Old trees and dirty feet
It's funny. People pay a lot of money for pretty basic human comforts while on airplanes (e.g., the ability to move your legs), and yet no one actually looks forward to "Economy comfort." Meanwhile, you can go camping, where you willingly give up cleanliness, privacy, plumbing, and intricate foods, for super cheap, and have a pretty wonderfully memorable time.
Last Friday I headed up to Sequoia with one of my best friends, her boyfriend, and a bunch of strangers, all of whom I am sure I will add on Facebook in the next few days.
Growing up, camping was the enemy. There are two reasons for this:
(1) The most popular saying in my household was, "we're camping." What did that mean? It was basically my dad's answer to any and all of the whining, or foreseeable whining, between me and my brothers. Don't like the food Mommy made for dinner? "We're camping." You tore your knee open on an unpaved road because you jumped off your skateboard and now you don't want Mommy to be the one to give you stitches? "We're camping." We have to do yard work in North Carolina in July?* "Camping."
It didn't take that long for all of us to figure out that my dad was trying to teach us the valuable lesson that Camping, and all of its related activities, is the worst thing anyone could ever dream of doing. Why some families actually did this, together, on purpose, completely baffled me.
(2) That one time Momma and Poppa Smith did decide we'd go camping, they really did try to give us a good time. Well, THEY had a GREAT time laughing at us from their rented RV while us Smith children were left to fend for ourselves out in our tent: my oldest brother kicking me and my middle brother while us two younger Smiths shrieked like girls at the animals moving about our tent. (Part of me is pretty sure this behavior is excusable for parents who have sired three children. The other part of me is in therapy.) Anyway, there were S'mores, there were cousins, what could go wrong? Well, a gang of hungry raccoons prying the windows of our Suburban down with their mangy robber hands so that they could eat all of the food from our car, and then shit all over our car, is what could, and did, go wrong. To make up for it, my parents took us to a Jacksonville Jaguars game. I don't know which was worse. Actually, I do. The raccoons eating all of our food, and then shitting all over our car, was worse.
Considering the above, was it such a surprise that I didn't even know what my college boyfriend meant when he said he wanted to go "hiking" in Arizona? I remember seeing the confusion in his face when I said, "Listen, I have a good attitude, but I hope I don't embarrass myself in front of your parents when I can't handle any ropes, and I don't have any special shoes..."
Yes, people, I was nineteen years old and didn't know the difference between rock climbing and hiking. Needless to say, things didn't work out between me and my college boyfriend.**
Klaus Streusel, a Florida native, enjoying his time around the fire
Fast forward six years, and I find myself marveling at how there isn't really any kind of activity that sounds downright horrible to me so long as I'm with people whose company I enjoy. I could make some kind of broad-sweeping statement about what has changed about me, blah blah blah, but I haven't really changed that much, I have just realized that the world is not going to end if I put my own dirty feet in my sleeping area. Like doing North Carolina yard work, jumping off skateboards, and eating Crunch 'n' Munch --- all of which I accomplished by age eight --- everything will be alright so long as there are eggs and a hot (or cold) shower at some point in my future.
Photo by M. Fisken. We're tall tall trees, not afraid to show our limbs and double chins.
More importantly, just as much as I've found that I've distanced myself from the mind I had when I was young, sometimes I forget what a normal part of my day it was to run around barefoot outside without fear of dirtying my clothes, hurting myself, or looking silly.
And yes, this is why camping is not actually the worst activity. I don't kid myself into believing I'm connecting to a more primitive form of humanity. I am pretty sure that 82% of us, myself in the 20th percentile of this group, would die in about three weeks without access to modern synthetic materials. It's really more about giving some love to the senses that you forgot even existed in the first place. Lifting your eyes up to the sky (not down to a screen) to catch some stars, listening for critters, and taking in deep whiffs with your nose without any fear of smog or stank. You're a kid again, and you didn't even realize you were grown.
Now, of all of the things you can do outside, bathing has got to be my number one. Despite everything I just said, it must have been nice for cavemen and Middle Earth people to take a break from trying not to get mauled by pumas to wash all the layers of dirt off of their bodies and cool off for just enough time that they didn't have to pluck leeches away from their skin. After all, Mother Nature is certainly more of a laissez faire provider; a moment in which an animal enjoys her life with little effort on her own part is a rare one. Deep down in us all, such peace demands to be savored.
With that in mind, I knew I was going to have to force my pale, cold-fearing, East Coast ass into this creek for some scrubbin':
Think of it as a hot tub. A 50 degree, leech-infested hot tub.
I won't lie. When I first put my feet in, I howled (a girly howl) in pain. "I'm going to hate this I'm going to hate this I'm going to hate this BUT I HAVE TO IT WILL BE GOOD." And in I went, and I really did hate it a little bit. My skin immediately turned red and my feet slipped all over the mossy rocks underneath them. But, knowing what was good for us, my dear friend and I found the best rocks to perch our feet on so that we could throw our hair back into a little waterfall. Right before water went up my nose, I opened my eyes with my head thrown back. I couldn't keep a grin off of my face, there it was: the sun, a Carolina blue sky, lined with sequoias, while I pressed my head back into the water and moss, for just a second. It wasn't a zen garden in Hawaii, but I couldn't complain.
I shouldn't have to tell you why.
*Filled with undying love for California and its people though I am, y'all are complete babies when it comes to heat. I will give you this: you swim happily in waters I would not dare place my baby toes into. But when temperatures creep above 70, you start melting and cranking the AC. Therefore, the following statement needs context: North Carolina in July is in the high 90s with about the same humidity. These are basically "conditions" enough to recreate that first scene of The Hot Zone for an Average Californian. Indeed, there aren't enough avocados or bro tanks in the world to remedy the discomfort of the sweet, sweet swamp ass one earns from moving some sticks around on a July 4th weekend in the South, let alone actually physically exerting yourself. During these times, even natives struggle to justify taking showers. What's the point? Even with cold water, you're sweating from the time you enter the muggy bathroom to when you're sitting as still as possible in your towel, now mildewed, wondering when would be a sensible time to put your clothes back on.
**He was from Asheville.