Hanging on

 Almost 6 months ago to the day, cold winds blew outside my window, as the woodstove kept us warm and dry inside. My computer screen was lit with hope of a summer day, waking up on top of a mountain in a lean-to. I booked a weekend at Coolidge State Park in Plymouth Vermont. There I would be climbing out of my sleeping bag, joints sore from sleeping on a harder than I am used to surface. I start a fire, the Coleman coffee pot on the fire. I wait for that blissful sound of the coffee bubbling up the funnel into the percolator top. The scent is amazing. The sun filtered through the fog. It’s going to be a great day. I want to remember this feeling of the morning air, the smell of the coffee perking on the fire, and eventually breakfast cooking. I want to remember the birds chirping happily that it is summer and that it is a beautiful day.

Somewhere in a parallel universe that we call reality, we are staring down the barrel of a miserable forecast. With it raining every day during the middle of the week I just knew we had to be safe by the time the weekend arrived. Those were odds that we’re not going to happen, however. Bringing up the weather channel I can clearly see that as far as the forecast goes the skies are turbulent with lots of what meteorologists describe as beneficial rain.

 As I think of the things that I need to pack for this weekend and how much extra work it is to tent camp, everything inside of me says to cancel. But is that what I really want? It’s not like if I stayed home I could get a bunch of the chores done that I want to knock off the list.

I know from experience that it is a weekend like this that is more likely to stick intensely to my memory as the years go by. It is a firing of all the senses to hear rain on the rooftop of the leanto or to fight a smoky fire. What really constitutes recreation? Is it doing something beyond your routine? Is it blue skies and perfect weather? Is it struggling for basic comfort? I honestly don’t think I really know the answer to this. What relaxation, regeneration, or discovery awaits on a weekend when you put yourself closer to the elements that remind us that we are very small, and it’s not really all about us.

I have canceled camping weekends in the past in the promise of terrible weather on the way, only to see one of the most beautiful weather weekends there could be. I imagine my appreciation for those trips would have been spectacular had I stuck with it. 

To cancel would be a mistake. Foil packet meals, keeping warm and dry when the elements suggest otherwise. Being out in nature and really taking in what summer is, wet or dry is what we really need as humans. Our manufactured version of comfort is irrelevant. After all, look at where it has gotten us. As a species, healthwise, we are breaking down and falling apart. I am all too aware that this is because we are removing the natural elements from how we live.

Back in 2016, we camped with our family at Green River State Park in northern Vermont. We canoed out to an island campsite, that after we spent three days there, my niece nicknamed “Hell Island” after noticing that the rain and the wind seemed much more intense than the other sites a quarter mile away. The day we arrived it was beautiful, but after breakfast the second day the skies turned dark and it began to rain and the wind was intense. It had been in the 80s but the temperatures were now falling. I have RA, it does not do well with dropping barometric pressure and cold damp settings. As the second day progressed it got even more intense and the rain poured out of the sky. This has been difficult for me because I spent a lot of years in the military on muddy rainy 40° rifle ranges. I think you get your fill of this in your life and you just don’t wanna do it anymore.

That night the rain never stopped pounding on the tent that my family and I slept in. The wind blew hard all night. We woke up on day three with the ground just absolutely saturated, 51°. All of my extended family members canoed over to our hell island for breakfast. Somehow we managed to get a fire going cooked a lot of food and had a great time spending time together. I had this incredible revelation during this breakfast. My auto-immune condition should’ve made me absolutely miserable, barely mobile. I should’ve been in pain more than normal. I live in pain so the expectation was that it would be even more intense in this miserable weather. But it was the opposite. For the first time in years, I was not in pain. I felt strong and powerful. Something about getting down in the dirt and being a part of it was very healing. It was on this day that I gained a serious understanding and appreciation for the power of being in the natural elements.

So what about canceling? Not me. Well, it’s probably going to be one of those no way but the hard way situation’s, I am sure that this will not be a watered-down (sorry) type of camping experience. This is real life.