Last weekend, I can’t really say I came full circle in my camping life, but it did kind of feel like that in some way.
First off, I guess an analysis of what constitutes the ‘circle of camping’ is in order. Since a circle is essentially a curved line, if we stretch it out, on the one end we have survivalism and on the other glamping.
I’ve never done the former, i.e., been dropped off in the bush with nothing but a blade of some kind and maybe a piece of flint.
I have never done the latter either, i.e., camped with all the comforts of home, but in the woods.
The majority of my camping life, I’ve been on various points of the spectrum in between.
When I was a kid, my family did car camping. We slept in tents on foam, cooked over an open fire or on a Coleman stove and lived outdoors. Not exactly “roughing it” but also not luxurious by any means.
In those days there were not very many RVs in the campgrounds where we stayed, but when we saw them, we looked upon them somewhat disdainfully as “not really camping.” Ah, the arrogance of youth.
When I got out on my own in my late teens and 20s, I was all about roughing it. We sought out the campgrounds you couldn’t drive into (or made our own). If we couldn’t carry something on our backs, it did not come.
Sometimes it would involve a small tent, other times it was sleeping under the stars, but it was always on the ground or on one of those razor-thin neoprene things you could tie onto the bottom of a backpack.
As the years wore on, I started making small concessions eventually finding my way back to car camping when I had young kids of my own.
Later still, I started transitioning to comfort camping, the biggest concession being a proper mattress and sheets and blankets rather than sleeping bags. It was still tents all the way, though, and RV camping was still not camping.
Some readers will likely recall that I lived in an RV for several years when I returned to northwest B.C. because of the abysmal rental situation in these parts. While it was parked in an idyllic camping-like setting, I didn’t consider it camping. While not a house, per se, it was my home and had most of the creature comforts of a home, although I did miss having a proper kitchen.
The trade-off was that it afforded me the outdoorsy lifestyle (best of both worlds?).
Once I graduated to a real house again in an urban environment, I did miss the outdoorsy lifestyle, though.
So, we traded in my former home for something smaller and last weekend we took it on a test run to Lakelse Lake.
There were a lot of firsts associated with the weekend. For one, it afforded me one of those ‘manly’ moments. I’ve had a driver’s licence for about 43 years, but never, have I ever, backed up a trailer. It took me about a dozen tries, but I finally managed to maneuver our new home away from home into its spot.
I know in this day and age considering backing up a trailer as being ‘manly’ doesn’t really fly, but I can’t help how I feel about it.
But is it camping?
At this stage of my life, it’s camping enough for me.
