The Great Outdoors

I feel some small part of me may not be Canadian. I'm at least a 3rd or 4th generation pure Canadian, but I think some part of my being may belong to another country.

I don't have the camping gene. The need/want to stay in a tent in the great outdoors, usually on a long weekend and near 100 other people and about 10000 different bugs.

No, I'm not a girly girl who needs her comforts of home. I can pee in the bush with the best of them, and could care less if I have TV, cell phone or wi-fi at my disposal. The lack of a hot shower gets annoying at times but I can survive.

But some small part of me just doesn't enjoy it. I don't know why, it just is this way.

Miss K. has been bugging us for ages to go camping. She wanted so badly to have a campfire, sleep in a tent and all the other things that go along with it.

We figured with it being labour day weekend we better get to it or it would be next summer before we'd be able to even consider it. We'd purchased a new and bigger tent just recently so why not try it out.

Maybe its all the work that goes into one night of tenting that I don't like? We did nothing but get stuff ready Friday night and Saturday morning. Granted if we camped more often some of the stuff would be more readily available, but my what a pain in the ass.

We wanted to take the boat along too as we were going to be near a large bay so that was added stuff that Big C had to dig out of storage.

On a positive note, we were going to be nowhere near a public campground. Definitely not my idea of fun, with your neighbours tent about 2.5 feet from yours, defeats the purpose of getting away from it all in my books.

Fortunately, we have a couple of friends who have rural properties that lend themselves well to outings like this and that is where we were going to be spending the night, not with partying teens or screaming kids, but somewhere that was actually remote.

Back to my complaints, there's too many bugs. Bugs and me have never got along, extended times in the outdoors never bode well for me even with buckets of bug spray. I'm guessing bathing in a vat of DEET wouldn't help, I'm just a tasty snack for the insects we encounter.

I hate being damp/moist/dewy whatever. Your pillow is damp, your clothes are damp everything just has a certain amount of moisture to it after a night of camping out. 

It's gross. I've been camping where you have to wear a hat and mitts at night its that cold. You can see your breath in the tent if you get my drift, that doesn't bother me, not ideal, but you can cope. It's the damn moisture. You roll over and the pillow at night feels like a wet wipe, not really wet, but it sure as hell ain't dry.

Putting on your clothes is another one, hey lets put on some undergarments that feel like they might grow mold at any minute. Fun? I think not.

We do have a tent now that I can at least pretty much stand  up in to get dressed so that is a bonus and eliminates one of my other complaints of trying to get clothes on while lying on a sleeping bag.

So, I go camping, but part of me hates it just a little bit. Not enough to refuse to go, but enough that it will never be a monthly thing. 

It does make it so much better when your kid had a total blast. Miss K. I think is made for camping. She maybe has a bit of whatever native blood Big C has left in his ancestry, I'm not sure but she took to it like a fish to water.

There was at least 200 extra questions on top of her daily total of 400, but it was good. The look of sheer joy on her face standing by the campfire or in her bed in the tent was enough to make any camping hater just a little softer in the heart.

There was stuff her 3 year old mind just couldn't comprehend, like why we had to take our garbage back home with us in the truck, but others like removing her footwear before going in the tent was second nature.

We had fun, it was nice to sit with Big C after we'd tucked the rugrat in and just talk and watch the crackling fire, listening to the 10 million crickets and other creatures of the night.

It was only one night but it was an escape from the everyday. No chores, no phones, no tv, no shopping, no errands no nothing but hanging out with one another and just having fun.

There are so many things you can give your kid without spending a lot of cash, this was one of those times. She learned lots, had fun, got dirty, laughed and slept hard. What more could you ask for in life?

Til next time…maybe I will have stopped scratching my bug bites...