The Best Things in Life: Simple Edition

I hear they now make tents from synthetic materials that practically mount themselves

It's a sad truth that we can't always crush our enemies, see them driven before us and hear the lamentations of their women, so occasionally we have to  seek our pleasures in simpler form. Camping is a fine example since it allows one to reconnect with all that green stuff that is often called "Nature", "The Great Outdoors" or "Leafy Hell", while concurrently, after about 24-36 hours, really, really appreciate the complex things of life that we've temporarily and perhaps foolishly abandoned.

It is another sad truth that every time I've gone camping, it has rained. No, that's not quite true. Once, about 30 years ago while camping on the shore of a remote lake in northern Quebec in July, it snowed. The next day it was sweltering and we were swarmed with gnats. Whatayagonnado?

That was quite a trip. We were flown in via seaplane and left to our devices for a week, some 200 miles from civilization and housed in a spacious, if spartan Hudson Bay tent with a central wood burning stove, dinning table and a half dozen cots on the periphery. Because of space and weight limitations in the seaplane, we had to leave half our supplies and a case of beer on the dock so, after two days when our stocks ran out we lived by our wits, armed only with fishing poles and one (1) shotgun loaded with bird shot to scare off curious bears. Thankfully, the lake was teeming with perch and northern pike so we didn't starve. In fact, you could catch a brace of pike in an hour of lazy trolling and these were monsters. Under three foot, we'd throw them back. We did roast a grouse--or was it a ptarmigan?--one evening, so we had some variety in our diet, but otherwise it was fish, morning, noon and night for 5 days. Needless to say, when da plane, boss, da plane returned and dropped us back into the land of milk and honey, the Golden Arches beckoned.

Through the magic of mental editing, I only vividly remember the better moments from that trip, and the best of all was when once, in the middle of the night, I stepped out of the tent to discover a sky ablaze with stars such as I had never seen, nor since, having never been so far from the ambient light of civilization. The Milky Way was a vast white slash of God's paintbrush across the sky and every star (billions and billions of stars) shown and shimmered--no vibrated--brighter and more intensely than the neon sign down at the local bar and grill. I stood there for long minutes agape and in awe, actually a little frightened at the immensity of it all, while a loon called out from the far shore. Until I remembered I had to pee.

C'mon dog, jump in the boat...

All of that is prelude to the news that I went camping last weekend and as the morning overcast took on a menacing tone, I began mounting the old tent. I hear they now make tents from synthetic materials that practically mount themselves, but I believe that a real man should know how to raise a musty, old, canvas tent with 54 separate aluminum pole sections (that only fit together one (1) way), in the rain.

Although it rained Saturday afternoon and night (Sunday was perfect though, thankfully), and although we had plenty of food and libation, there is still a simple pleasure in lying in a tent listening to the patter of raindrops on the fly tarp and enjoying the light show of passing thunderstorms illuminating the canvas. That said, a four-star hotel with heated swimming pool has it's virtues too.

...missed it by thaaat much.