The Uhler clan has never been accused of being outdoorsy. My father told some stories about fishing and him sleeping on the beach when he was younger. There were a few years where my brother and I would go fishing with my dad and grandpa. But outside of that, the most outdoorsy thing I did as a kid was play in the woods (a lot) and sleep in my friend Ed’s backyard a few times.
Ed had an old tent that to my pip little kid eyes seemed palatial. I think it was canvas and slept twelve. It had that musty old tent smell to it. Being the young mischief makers that we were, we used the unsupervised opportunity in Ed’s backyard tent to load bb guns with incense sticks (not lit) and shoot them at each other. We’d line up in teams on the opposite sides of the tent. We’d use our pillows as shields. Sometimes, we’d throw things at each other, and other times, we’d just charge into the middle of the tent and beat each other silly in some form of war. I’m sure someone got hurt. Someone always gets hurt.
In college, I took up hiking. I loved getting out on the trails, finding good mountain top views, and eating at the greasiest little diner on the way home. I kept this up for a few years after college. Sometimes friends would go, sometimes my ex-wife would go (she wasn’t my ex then). For a while we would mark down in the hiking book who went on which hikes, and where we ate. We did this often enough that I once bought a tent as a joint gift for me and the ex. I have the tent with me as a backup. Then everyone became adults with adult responsibilities. Taking an entire day to hike, much less a weekend, became too much of a commitment.
I’ve since done a handful of solo trips. Some local and some long distance. The most notable road trip hikes were two days in the Smokies, two days in western Virginia (not far from here), and now two days in Shenandoah. Despite the amount of hiking I’ve done, last night I camped for the first time in my life. Today I mapped out my own hike (using GPS) and spent 7 hours in the woods hiking a little over 13 miles. Both the camping and the hike have absolutely kicked my ass.
When I rolled into the campsite around 2pm yesterday, it was foggy, misty and cool. It’s been that way the entire time I’ve been here. I don’t know if the temperatures have gotten much above sixty and the damp mist makes everything feel clammy and almost bone chilling. The first thing I wrote (sometime around dinner time) was “A dense fog shrouds the trees. Wood smoke fills the misty air.” And then, once I got bored (no fire pit) and fed up with being misted on, I retired to my tent and made a list of things I’d like to have:
Sweatpants/track pants to sleep in (I only have jeans and shorts)
A chair to sit by the fire pit (or anywhere other than the picnic bench)
Wood for the fire pit
An axe to chop the wood
Parents or partners who would have shown me how to do this
A knit cap (mostly for appearances)
Every aspect of camping is new to me: from how the campsite is set up, to the fire pit, to making coffee and cooking on a camp stove. All this newness means plenty of things to be anxious about. What if I can’t get the stove started? What if I do something wrong that attracts a bear? What if I violate some unwritten piece of camp etiquette? Quite honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from car camping – maybe a big field with lots of RVs. Instead we each have our own little parking spot, a flat piece of land next to us, a picnic table, and a fire pit. Some have a storage bin. I’m also surprised by how many people are here and how close we are – campsites are about 50 feet apart. Among most of the campers here, I have the smallest and simplest setup. While there are more than a few RVs, there’s also some pretty elaborate, big, and multi-tent set ups. Some people have set it up so that they have a screened in porch over their picnic table – that would have prevented me from being rained on as I ate my soup. By comparison, I have a small pop-up tent. It fits me, but it’s not roomy. I can sit up in it, but not stand.
By 7:30 or 8:00pm I was in my tent. I had some books and my notebook, an LED lantern, a blanket to put under my sleeping bag, my pillow and some clothing to put under my pillow, and my sleeping bag. I tried to read and I tried to write, but couldn’t. Instead, I listened to the other campsites, the occasional pop of wood in a fire pit, the sounds of wind and maybe animals rustling, and the rain shaken loose from the trees pelting my tent. For the longest time, I sat there trying to get comfortable and also trying to decide if I should go pee one more time (I’ve had a lot of nervous peeing on this trip). I didn’t really want to walk over to the bathroom in the damp dark, but I also didn’t want to have to do it later. I went and peed.
The next thing I wrote was, “sleeping on the ground and the bony parts hurt.” My hips, shoulders, elbows m, and ribs bore the brunt of not having some sort of pad beneath me. Add it to the list. It took a while to get comfortable and at one point I felt flush – later when the temps dropped into the upper 40s, I’d wake up shivering. The worst part… was that I was angled with my head downward and I didn’t have enough pillowing to prop me up. This gave me awful acid reflux…
Today I hiked. And hiked and hiked and hiked. I spent my morning drinking my French press coffee, eating some oatmeal, and mapping out a circuit hike. I overdid it – 7 hours, 13 miles, and 3,000 ft. of climbing, about 1,000 of which came in the last two to three miles of the hike when I was tired, my feet were wet and sore, my back hurt, and I just wanted to be done. Were I in better shape, it might have been easier. Were I more practiced (this is my first hike in months, maybe over a year), it might have been easier. Just like scalding the roof of my mouth on too hot pizza, and hurting myself when I try to work out, I tend to practice low impulse control and bite off more than I can chew…
Back at camp, where it was still wet and foggy, I moved gingerly about my site as I put things away and cracked open a beer. I took off my shoes and socks and saw that my big toe had blister the size of another toe. Not great. After drinking about half of my beer, I drove over to showers where I plunked in $5 worth of quarters and took one of the longest, hottest, showers of my life. At one point I contemplated just staying in until the water shut off, but it never did. I’m not even convinced I need to put the quarters in. I drove back, tried to put some things in order, cooked more soup, cleaned up, then sat in my car writing while I charged my phone.
In my tent, the ground still hurts, and I’m sore from the hike. There’s still the sounds from the other campers, and the rain from the trees plinks my tent and car like an off-tempo snare drum. I’ve rearranged things so that I’m facing the other way, and I’ve brought in with me a few more hoodies to put under my pillow. They’re calling for spotty showers tomorrow and with the blister and the body aches, I probably won’t hike.
The theme that’s been running through my head for much of this part of the trip is anticipation. I anticipate things. As I drove towards Shenandoah, at least twice I reached for my wallet to retrieve my park pass. The entrance was nowhere in sight, but I found myself reaching for it anyway. I like to have things in order. As I hiked, I frequently looked at the map to make sure I was doing it right even though there were no turns or other trails to be on. Though at the end of the hike, I was checking the map to see how much further I had to go and pleading with it to give me good answers. When I first set up my camp stove, it didn’t light right away. Because I was worried about blowing the place up – or looking stupid – I googled a video to make sure I had done it right (I had – I just didn’t have the knob turned high enough). Not only do I try to anticipate problems and outcomes, I have a fear of doing things wrong, or being in the way, or disturbing other people. You can imagine the horror I felt when at 7:30 this morning I tried to charge my phone and my car automatically started playing loud music from my phone (Primus).
I don’t know how to do any of this: camp, wander aimlessly, loosen the grip on wanting to have control. And while I don’t necessarily need someone to show me these things, I am the type of person who learns best in groups or from watching someone else (preferably someone more experienced than I am) go first. I’m trying to be less anticipatory. I’m trying to not spend my time thinking and planning the next step. I’m trying to give up the sense of efficiency that I apply to most aspects of my life. Maybe what I’m doing is a form of chasing youth… an attempt to throw off the shackles of a scheduled and busy world… an attempt to get back to learning how to fail on a more regular basis… an attempt to try new things, and be stupid like a group of kids shooting incense sticks at each other on a summer night. I don’t know how to do any of this – which seems to be the point.