Choices Including A Decision On What Is Essential

Choices Including A Decision On What Is Essential

The weather was warm, the grass, as always, was a bit brown, but the garden was in good shape except for the squash which died from some sort of fungus. The outside repairs except for two more porch-related projects were done, and the apple trees were coming along nicely with no broken branches now that I had learned to make supports for the heavily laden ones. So now it was time to go to camp. Yes, after all these years, I still go to camp and Boy Scout camp at that.

Camp is really a time for stripping away the unnecessary. Some background might help you understand why that might be so.

Our first week is spent at a primitive camp. Tents and cots, but not much else in the way of amenities.

What to wear is never an issue. No matter what day it is I will be wearing a red T-shirt and shorts. If I run out of shirts, then I will go swimming with one and when it dries, I will have a clean T-shirt to wear the next day. And if it doesn’t get washed, I won’t worry overmuch about it. Fashion at camp is whatever is comfortable, handy, and reasonably clean with the third being pretty far down the decision tree.

If it gets cold, I will slip on my old fleece and my nylon track pants. There will be no choice of which ones because I only bring one of each. When you have to carry everything half a mile to your campsite, you tend to take only what is necessary. The fleece is showing its age with many patches, but warm and light together trump any fashion sense I might have.

There is no electricity so you tend to get up at daybreak and go to bed at a decent hour. But without electricity how do you charge your cell phone and iPad? You don’t have to because you left them at home. We have a strict no-electronics rule, but there is little need for enforcement because there is no Internet and there are no bars on your cell phone. There is also no newspaper and mail is iffy at best. This column was written on paper with a pen. Whoa! Totally retro. But then I had to file it so I grabbed my pack and a hideout tablet, walked two miles one way to an Internet connection, typed in the story, and transmitted it before walking back. When you have to walk four miles to get your e-mail, you probably won’t.

There is more than just doing without some simple things. You also learn to make choices and not rely on shortcuts. For instance, if I walk to the waterfront for a swim and find that I have forgotten my towel, then I have a simple decision to make. I could walk back and get it, but it is a long walk and the hill is steep. Nobody drives and there is no phone service so I can’t take one of the usual shortcuts I might employ back home in Lexington. I will simply do without which means I will dry myself with my T-shirt before walking back to the campsite.

Snacking is hard. There is a camp store, but it is a long walk and it has short hours. Given a choice between a long walk or an afternoon nap, I will probably choose the nap. Last year I spent just $15 at the store in two weeks, most of it on ice cream cups, the rest on popcorn.

Watching mindless TV, or any TV for that matter, is out. A book would be a good thing to bring along. A real book rather than an electronic one. The funny thing is that there is so much to do that there is not a lot of leisure time.

Every day is grilling day because we cook all our own food over outdoor stoves. Here, too, there are choices so you soon learn to balance food preparation and cleanup with the basic thought of minimizing both while still putting a good meal on the table.

I don’t have to drive out to some piece of conservation land for a walk. I have several thousand acres to enjoy and I am right in the middle of it. You walk everywhere so putting in five miles in a day is pretty standard and you get to know a lot of animals. For the past couple of years I have found that if I walk down the main road around 9 PM, I will come across a porcupine just sitting in the road. Maybe this is his version of camp.

One of the best parts of camp is that it gets dark. There are no streetlights. There are no electric lights at all except in the administration building which is far away, and in the showerhouse. The night noises remind you that there are other beings on the planet and in this place. The stars are awesome. Those new to camp tend to bring monster flashlights. I carry a single cell LED light which I use only when there is no moon and even then I use it only as a last resort. One has interesting experiences when trying to walk from the administration building to the campsite without a light on a dark night.

Of course there are the campfires. Skits which were old forty years ago, but which are still funny. Songs. Stories. The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew can only properly be recited around a campfire. “There are strange things done, in the midnight sun, by the men who moil for gold …”

Even the bugs are awesome. Often at night we will light a Coleman lantern which everybody shares for reading and games. Within a few minutes there will be an amazing assortment of winged critters attracted by that light. Bug zappers? Don’t be silly. In two weeks we will be gone and all that wildlife will still be here. It is really their place and we are just summer visitors so we try to tread lightly on the land.

I will arrive back in Lexington, probably in need of a bath, but I will be five pounds closer to my goal of getting back to 184 pounds, I will have taken at least 200 pictures to sort through and post, but then I will look at my overflowing voice and e-mail inboxes and I will realize once again how much time I spend doing things that are necessary, but which two weeks out of every 52 I get to ignore.

“Oh, gosh—I would have called you back, but there was no phone line available and no Internet connection” sounds so much better than “I just didn’t have the time (or desire) to return your call.”

But there is one bad thing about camp. When I come home it takes a long time to lose the feeling that while camp can be physically demanding, overall life there is a lot easier. I will be home in a few days where I will have to sort through 200+ e-mails, several dozen voicemails, and a pile of snail mail which is overflowing the table onto the floor.

I can’t wait until next year …