From the time I’ve lived here in the last frontier my parents and later boyfriends and then a husband all dragged me out on numerous camping and fishing trips. When I was a kid there was a huge limit on salmon. My family would drive to Copper Center (all of them, aunts, uncles grandma and grandpa) and then they’d fish and can for a long weekend to get our winter’s worth of fish.
Copper river, despite it’s name, is in a grey place. There are grey rocks, grey dust and greeny-grey nearly dead trees (what few of them there are on the freezing cold and stony river-bank. And there we kids would be, no place to play outside, too cold and windy and having to be quiet inside so that the adults could rest up for more fishing and canning.
Then there were the boyfriends. I drink very rarely, so it was my job to drive so that they could sock back the beer (fishing is just really an excuse to drink) while supposedly looking for a good fishing hole. And the there’s the whole camping thing. It’s just non-stop housework, IN HELL. Instead of a nice sink full of soapy water (or preferably a dishwasher) there is cold lake or river water and gritty sand. And to get the water hot, for when you’ve sandscrubbed all the guck out and are ready to wash the dishes, you have to boil it.
Everything you do at home insofar as housework, you still have to do in tents and such, only it’s colder, nastier and takes 10 times as long. If a girl DOES get a second to herself while out camping, there’s nothing to do anyway (I did used to bring books along, but then the jerk would start whining about “doing something” even though HE was just sitting there beside the pole drinking beer).
I once spent an entire summer living in a hunting cabin with no water, electricity or heat. We had to use a wood stove and haul water (and I did this while still commuting an hour both ways to a job as an admin assistant and having to wear office-y clothes). That was horrible.
Oh and as to the “people who don’t like the outdoors don’t like to do anything anyway”? NONSENSE! I love dancing, love my job, (which is active and most of it takes place outdoors), dancing, shopping, plays, concerts, dancing (I did say dancing right? :D).
I get some sort of weird allergic, almost burned reaction to the sun, so mostly I like to be outside when it’s slightly overcast, or preferably with that misty type rain. I will take the dog on the trails, or to the tennis courts to play “boomer” (we have, IIRC, a couple hundred miles of them in the Anchorage muni, Chefguy probably knows for sure). So I do go outside, I just hate the staying there for extended periods of time and/or “roughing” it.
However, even if I were someplace where I was miserably outside in a situation not of my choosing, I wouldn’t “crash and yell” (what was the crashing noise the blue tank shirt lady was making anyway?).
