I’ve lived in cities. Don’t like it. I’m a suburban guy. In my case the suburbs are interspersed with wooded lots so in the back yard it is like grandpa’s farm. We have squirrels, raccoons, deer, coyotes, groundhogs and toads. The deer walk up to us but we can’t quite get them to eat out of our hand. The baby raccoons will scamper pretty close if we are sitting out late while burning this weeks fallen branches. The closest neighbor behind me is 200 yards through the woods and across a small stream and I can’t see them.
The lights are just for when you need them. I have dusk to dawn lights on the front and side of the garage but they are pointed down. The motion sensing lights are great. When I drive down the driveway at night the front then side porch lights turn on as I go past, then the rear lights on the house as I pull into the garage. I hardly ever use the big flood on top the two story garage. But on a snowy night I sometimes turn everything on and go out to the road and look at the fantastic glow. It’s like a giant snow dome. But I still ain’t sleeping in the woods.
I didn’t even know it was on a soundtrack, I’ve always known the song from the “Car, Button, Cloth” album. I love the Lemonheads. But have to check out the film.
When I was in high school in Denver, my buddies and I did a lot of 4x4 car camping. Great fun. Then in my early 30’s I moved to the mountains. And camping became sort of pointless. The outdoors and wilderness is right here, at home. AND I have a bathroom and a kitchen and a bed. The fire is in the house in a cast iron stove.
My Wife does ski. I do not any more. My relationship with snow is moving it.
I often told my children we live at camp, you don’t need to camp out.
Son-of-a-wrek often pleaded to go out camping with his buddies in highschool. I knew what they were on about. A big bonfire, lots of cheap beer, hyjinx and maybe girls, if they were lucky. As it were, he rarely got that privilege.
I told him bring the guys here. Somehow that didn’t seem as fun.
Now he has a wife who monitors his boyish need to go to camp. The one his Dad is at.
They still have large bonfires and cheap beer. The hyjinx ain’t happening.
The girls ain’t coming to that stinky place.
We still live at camp. Lots of wilderness 20 steps off my deck.
I have an inordinate fondness for beetles, but like the Beatles too. I am a man of wealth and taste.
But camping? Dirty nature? I was three weeks with the boy scouts. Never looked back after I stopped going.
The best time not to visit the wilderness was a few million years ago. Although there is a lot of it left in Canada, and the cold and bugs can be bad, it is probably more boring than dangerous to the adequately prepared. It still offers some spectacular beauty and interesting encounters. We camped and canoed all over the place growing up; my brother still deeply loves doing that.
But it isn’t for everyone. I know plenty of army folks who feel they have done their share of camping and hope to never do that again. And immigrants who liken hiking in the forest to sleeping in the garage. I generally prefer the comforts of home, but still climb the occasional mountain or paddle a mighty river. But I never much loved hunting or fishing, and never dreamed of becoming a mountain man.
Speaking of bugs I recall reading a story that some men building the ALCAN highway went mad due to the plague of mosquitos that seemed omnipresent and in great numbers.
I’m fascinated by wilderness survival stories. I read about Chris McCandless and doomed Everest excursions. My characters in my own books spend all kinds of time in the woods.
Me? I like a nice hike, preferably at low elevation, on a clearly marked trail.
Sleep in the woods? I have enough existential dread as it is, no thank you.
British evolutionary biologist and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane said once if a god or divine being had created all living organisms on Earth, then that creator must have an “inordinate fondness for beetles.”
