Camping or Vamping?

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“There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm.” –Theodore Roosevelt African Game Trails, 1910  

I came up with a word: boring.

When we say something like that, adventure-seekers and wildlife enthusiasts have two words to describe us: city slickers. That’s not good-natured ribbing either. It’s a harsh condemnation as far as they’re concerned, and we can feel their intent soon after they say it. We could try to defend ourselves, but what’s the point? It’s true. We are city slickers who prefer the creature comforts of city-life and technology, and we know it has probably made us all soft and gooey from the inside and out, but we can’t admit that. We have to pretend we’re strong, rugged individualists who could survive in the wild with nothing but a blade and a canteen, because we feel guilty for living the easy life, and we’re a little jealous of the experiences that hardened these outdoorsmen. Are they true survivalists though? Do they know enough to know what they’re supposed to know, or are they just making it up as they go along? Could they compete with a Theodore Roosevelt in the wild, in the harsh conditions he probably experienced, or are they a hybrid between those who are accustomed to modern conveniences and technology combined with our modern definition of the rustic, rugged life? Are they experienced campers or vampers? 

We all heed the call of the wild, and the need to step away from convenience and comfort to escape civilization and embrace our untamed/wild instincts to let our primal nature hang out for all to see. We know it’s just good for the soul to have experiences that teach us more about ourselves. “You’ll never know who you are, who you truly are, until you’re backed into a corner.” And that sounds so romantic that if we brought it up in front of a group, almost all hands would go flying up from those who want to join us on our planned expedition. Some hands will even turn into fists, as they shout, “Yeah, gimme some a that!” But the minute we start darkening spots on a calendar, those hands, smiles, and eyebrows all go down. “Something tells me I’m going to be busy.” 

The concepts behind achieving a true Theodore Roosevelt spirit, seeking adventure and meaning in nature is such a romantic notion that city-slickers can’t but help but want some of that for themselves for at least one weekend, but we always fail. “It doesn’t matter that you fail, because everyone fails at something or another in life. It’s what you do after failure that defines you.” We love that, all of it, but if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, our failure to become this generation’s Theodore Roosevelt will never bother us so much that we’re going to do whatever it takes to make it happen. 

Da Mudder Humper

We know mudder nature offers great solitude and beauty to the unsuspecting and suspecting, but how long how long we’re supposed to stand at the bottom of a mountain before it happens? How long does one quietly stand at the bottom of a mountain before we make a connection to its height and vastness—not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually? I’ve tried to experience it, but someone always interrupts me with, “Ok, are you ready?”  

“No, I’m not ready.” I say with indignation. “Hold on for a second.” This interrupter wanted to checkout prematurely, or what we considered a premature checkout, and we weren’t even halfway done, because we thought were close. “We drove all this way to see this mudder humper. Why don’t you go ahead and give me a second to appreciate her.” And we said that with solid conviction, but we didn’t really know how long we needed to convince them, or ourselves, that the very large mound of dirt and rocks inspired feelings of grandeur and timelessness within us to the point that we made that connection.

We don’t want to be a modern who looks at a mountain of breath-taking glory for twenty-two seconds and checks out and moved on. We want to feel, just for a moment, what our forebears must have experienced when they looked upon this mountain. We all think that the man of yesteryear was more in touch with nature than we are, because we’ve been too modernized. There is truth to that, of course, but did they appreciate the wonder of natural landmarks as much or more than we did? My guess is they didn’t view a mountain range as a breathtaking wonder in the manner we do, but as a pain in the ass that they were either going to cross or navigate around on foot or by horse-drawn carriage. 

***

Spotting nature’s finest critters in their environment, doing what they do, can also be awe-inspiring, but how often do we actually see them in the wild? “The one thing we know about nature with absolute certainty is that it’s unpredictable and unreliable,” a tour guide informed us when we didn’t see a single creature on our tour. If we’re lucky enough to actually see a wild animal in their environs, doing what they do, how many of those moments are inspiring or exciting. Most creatures of wild seem to spend about 75% of their time sleeping, 10% hiding from predators, and the rest of their time actively searching for food, eating that food, and sitting on their can doing nothing. If you’re lucky enough to see them during the percentage of the 15% of their time actively searching then you’re one of the lucky few. I’ve never been that lucky. 

When we see these incredible beasts in a zoo, we immediately think about how awful it is that they have to spend their existence in a caged environment, but if you’ve ever actually seen one of them in the wild, you know caged animals really aren’t missing that much. The wild ones live lives a lot more boring than most of us know. Their whole lives are about eating whatever they can find, sleeping about 15-20 hours a day, and occasionally finding someone to procreate with to extend the species. The caged animal not only sleeps the same amount of time, but they get free, non-taxing delivery of food, and they also have procreation partners delivered to them. The two things zoo patrons might characterize as the primary deprivations of the wild animal is mental engagement and physical exercise, which I think most wild animals would characterize as overrated. Our tour guide basically bolstered my characterizations when she informed us that one of the only ways they can get the wild animals out of their homes is by providing them salt licks, and they conveniently put them in areas where tourists can spot them. Yet, this only increases the chance that an animal will leave their home. It guarantees nothing. 

As a person who is more accustomed to seeing wild animals in action, it’s disappointing to see them do nothing but pant in bask of a sunrise. It’s a pretty decent picture, don’t get me wrong, but at some point you wouldn’t mind seeing what happens after a park ranger sets a mechanical rabbit loose, like they do at the dog tracks to set them in motion. If we got lucky enough to see them hunt or a fight LIVE! and IN ACTION!, and we see them ripping each other apart, we probably wouldn’t want to stick around long enough to see the unsanitary ways they rip entrails out of the loser’s anatomy. We prefer the packages our nature shows put together with their motion-sensitive cameras in the wild, and most of us can’t even last a full show, so we go to YouTube to watch the highlight reels. “It’s not the same,” the nature enthusiast will counter.

“It’s not,” we admit, “but I’ve spent some time in the wild, and I’ve seen these creatures in their habitat, doing what they do, and they’re so boring for such long stretches of time that my embarrassing reflex is to reach for the remote.”  

*** 

I don’t know if I loved camping in the outdoors (on a protected reserve) when I was a kid, or if I just remember my own highlight package, but I had a love/hate relationship with the wild. Back then, I feared, hated, and loved her dark, wooded regions. The creatures I imagined therein were not all earthly either. I had a vivid imagination, and I imagined that everything outside the campfire light was mysterious, had hidden spirits, and its own relative charm. Now that my imagination has lost some of its vividness, I know I likely would’ve found nothing if I dared venture beyond the campfire light into those dark, foreboding regions. And if I ever had the misfortune of running into one of the most fearsome beasts imaginable in that darkness, my guess is that they’d probably be more scared of me than I am of them, or asleep. I would never tell younger me any of that though, because I know those fears added to the charm of those camping trips, and I still feel that every time I smell burning wood.

When we get older, but not so old that we lose our imagination, we try to recapture the magical charm camping once held for us. The problem is that our parents handled most of the particulars of camping when we were very young, so we needed to find a friend who was a more experienced camper. We searched for that fella or female who knew how to help us, and when we finally found him, we found that the biggest difference between an experienced camper and an inexperienced one is mostly about the tent. Our experienced camper put up quite a few tents in his day, but he wouldn’t put our tent up for us. He didn’t want to deprive us of the sacred rite of passage involved in putting up a first tent, which was the whole reason we invited him to our camping expedition. When we were done, he laughed at us, and he pulled the stakes out another half-inch. “That’s it,” we asked ourselves. “That’s the difference between an experienced camper and an inexperienced one?”

No, that’s not it, he brought a flashlight. “You forgot a flashlight?” he asked with disgust. “You, my friends, are inexperienced campers,” he said. We felt insecure about our lack of knowledge, and we felt some shame for being so unprepared. Feelings of shame are usually followed by some form of rebellion, and we felt that bubbling to the surface, but our experienced camper was not very attractive, he was out of shape, and he was a subpar employee in our company who didn’t have many friends, so we let him wallow in his camping superiorities.

Once we managed to get past the tent and supplies portion of the camping routine, we all decided to go fish. Our experienced camper was also an experienced fisherman, and he did not appreciate us doing the only thing inexperienced fisherman love about fishing: casting. We were casting for distance, and we were casting to break up the boredom of fishing. We also reasoned that because the lake was full of moss and weedy, frequent casting kept it more debris-free. Plus, we didn’t want the fish nibbling our nightcrawler off the line. “What are you doing?” he whispered at us in disgust. “You should be recasting 5-7 minutes apart at the very least.” When we asked him why, our question was a respectful one that ceded to his authority. He explained his rationale, and it was a rather generic answer that involved the frequency of the recast depending on the bait type, water conditions, and target species. When we attempted to explore with more specifics, he tried to answer, but his answers didn’t satisfy us, so we kept asking. “Stop talking,” he spat in whisper, “you’re scaring the fish away.” We respectfully waited beyond reason to speak again, and when we did, he repeated: “Stop talking, you’re scaring the fish away.” We tried to display respect, through more silence, but when we got too bored and tried whispering things to him, he moved to the other side of the lake. Our takeaway was that while camping is boring, but fishing is mind-numbing.

When we extinguished our campfire at the end of the night, our experienced camper brought out an inflatable mattress, which we considered a cardinal sin of the camping world, until he followed that with a Flextailgear Max Pump Three that promised to “inflate the standard inflatable mattress in under two minutes with a 5,000 Pascal pressure rating and a built-in camping light.” We read that off the box to our experienced camper and asked him what his patron saint of outdoorsiness, Theodore Roosevelt, would think of an inflatable mattress with a Flextailgear Max Pump Three. 

“I don’t care,” he said. “There’s no way I’m sleeping on that cold hard ground.”

It’s not for me, but I respect anyone and everyone who tries to “ruff it” in the wild, but what does “ruffing it” mean? It’s relative to the person of course, but we all know that minor level of sensory deprivation nature provides can yield a certain sense of peacefulness, as we attempt to connect with nature and ourselves. It’s a momentary escape from the distractions we so enjoy. Once we’re done with that relatively quiet walk through a trail in a wooded region, we ask ourselves what’s the difference between a true outdoorsman, an adventure seeker, an experienced camper, and someone who never travels outside the city? Our guide, teacher, experienced camper or vamper, knew his stuff, but how much stuff is there to know when we go out camping? He improved the taughtness of our tent by moving it about a half-inch, he remembered a flashlight, and he knew enough not to talk while fishing, but he also brought modern conveniences that would’ve made the experienced outdoorsman of yesteryear groan. He didn’t help us renew our appreciation of anything, unless we’re talking about our renewed appreciation for the controlled climate an HVAC can provide, the appliances that provide convenience and comfort, and our devices. When we’re nestled back in our comfortable homes, we appreciate not being smashed into by bugs, as when they see a campfire light, they think it’s a moon, they fly kamikaze-style into it. The june bugs, in particular, don’t seem to care that something as big as a human face stands between them and the light. When we’re in the comfy confines of our home, we also know that nothing is going to stick its disgusting, grimy little proboscis in us to suck blood out of our system. More than anything else, our camping trip gave us a renewed appreciation of our sense of home. Theodore Roosevelt would not have approved of any of this, but the only word we could find to describe “hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm” was boring, and hot and sticky, oh! and the two words ‘never again,’ sorry, Teddy.

You Can Never Go Home Again  

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“You can never go home again,” is something they say. Ok, but if home is where the heart is, we go home every day. No, they’re saying, you can’t go back to your childhood home ever again. I lived in my dad’s house for twenty years, and then I moved somewhere else a bunch of times for the next twenty years. After my dad passed on, I moved back into my dad’s home, and I went home again. It’s a different home now, but it’s still home, and it’s the same home I grew up in. 

“How can you stand it there?” the theys ask when they find out what city you call home. “It must be so boring.” Ok, but I view home as the place we return to after we go out. I don’t think time at home should be exciting. The definition of home should be home base, or place we return to after our exciting adventures.  

“That’s kind of the point,” they say. “Where do you go in your small city/big town to have exciting adventures?” 

“I realize you live in a bigger city with more people in it,” we say to them, “but what are you doing outside your home that is so much more exciting?”   

“I’m saying you don’t have as many options as we do.” Ok, but anytime we put a bunch of people together, they develop things to do. They post about functions and get-togethers, they build buildings to do things in, and they pay people to come to our city to entertain us. What are you doing that’s so much better? What’s the difference between Big City entertainment and Big Town/Small City entertainment?” No one has even been able to answer those latter two questions in a way that made me rethink my relative definitions of home, boring, and things to do. 

When residents of big towns, and small cities want to go out and have big adventures, they travel to “exciting” locales with their “exotic” sights, and when they’re done, they can’t wait to return to their boring home in their boring hometown.  

The big city, city slicker cannot imagine living in a city as small as small as ours, because they’re just too exciting, and they have to constantly have exciting things to do. That’s the headline, the thesis statement, and the takeaway we’re supposed to have in this conversation. Once we become friends with the city slicker, he concedes, “We don’t go out much. We’re pretty much homebodies.” We’re not supposed to catch the inconsistency, but when we do, and we call them out on it, we can tell that they didn’t catch their own inconsistency. Are they dumb? As a small city resident, I don’t believe we’re allowed to ask that question if we live in a smaller, less populated city, because we’re required to assume that size matters when it comes to intelligence, and I think we’re supposed to naturally assume that size matters when it comes to how exciting an individual is too. It genuinely surprises most city slickers to consider that they fell prey to their own big city fallacies. “I think I’ve heard that people question small city/big town residents on the excitement in their town so often that I never considered realities of it.”

***

All my people were boring, and I was born and raised in a boring house in a boring hometown. As a result, I’ve been boring most of my life. There were times when I went crazy with the boredom, and I made friends who said things like, “What are we doing here fellas, let’s do something.” They were boring guys who knew they were boring, from boring homes in a boring hometown, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t fill their lives with constant excitement. They, like me, were the literal definition of home boys, but that didn’t mean we had to sit around watching Who’s the Boss reruns, or chat in the boring manner my people did. I hung out with these friends separately, for the most part, and they kept me on the go, constantly, until we branched out to other boring fellas doing other boring things all the time in our boring hometown. We did so many ‘things to do’ that a lot of these things began to run together, until we didn’t appreciate most of the things we were doing. At some point, we just wanted to go back our boring home with our boring people, until we finally got back home, and we couldn’t wait to go out and do something again. 

There’s the rub, I’ve had blocks of my life with people like me who never wanted to go home after a shift, and we’ve partied so hard and so often that the parties started to lose their edge. What is “that edge”? That edge is a thrilling, momentary escape from the mundane activities of the every day. Yet, if you’ve ever had a block of life where you had so many friends, wanting to do so many things, we reach a point where we party so often and so much that we’re no longer escaping the mundane. We reach a point where we want to return to the boring side of life, so that the next parties are more exciting. The Big City, city-slickers purport to live exciting lives that the rest of us would never understand, but my experience with this fast-paced lifestyle is that if we don’t return to a base norm it starts to become more commonplace and it loses its edge?    

The “How do you continue to live in such a boring place with nothing to offer?” question reminds me of the old “Mean People Suck!” bumper sticker. One of the latter’s primary purposes was to inform those of us who see the bumper sticker that its owner is NICE!, as in all caps with an exclamation point nice. We don’t see this self-serving bumper sticker any more, but I would’ve to ask them to define the difference between mean and nice. I’m quite sure their reply would be just as self-serving, to which I would say, “Doesn’t this bumper sticker imply that you’re nice, and isn’t that a characterization you’re required to allow others make of you?” I have the same question for the The Big City, city-slickers who want to leave us with the impression that they’re movers-and-shakers, cosmopolitan types with so much culture in their system that it’s now bubbling up and out of their pores. They can’t identify with country bumpkins who don’t mind being bored. That’s their headline and their takeaway impression of themselves, but after listening to their bio, I often find them just as boring and unsophisticated as I am, you are, and the rest of the 50% of the planet that they just assumed they were better than.   

The Beauty and the Not Ugly 

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Women love a funny guy, but there’s one thing they love more than a funny guy, a guy who considers them funny.

I found this out when an extremely attractive woman named Julie agreed to go out with me. On this date, she informed me that I was “not ugly.” The idea that she and I were operating from opposite poles of the beauty spectrum was obvious to anyone who saw me walking into a restaurant with her. “What is HE doing with HER?” was such an obvious question on the faces of the other patrons in the restaurant that if one of them gave voice to their look, I wouldn’t have been too surprised.

I wasn’t sure whether I should feel more insulted or complimented by those looks, but I really enjoyed playing the “HE” role for the first time in my life. I wanted to be seen with Julie in public more than once, and then I wanted to do some awful things to her in private. After she allowed both without a fight, I let her make condescending assessments of my physical appearance without a fight.

And I don’t think I would’ve been able to do any of that if I didn’t laugh at just about every joke she told. Based on my very brief dating experiences with Julie, my first piece of advice to my not-ugly-guy contingent is if you want to date excessively beautiful women, be funny. If you’re not funny AND you’re not ugly, however, you won’t have a shot in hell dating a woman as beautiful as Julie, and I don’t care what those loser-dates-the-lovely-lady, 90s movies taught us about hope. There is no hope, because the excessively beautiful just have far too many options. They won’t even look in our general vicinity, because they don’t want to get us started.

I wouldn’t have had a shot in hell at dating Julie either if I hadn’t accidentally discovered an end around, loophole, or whatever you want to call it in the not-ugly-and-the-beautiful natural laws of dating: Beautiful women love it when men find them funny.

I know what you’re thinking right here, you’re thinking I faked it to try to seduce her. I had no master plan, and I have no talent for deception, and you can ask anyone who has ever played poker, chess, or any game with me that requires some form of deception. I cannot bluff. I learned at a very young age what a horrible liar I was, and how much I hated getting caught in a lie. I felt so bad about lying that I made the decision that I wouldn’t go through what I assume good liars have to go through to get better at it. Long story short, my laughter was not fake or deceptive. I genuinely considered her funny, but I must admit if a guy, or a not ugly woman, told the exact same jokes Julie did, I would’ve been much more critical. I was so attracted to Julie’s physical appearance that I found her jokes funny. Was I giddy? I think I was as giddy as a schoolgirl who has such a huge crush on a cute boy that she giggles at everything he says. It’s an embarrassing admission, but it worked. 

It worked, because Julie, like everyone else in the world, loves it when someone considers them funny. The one caveat I would tell any man who tries this is that you will have to avoid the temptation of telling your own jokes, and that’s tougher than you think. When the jokes start flying, we get caught up in the moment. We want to add a nugget here and there to the tail end of their joke, or we might be the type who just wants to keep the jokes going, so we add our little bits. Don’t! They don’t like that. They only want us to laugh at their jokes. My little, tiny attempts to add to the levity in room revealed to her that not only was I not ugly, but I was not funny too, which led her to decide that I was not dating material.  

It’s no secret that we all love it when someone considers us funny, but if you’re not ugly, and you have regular interactions with someone who is so far out of your league that you don’t have a chance in hell of being seen in public with her, try laughing as hard as you can at her jokes. It might not work, depending on how far down the not ugly scale you are, but if you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, what do you have to lose?  

The Not Ugly Limelight

I had a moment in my not-ugly life when I thought I might be attractive. It was a strange, almost inexplicable time that happened when I was barely a teenager, in the seventh grade. Three eighth grade girls and a couple of seventh grade girls expressed interest at the same time. This all too brief window in time made no sense to me, until I later learned that planets transit through zodiac signs to create aspects that affect an individual’s natal chart to trigger, amplify, or challenge energies. When I heard this, I rejected the notion outright, until I remembered this moment in my life. These weren’t the typical girls either, they were the most popular, best looking girls in the two grades. I don’t understand how the movements of celestial bodies could affect what we think, how we act, or how we verify it, but I’ve found no satisfactory explanation this. My guess is that my otherwise excessively pale face probably had some color to it for that brief moment in time, and that combined with the fact that someone convinced me that the center-part of my hair was no longer working for me. Not only did I start parting on the side, but I decided to start feathering my hair. I still don’t know if it was Uranus in retrograde, or my side part, but I do know I didn’t sell my should to the devil to experience what only the beautiful know for an all too brief moment of my life, but having this many females attracted to me at the same time never happened before all that and it hasn’t happened since. 

That’s right, my idea of what it must feel like to be a sex symbol peaked at age thirteen. When I received hints of their attraction, I decided that I was not going to get excited just because some girl just happened to look in my general direction, then at me, then lock eyes with mine, and smile. I simply pretended that it wasn’t happening, because I wasn’t going to allow my overactive imagination to begin interpreting what I thought I was seeing. I also didn’t want my aspirations to meet the tenets of the “The Bigger they are the Harder they fall” analogy. It took more than a couple of instances for me to realize these looks weren’t coincidences, this wasn’t a dream, and I wasn’t imagining it. I was shocked, stunned, overwhelmed, and a little terrified. I didn’t know what was happening, I didn’t know how to act, or if I should do something to end it before they found out I wasn’t who they thought I was. I wanted it to last, of course, but I had no idea how I could make this intoxicating idea that girls, real, live girls were actually interested in me, last. It was the closest I ever came to knowing what a Beatle, Elvis, and Marlon Brando must go through when multiple women are attracted to them, and I did not handle it well.  

I didn’t have to stress about it too long, however, as it ended almost as quickly as it began. Before I could consult with someone, or something, like a TV show, or an astrology reading, most of it was over. I don’t know if the tan faded, the hair wasn’t quite right, or the planets transited across other zodiac signs, but my options were limited to one girl: Rhonda.  

Now, when I say I was only left with Rhonda that might sound like I settled, but Rhonda might have been the best looking girl of the bunch. She was so beautiful that I remember having trouble getting to sleep when I thought of her. I couldn’t believe a beautiful girl found me physically attractive. It eventually became known, through intermediaries, that she wanted my phone number! Holy Larry! I thought this would prove to be an epoch in my timeline, a B.C./A.D. life-altering moment. It might have had a lot to do with my age I was at the time, how impressionable we all are at that age, or a reflection on how boring my life has been since, but the time I spent waiting for that phone call were some of the scariest, most exciting moments of my life.

The phone call obviously went well, as Rhonda and I shared approximately three more phone calls. I never thought this would last forever, but when she passed final judgement on me with a, “You’re boring!” ruling, the click on the other end of the phone reminded me of sound of a gavel pounding. It hurt like the dickens. It taught me that what a woman says about you stings far worse than anything a fella can do to you. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I knew nothing about her, and she knew nothing about me. We absolutely had nothing in common, and therefore nothing to talk about. I should’ve been more interesting, but I was a thirteen-year-old, and my idea interesting subjects involved the NFL, the music of KISS, and Evel Knievel. I wasn’t well versed in topics that females find interesting, and the wife might say that I’m still not great at it. 

In the world of beautiful women, I learned that I was not ugly, not funny, and not very interesting. I was not what they expected, and the one step forward two steps back taught me my station in life, until I met Joel. Joel was a not ugly, not funny, and not very interesting compatriot who moved effortlessly from one table to the other in a singles bar. The women at the first table politely informed him that he was not welcome at their table, and the next one purposefully continued the conversation they were having before he interrupted it. I don’t know what was said at a third table, but when he left the women were laughing, and he was a darker shade of red. Joel came back to us, the fellas, his home base after each rejection, and he chatted with us until he spotted another table of women he found interesting. “How do you do that?” I asked him. “How do you just move to another table after being rejected like that?” Joel responded, but I can’t remember what he said. If he said something profound to sum up a philosophy that motivated him, I would’ve remembered it, but far more important to me was what he did as opposed to what motivated him to do it. My takeaway was, there will be moments in our life when someone will reject us for failing to be who they expect us to be, but we should use it to become who we want to be. How do you use being not ugly, not funny, and not very interesting? That’s up to you to figure out and find out.