacationed only with guys.
  
• First time I've ever gone four days without a cold beverage.
  
• First time I intentionally took Imodium as a preventive measure to keep me from having to poop again in a hole in the forest.
  
• First time I camped with someone afraid of the dark.
  
• First time I camped with someone who mistook chipmunks for bears.
  
• First time I wished I would rather be at work than on a trip.
  
• First time I've spent 5 days away from Erika when it wasn't a business trip.
  

There were some lasts:

• Last time I'll camp only with guys.
  
• Last time I'll portage a canoe.
  
• Last time I'll stop every 45 minutes on a ten hour car trip.
  
• Last time I'll go to the Boundary Waters.
  

And the biggest first:

When I got back from this trip (It cannot be called a vacation), I read a commentary by Garrison Keillor that was the first thing he has written where I couldn't stop laughing so hard, because it summed up the trip so well:

"What truly cheers me up through these dog days of summer is the thought that two old friends of mine are up north on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and that I am not there with them. I am here, reading the paper, and if I wanted to go to a movie, I could go, and if I wished to use a flush toilet, I could do that, too. But for the grace of God, I could be sitting on the ground, filthy, embittered, a homeless person, eating freeze-dried food and listening to the Master Woodsman tell you what a great experience you're having and meanwhile the woods are not lovely, just dark and deep, and a cloud of mosquitoes has come out to avenge the white man's colonizing of North America. I have been on canoe trips, I know what goes on.

Every canoe trip has a self-appointed Master Woodsman. In civilian life he may be a mild-mannered clerk in a cubicle, but out on the trail he is transformed into the song leader, pathfinder, the great helmsman, the tier of correct knots, and the authority on bears. He shows you how to do everything except the things you really need to do, such as 1) move your bowels in some dignified manner and 2) get out of here and find a hotel. Your body aches from sleeping on the ground, your bowels have turned to stone, and you are thinking about "Lord of the Flies" and what it says about the fragility of civilization, but he is relentlessly upbeat. And then it dawns on you: Your suffering is what turns him on. The man is a sadist." -- Garrison Keillor, "No wonder they called him Turd Blossom" August 15, 2007