The Great Outdoors

I thought I enjoyed camping. With 3 sons, all in Scouts, it was inevitable that sleeping outside on hard earth with just a thin layer of nylon held up by a couple of poles as protection would emerge as a favorite thing to do. My two older sons are Boy Scouts now, and they camp at least once a month. They've hiked the Appalachian Trail (where bears also hike), they've slept in caves (where bats also sleep upside-down), they've eaten meals in swamps (where crocodiles also eat their meals), and they've slept through some of the wildest, most intense southern thunderstorms imaginable (like the kind of storm that sent Dr. Emmett Brown back to 1885 in "Back to the Future 2"). Yes, there are inherent dangers to sleeping in the great outdoors...bears top the list, followed closely by snakes, skunks and lightning strikes. Further down the list you'll find racoons, poison ivy, falling tree limbs, and ridiculously loud snoring.

But camping, at its core, is really an exercise in tolerance. How much can you tolerate, and for how long? My wife Laurie refuses to camp under any of the conditions I've highlighted above. Her tolerance level is at the low end of the spectrum, virtually non-existant. In fact, to get her to camp outside, I would need to provide electricity (for her hairdryer and curling iron), and I'd have to guarantee mild temperatures in the range of 62-78 degrees. I would also have to guarantee that no other human being besides our immediate family would lay eyes on her in the morning until she's had a chance to do her hair or fix her makeup. And one last caveat, there would need to be a shopping mall within 15 minutes of the campsite...otherwise we're in far too remote of an area for her comfort level.

My youngest son is 7, and he's yet to experience a full campout. He's new to Scouting, and there will be plenty of opportunities very soon, but he was envious of his 2 older brothers this Summer when they disappeared for a week at Summer Camp in North Georgia. I felt bad for him, so I decided to offer him the "sampler" version of camping in the Great Outdoors...namely the "Backyard Campout". We set up our tent no more than 15 feet from our back door. To prepare for the night away from the comfort of our home, we loaded the tent with a laptop and DVDs and books and fresh microwaved popcorn. We inflated air mattresses and threw in our fluffiest pillows and most comfortable blankets. And then, since it was the middle of summer, we brought in our battery-operated heavy-duty industrial-strengthed fan to be placed somewhere in the vicinity of our heads all night long. It was gonna be great!

We set the tent up before sunset and decided to keep the rain fly off since it promised to be a warm, clear night. After sunset, Christopher was busy playing a video game, and I was watching a pretty good ballgame on TV, so we delayed our outing until after 9PM. When the time came, we kissed Laurie goodnight and headed for the long trek from our back door to the tent. Took about 8 seconds, door to door. Once inside the tent, after watching a movie, eating some popcorn,

and reading some books, we turned off the light and attempted to sleep. Christopher was excited to be out there, but eventually he faded off to sleep.

Then the noises began. First, a wild animal brushed up against the side of the tent near my head. Skunk? Racoon? Or that most-dreaded of all residential rodents...the grotesque Opossum with the cone-shaped head and the evil, beady red eyes? No, just Jack...our curious pet cat. His purring gave his identity away. He was attempting to test his claws on my brand new over-priced tent from REI, so I smacked his back leg through the tent. Disaster averted. I laid my head back down on my pillow. 10 minutes later I noticed faint flashes of lightning. Stupid weather forecaster said no chance of rain. I intently watched the skies...measuring the frequency and intensity of the lightning. After determining that the storm was indeed getting closer, I

gathered the laptop, the DVDs and the books and took them into the house. I returned to the tent and, for a few minutes, contemplated picking up Christopher and taking him to his bed and calling it a rainout. He would have never known the difference...but I just couldn't do that to the kid. So I crawled back in the tent and, now wide awake, tried to fall asleep. Naturally, I couldn't. I turned the fan off to see if that would help me fall asleep. The lightning faded away and stopped, but next I heard the amazing sound of an owl in the woods down my street...sounded like it was 2 or 3 houses down. Cool sound! But a few minutes later I heard another owl, much closer in the woods behind my home, but this owl didn't sound "real". In fact, to me it sounded like a human trying to immitate an owl..."woo, woo-hoo". Every time the real owl hooted down the road, the phoney owl in my backyard gave its awkward reply. And each time, it sounded more and more like a fake owl..."woo, woo-hooo". As fascinated as I was by this, I began to

wonder, "Is there some sort of deranged stalker lurking in my backyard woods pretending to be a nocturnal bird?" Has he been doing this for years without us knowing about it? An escaped asylum patient perhaps? (I'm not sure where the closest Asylum is, or if they're still called "Asylums" for that matter, but the mind does strange things when camping).

Eventually I think I drifted off to sleep. Only to be awoken by the sound of an animal walking through the pinestraw of my backyard woods. No mistake about it, this was a heavy-sounding animal. Then suddenly the walking turned to an all-out sprint through the woods with a trailing beast-like growling noise. Definitely not one of our cats. Perhaps a coyote or a fox? But honestly, to me it sounded more like a half-man/half-wolf of some sort...either that or a prehistoric raptor.

Or was it that escaped Asylum patient, up to his old tricks?

Now I was wide awake...and we weren't even close to sunrise. Christopher of course was sound asleep. I couldn't get comfortable. To make matters worse, the $75 inflated mattress pad under my sleeping bag obviously had a leak, because I was now pretty much sleeping on solid earth. I turned the fan back on, to try to drown out the noises of my ridiculously weird and annoyingly loud backyard. Backyards are a lot like neighbors...the more you learn about them, the less you wished you knew.

As dawn approached, a stark reality dawned on me. There's a reason I sleep inside my house. There's a reason I sleep on a firm mattress. There's a reason I lock the doors at night. There's a reason I don't go for walks in my woods after sunset. And there's a reason camping is fun ANYWHERE BUT your own backyard!