A Bunch of Drunks In the Woods

I used to go camping with my dad and my sister every summer when I was a kid. Those were among the best times of my childhood. However, I have not been out in the "great outdoors" like that in years, at least not before this past weekend. And so, ill prepared for the very purpose, I hopped in my car following work last Friday night and drove out to the middle of nowhere, and by that I am not referring to Susquehanna University. I mean a place where in order to get there, the roads you have to travel on get progressively worse, from interstate to main drag to open road to back road to dirt road to grass approach.

Not long after arriving, I was quickly reminded of Rule #1 of Camping: no matter how hot it may have been that day, it WILL get much colder. The hardy souls who had arrived before me had taken the True Outdoorsman step of building a campfire, but not even True Outdoorsman can stop a wind that makes Mt. Washington feel like a summer breeze. Meanwhile, our "cook" for the evening is busy with the Coleman stove cooking up some steaks and the rest of us are doing what you must do when you are a bunch of guys out in the middle of the woods enjoying nature: drinking a lot of beer. Unfortunately, this only leads to the true experience of man getting back to nature, that of course being having to drift out into the woods and "do your business" behind a tree. Given the amount of alky-hol being imbibed, this was a ritual repeated quite often throughout the weekend.

A couple others show up with their dog and two ferrets (welcome to "Wild Kingdom"), thus setting the stage for the most repeated line of the weekend to be, "DON'T STEP ON THE FERRETS!!!" Our animal guests, however, promptly fall in line with the rest of us, as the dog has its head in the tub of ice keeping our keg cold (if not the keg itself), and one of the ferrets crawls over one of the guy's shoulders and sticks his head in the guy's beer mug.

Now True Outdoorsman has taken the step of putting up tents, which is just fine with me, because even when I was a kid, I was about as coordinated with a tent as Dick Van Dyke was with an ottoman, which is to say not really. That's beside the point, however, as I am without sleeping bag or pillow and the tents are strategically placed (or not) in a different area code from the campfire. Therefore, I did what many of my fellow guys did and piled into the back of my car for the night. Just goes to show you the Boy Scouts are right about something when they say "be prepared". Now, as for their stance on homosexuals, well, that's another column...

I was awoken not very much later by the very familiar tapping noise on the roof of the car that can only be evidence of Rule #2 of Camping: it WILL rain. And naturally, I left my stuff out near the camp fire, in the opposite area code from the fire as the tents. Now, cold and wet, I am truly ready for an uncomfortable night's sleep in the great outdoors (more or less).

The morning comes, way too early I might add, and we all fall in (literally, I tumbled out of my car head over heels) and head back to the campfire for what turns out to be the slowest breakfast ever made. Apparently, the Coleman stove had fallen victim to Rule #3 of Camping: all that pricey LL Bean-type outdoor equipment WILL NOT work like it should. 90 minutes later, we have bacon.

Now being out in the great outdoors gives many a chance to pursue those activities that they would not get to do in Suburbia. We couldn't fish, so some went out in a canoe, and wound up in the pond (let that be an important safety lesson, never paddle drunk). Some laid back and played cards or sat around the campfire (as it was still a windchill of -10) and others enjoyed outdoor activities. Like target shooting. Now, I'm no gun control nutjob, but when I see True Outdoorsman looking to pick off a couple of targets/rodents/insects/whatever, I know enough to stay on the opposite side of the campsite, thank you. Of course, we then truly saw the difference between True Outdoorsman and your typical suburbanite "guy". True Outdoorsman only uses his weapon for its intended purposes. A "guy" takes a BB gun and shoots another guy's hot dog full of BBs while it's grilling on the campfire. True Outdoorsman decides that when the fire is getting low, he is going to get his trusty chainsaw and lay waste to a couple of squirrels' houses. A "guy" tries to bring down trees with EXPLOSIVES (think Jimbo from "South Park"). Actually, it probably wasn't too hard to get firewood, as by this point, we had drank so much and relieved ourselves so often that we had probably killed half the forest.

Meanwhile, us cityfied folk prefer to indulge in our own version of relaxing in the great outdoors, which means cranking up the car stereo and listening to the Sabres game. That, and getting sunburned beyond belief, because even when it's freezing cold, if you're out in the sun all day, it will happen.

All too soon, it's time for me to depart (duty calls back in radioland, unfortunately). However, I consider myself more acclimated to the outdoors now, not to mention burned beyond all recognition. Now I can prepare myself with a list of necessary items for the next time I go to the great outdoors (sooner than 10 years from now). That list would include:

* sunscreen
* sleeping bag
* tent
* stove
* food, and most importantly...
* explosives