Camping

Camping can be a wonderful thing. For me it is about preparing and eating food in the open air, the smell of the campfire, the wind in the pines, an interface with the natural world that is a little closer than the one I experience from from desk at work, or my urban backyard. It is also about adventure, since nature is always a bit unpredicatable. The last time I went camping we had a tornado evacuation from our tents in the middle of the night, and two visits from bears. When you are in a tent, a visit from a bear can be pretty terrifying, even if said bear is more interested in bacon grease left on a grill than in the contents of said tent. You just never know.

This year, three couples and an extended family headed north into the depths of the Hiawatha National Forest in the upper Penninsula of Michigan. Experienced campers all, we were ready for anything—or so we thought.

We arrived on Saturday on a gorgeous, sunny day and set up our tent and screened picnic table shelter. We were a little nonplussed by the small village next to us, populated by a dozen people and a dog, and anchored by a huge RV and a large pickup truck, but they kept to themselves. We had a plan for locking our food in the car each night, but bears and other wild creatures were no problem at all, for reasons that slowly became clear. The campground faced a small blue sparkling lake marred only by the motorboat that pulled tubers (not potatoes, the other kind) in a tight circle for several hours. Nevertheless, we found our friends in scattered sites and, over the constant whining from the motorboat engine, we had fun sharing beers on the small beach on the lakeshore.

The next morning we were surprised to find that the entire neighboring village had decamped without even waking us in our tent. By the end of the day, we would miss them, desperately.

Around noon, a new group arrived—an RV and several trucks in the adjoining site, other groups scattered around the campground, with all of their teenagers clustered together in a site adjacent to ours on one corner. Within minutes of their arrival, Megadeath and their ilk boomed at top volume from the teenagers’ powerful car speakers, and continued until we asked the parents to intervene at 11:30 pm.

The next day was spent away from the campground in an exploration of the beautiful National Lakeshore. Shortly after our return at 7pm, Megadeath started up again with an effect not unlike having teeth drilled without novacaine. At 10pm, the hour when all audible electronic music was supposed to stop, we asked the parents to quell Megadeath, and requested that the camphost make an appearance to enforce the rules at site 28, equally loud, though in a different genre. The camphost made one slow circuit in his Pinto, the music dying on his front bumper and swelling at his back. Shortly after his ineffectual patrol, I wandered over to site 28 and asked them to turn off their music. The volume level of the music pouring from the open doors of the pick-up would have resulted in a police call in any more urban area. They irritably turned it down a notch but would not turn it off. Our friends who abutted their campsite reported that it played all night—again. Sleep-deprived, they planned to pack up and leave a day early.

We enjoyed a relatively quiet evening, turned in, and planned to leave a day early with the last of our friends. When we woke up on Tuesday morning, it was to find that we had ignited a campground war of sorts. Campsite 28 made his displeasure known by means of a two-fingered salute and slow rotation in view of our friends, We did not have a direct view, so had invectives hurled at us as we broke camp. Site 29 had not spoken to us since apologizing for the attack of their three dogs as Tom walked the path to the latrine. They were clearly trying to stay out of the line of fire.

Our next door neighbor at site 31 amused himself by standing at the edge of his site with a pugnacious stance, radiatating anger and staring at us for almost three hours—from the time we woke up to the time we drove away. When Megadeath started up again at 10am or so, we asked the teenagers to turn it down. He screamed at them to turn it up—because we might leave faster—and then screamed that we were unwanted, should leave, and never return. Damn—I was all set to book another Hiawatha camping vacation! Then, in a classic Bre’r Rabbit move, Mr. Site 31 decided that the teenagers were not annoying enough and he cranked his own music to everything his truck could produce. His taste in music was much more bearable to us, and once Megadeath was drowned out, we were able to continue breaking camp without screaming, though we did have to lipread as we coordinated our efforts. Tom noted that he played “Now You’re Messing With a Son of a Bitch” no fewer that four times—a subtle move that was lost on me.

The fantasy ending to this story: Shortly after we pulled out, a forty foot RV rumbled in to take our place. A bunch of burly retired law enforcement types spilled out of the huge pick up and unloaded a couple of cords of wood before firing up the generator on the RV. Popping the tabs on their beers, they opened the doors of their pick up, cranked up their sound and started in on 8 hours of the best of international opera, until precisely 10pm.

The real ending: We drove away with one more stop—the campground dumpster. We drove slowly down the road and hadn’t spotted it yet, when we saw a woman walking towards us. We stopped to ask for directions to the dumpster, but before I could open my mouth, she introduced herself as one of the women camped in Site 31, and tearfully apologized at length that her husband and his immature friends had ruined our vacation, not to mention serving as horrible role models to all of the teenagers camped with them. I thanked her for her words, but as we drove away I felt nothing but sadness for the fact that we could drive away, but she could not, or had not.

Fantasy ending number 2: For Ms. Site 31, this is the last straw. She has had it with Mr. 31’s anger at her, at their kids, at the world. She can’t stand his friends and she secretly longs to camp in a tent instead of an RV. She leaves him, takes the kids, and ends up with a really nice guy who owns the Ace Hardware store in Munising.

Now that really is a fantasy.