Let's Get Primitive Contest

Over Labor Day weekend 2000, my now-wife Kim and I threw caution to the Ramble and joined the Urban Park Rangers for the first-annual camp-out in Central Park. (It was really more like the first sanctioned camp-out. One passer-by informed me, "Back in the day, we used to sleep out here all the motherf****n' time.")
 
Our group consisted of four families, three young couples (competing in a making-out-per-minute marathon), and a number of Urban Park Rangers who offered a wealth of ecological and historical information. We learned that Central Park has a lookout built during the Revolutionary War, that screech owls live in weatherized cedar boxes, and that Ranger Dakota has a serene deadpan delivery.  (Me: "Where's the Forever Wild-ing section of the park?" Dakota: "We don't take campers to that section").
 
After the orienteering hike, we set up our two-man tents and foraged a meal from Subway while an off-off-off-off Broadway theater troupe rehearsing Shakespeare with wooden swords and plastic helmets provided us low-rent Bard in the Park. After sunset, we were treated to S'mores tartare as Ranger wearing tie-dyed civvies showed us how to find the North Star. Then I assisted a couple of toddlers in painting two trees -- one in the light, one in the dark -- with "bug juice," a sugary confection of fresh fruit and berry-flavored syrup designed to bring out the nocturnal insects.
 
We set out on a night hike, and as we wandered through the dark, Ranger Rich shined his high-powered light on bats and a lazy frog chilling in the cool air. The conditions should’ve been perfect for an aimless stroll through the woods. It was a brisk fall night with a swaddling harvest moon, but Central Park seems more dense, expansive and spooky during the witching hours.
 
Although a colony of ants was dutifully licking fructose off the tree, the bug juice was considered a flop. Apparently, we hadn't used enough banana, but later I returned and found a horde of sinister-looking beetles dipping their pinchers in the fruity concoction. Mission accomplished.
 
Apart from the occasional feint wail of a siren, the Manhattan night was amazingly tranquil. This being Gotham, however, it must be noted that you can take camping to the city, but you can't take the city out of camping. For instance, Ranger Ted completely ignored the pile of human waste we discovered during the hike, and we were treated to a couple of Upper West Side teens who decided to, well, get back to nature about twenty yards from our tent (bless their horny little souls). I spied on these precocious youngsters and delivered unwanted play-by-play to Kim as their adolescent moans wafted through the air. I couldn't see her, but I give him an A- for stamina and a C- for technique -- too much of a jackhammering motion. We dozed off with a full moon above us, and one bouncing up and down to the left of us.

— Patrick J. Sauer

We were two senior citizens making our last stand against nature. Emulating famous couples who had come before, we, too, set out in a quest for the Northwest Passage. Budget conscious, we chose to camp the old fashioned way. A two-person tent fit the bill. We could break camp and move off down the pike on a whim. After all, we had experience, been camping for years. We had undaunted courage.

Daylight lingers in the upper forty-eight. Sunsets fringe the Pacific horizon past bedtime. We indulged our habit of the European way of dining past nine-ish P.M. Our campsite sat high above the pounding surf drowning evening small talk. Closing hour chores are accomplished with unspoken efficiency. Dry food storage belongs in the trunk of our nearby car, a precaution against nocturnal marauders. The hour is growing old and so is the cook. Just toss those left over rolls in the back seat, easier to grab for breakfast to sop up cowboy strong coffee. We hit the sack. Deep sleep is so easy to come by in these peaceful surroundings.

At home we are late risers, why change values now? Brewing coffee waifs up my twitching nostrils. I am a lucky woman. My man went ahead and put the pot on to boil. He'd groveled for canned grinds stowed in the back seat beneath our stuff. In my state of bliss, out I crawl and stand to bless this master with a kiss on his turned cheek-no morning smooches head-on before encountering the toothbrush! Instead of anticipated appreciation, a scowl returns the favor. He wants to know how I could be so forgetful that I carelessly left open a car door. Huh? Sorry, wrong number. The debate would be settled if he'd just admit his memory is fuzzy from the abundance of grapes squeezed in his cups the night before. Neighbors were generous sharing nectar from the gods.

Let's be reasonable about this and inspect the scene of the crime. Aha, it's obvious another famous couple took this trail; bread crumbs litter the blacktop. Our neighbors come bounding from the safe confines of their camper truck. They ask if it rained mid-night and had we retreated to the car seats seeking asylum? We're not wimps but it didn't rain either. They'd heard a beep-beep signal going off forever.

I discovered the torn plastic bag containing remnants of stale rolls cast aside under beach plum bushes. We'd been robbed while we slept. Fumbling with the door handle revealed traces of nail scratches imbedded in the coating of dust stuck to the auto body paint. Bandit paws had pried open the heavy door but couldn't make the stretch to shut it. He probably spied the object of his affection from his perspective atop a tree branch overhead. Armed with resolve, the perfect break-in took place under cover of night, undetected.

Who was that masked man?

—Sandy Korey

“I will never camp again,” I thought as we sat in the waiting room of the
Greyhound station off Route 13 in upstate New York. I repeated the mantra, this time loud enough so my husband would finally
understand this inescapable truth—“I will never camp again.” This was the
third try in a series of disastrous attempts to get me to “soak up the outdoors.” I didn’t realize that “soaking” would prove so literal. The previous evening, a torrential downpour that soaked our leaky tent almost too much to bear—that is until the next morning when our engine oil light indicated that the car was kaput in the state park 10 miles from town. Fortunately, the park stood atop a hill and we rolled our way into a junkyard that put the car to rest—along side any future adventures in camping.

Don’t get me wrong, I valiantly tried to shake off my urban girl façade and embrace the simple beauty of “roughing it.” First there was the time we set up a tent along the Pacific Coast. Unfortunately, no signs indicated that we were perched upon some type of dangerous wind tunnel
producing gales that jutted the tent stakes in different directions. As it turns out, this happened as my husband decided to take a midnight stroll. As the tent rolled about and shuddered in the wind, he finally returned explaining, “this type of thing never happens!”

I gave him this benefit of the doubt during our second trip, a romantic
Valentine’s Day weekend camping near the wine country of Temecula, California. This time we opted to do a “park-and- camp” to insure that if anything happened while Nat collected firewood, there would be nearby
campers who could stop my tent from rolling or halt any other unforeseen
calamities. Unfortunately, no amount of firewood—nor cabernet, nor our flames of Valentine’s Day Love—could keep the frigid temperature drop from freezing us. Instead, our car served as the “tent” on our second camping trip. As we loaded into the car, Nat mumbled in disbelief, “I can’t believe how cold it got. I knew I should have brought the extra blanket!”

Despite these previous setbacks, I took on more shot at shedding the
comforts of urban life and tried to embrace the wilds of camping. Then came the rains, the engine light, and the death of our car. As we hopped on the Greyhound, watching the feature film overhead on the video monitor, Nat turned over to me and whispered, “next time, I think we’ll try a day hike.” “That sounds like a great idea.” I replied as I leaned on his shoulder. “Perhaps in a new car—and a cell phone wouldn’t hurt.”

—Jenn Zappia

In retrospect, I’m not sure why my boyfriend and I chose Assateague Island in Maryland as a suitable place for camping. Initially, we were considering a place in Pennsylvania, but I think it must have been the wild ponies that finally tipped the balance in Assateague’s favor.

The brochure we had showed windswept beaches, salt marshes, coastal bays and maritime forests. The ponies made it all look so wild, so beautifully romantic. Never mind the fact that neither of us had ever organized a camping trip before: how hard could it be, after all? We bought a tube tent, some backpacks, and a few other sundries. And hiking boots, as we were planning on doing some hiking. My boyfriend already had a pair, but I didn’t. They cost a lot of money, but they made me feel like a real outdoorswoman. I was awfully proud of those boots.

Assateague Island really was beautiful, but there wasn’t a wild pony in sight. “Don’t know where they’re all off at,” admitted one of the natives we met while walking along the beach. “They’re usually all over the place.” He warned us not to approach them, if we should happen to see one. “They bite.”

Setting up a tube tent is easy. It is just a plastic triangle with a line through the top, secured on both sides. All you have to be careful about is making sure that the poles at either end are secure so the line between them is taut. Our particular tent should have had flaps that could be attached to seal off the ends, but for some reason, we could not find them. Something happened to the poles, too – the wind, probably, which was fierce. One of them collapsed in the middle of the night, rendering our tent fairly useless. It had begun to rain in earnest at this point; finally we managed to secure the open end that was still flapping about by placing a boot on it, wrapping it up in plastic first.

In the early morning, we made several discoveries. First, we awoke to find the top of the tent only an inch or two from our faces, weighed down by water. Getting dressed was tricky and we ended up snapping at each other, but finally we were dressed and ready to leave. That was when I made the second discovery: the boot we’d used to weigh down the side of the tent was mine. And whatever we’d wrapped it in had had a hole in it. A big hole. No matter how hard we tried, we could not get my boot dry. Water oozed up between my toes with every miserable step I took.

A year later, a friend and I were climbing in the Japanese Alps on a hot summer day. “Is it just my imagination,” she asked, “or are your boots completely different colors?”

Just the memory of it cooled my feet right off.

—Mary Whitsell

In the Appalachian springtime, the hills burst into proverbial bloom, rustling with life ... all kinds of life.

The last weekend that I lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, two of my girlfriends joined me for an overnight backpacking trip. Sarah was indisputably our ringleader. This West Virginia native carried a machete in her boot and knew every plant in the forest. Smiling, spirited Jo was a pillar of the local Sierra Club chapter. And I’d led outdoor excursions, so figured I was as good as a Girl Scout.

We set out on a scenic walk along the river. I thought we’d camp along its banks, but Sarah enticed us to bushwhack up a steep ridge. Soon, we’d pitched our tent and whipped up a clever little meal. About 50 yards from camp, we found a great spot where we could eat dinner and watch the sun set.

Darkness had fallen when, from the woods behind us, we heard unmistakable footsteps shuffling through the leaves. “Listen!” Jo whispered sharply.

My stomach clenched. “You know, there are folks living out in these woods,” I told them. “Someone could have followed us.”

Sarah laughed. “Let ‘em follow us,” she dared, reaching for her machete. “I’ll give ‘em a piece of this.” But she was whispering, too.

“It’s probably an animal,” Jo reasoned. “Wild boars run rampant through these woods.”

“It could be a bear!” I realized with renewed terror. “It is springtime. Bears are always hungry in the spring.”

“Where’s the flashlight?” Sarah demanded, “Let’s see.”

But the flashlight was back at the campsite—along with everything else we owned. And soon we could hear that the creature was tromping around in the midst of the site, snorting and heaving. Like a bear, I’d insist. Or a really big raccoon, Jo would counter. Minutes passed, then an hour. I really had to pee, but was too terrified to move.

Finally, Jo turned and began to shimmy down the incline. “I’m sleeping in the car.”

My visions of a female empowerment weekend were officially shot.

We arrived at the trailhead just after midnight. I still had to pee. Up the hill, there was a perfectly civilized bathroom at the river rafting outfitter, all lit up with fluorescent lights. We headed towards it.

When I came out of the washroom, I could see Jo’s smile, even in the dark. “C’mon!” She dragged me into an adjacent storage barn. Inside, river rafts were piled high. Sarah was curled up inside one, looking smug. “She used her machete to cut the plastic lock on the barn,” Jo explained.

I had to admit, it beat the bucket seats of my Subaru. I pulled towels from the nearby clothesline to keep us warm, and Jo broke out a bag of carob-covered almonds to share. We talked for hours till we finally drifted to sleep. Though we never found out what kind of critter diverted us that night, I think we ultimately wound up on the right path.

—Amy Tsaykel

July is a hot month. The July in question was hotter than most. 104F in the shade. Yes, I said shade. 115F in the sun. When you walked through the threshold of the air-conditioned RC’s door, the humidity felt like freshly mucked drywall. As long as we had to endure the heat, we thought the beach breeze and water would be a slight comfort.

We packed the tent and some belongings onto the roof of the old, reliablestation wagon and the four of us set out for the Gulf of Mexico. It rained the entire drive from the farm to Grayton Beach State Park (FL). That should have been our first clue, but the rain stopped as we arrive. Sucker punched again.

I staked the tent, complete with tarp porch and set up camp. The remainder of the day was spent wandering between the gators and the water. The night fell, but unknown to us, the Clampetts had moved in next door.

Quiet time in a state park is a given. Unfortunately, the Clampetts were
never given anything in their life except for possibly the two cases of beer, also off limits in the state park, they brought with their horseshoes.
Not the rubber set mind you, but the full-metal-jacket version.

Once the whooping, hollering, clanking and beer-can crushing stopped around 2AM, I finally got some sleep. My wife, however did not. By 7AM, I was directed to do something. I made breakfast. Apparently, that is not what was expected of me and by 9AM I was told that better accommodations were being sought. She took the car and sped west.

Now your standard black and green camping tent can absorb and amazing amount of solar energy before 10AM. I didn’t realize just how much until the stakes were up and it hit the sand. The next 3 hours were spent like this: Roll three turns. Ow! Roll two turns. Ow! Roll one turn. Ow! Roll a quarter turn. Holy cheese! Roll…Mother of Pearl! Roll…Kid’s take a walk. Daddy needs some space.

By 1PM the tent was tucked, the car was back (there’s the little woman) and we were off. Where? I didn’t care. My hands had 2nd degree burns and I needed a Mai-Tai.

The Holiday Inn in Sandestin, FL is a lovely pink building with a very
refreshing swimming pool and a chastity-belt-wearing, 400-year-old
receptionist who insists that check-in can not be accomplished before 3PM.
Kids, let’s go stand in the pool.

It is important to know that these events took place about 10 years ago.
That doesn’t mean that Ursula of the undead isn’t still there. I think they
built the hotel around her because she refused to move.

—theBarefoot

I don't remember the exact year we camped with the Missing Links. It must have been in the mid-80s because I remember our children were about 3 and 8 years old at the time.

We had a used tent, the old kind with the walls and poles that took an hour to set up. My sister and her husband had a small pop-up camper. We lived 200 miles apart. We decided it would be a fun weekend to meet somewhere near the middle of the distance between us and camp together.

I grabbed our trusty Woodall's Campground Directory and searched for a place about midway between us and with some things to do for the kids and maybe some fishing for my brother-in-law. I mercifully can't remember the name of the campground, but it was privately owned, not a state park. Woodall's stated it had an ample shaded tenting area, a lake for fishing and on-site instructors if a camper would like to try scuba diving. There was also a playground, firepits, a volleyball court and horseshoe pit. Ice and limited groceries were available at the campground office. It was very near Arrowrock, an historic little town in central Missouri with lots of bric-a-brac shops that my sister and I might enjoy. Sounded great. I called them and made reservations for the weekend for both families.

We arrived about 2 p.m. on Friday and set up camp. We weren't too impressed with the tenting area. There were no designated areas for each family. In other words, someone could, if they wanted, park their tent a foot from ours and that would be okay. There were only a few other campers, those were spread out, so it didn't seem a problem. My sister and brother-in-law pulled in a couple of hours later. We got a fire going and waited for the coals to ready for cooking.

When the first few motorcycles pulled in, we thought, "cool." We aren't the uptight stuffy sort of people who think all bikers are murderers, rapists and dope dealers. We admired their bikes and watched them set up their little tents. A couple of vans drove in and parked near the bikers' tents. We thought, "Ah, that makes sense, they can't carry enough on a bike for a whole weekend, so some friends came with supplies." Yep, they sure did. One of those supplies was a stereo system, no, make that an audio system, with it's own little stage and speakers six feet tall. AC/DC began to pour through the campground, but it wasn't horribly loud. We went on with our meal preparations and our family visiting. We chowed down while enjoying "Highway to Hell."

About 6 some more bikes came into the campground. Then some more. By now there were probably 20 bikes, each with a biker and usually his lady on board. More little and big tents popped up. They were still at least 100 feet from us. No problem.

By 9 p.m. the place looked like Little Sturgis. A banner ten feet by twenty feet was assembled: THE MISSING LINKS. There were at least a hundred bikes in the campground now, along with another half dozen support vans. The tents were not only getting closer to us, they were encompassing us. We were a tiny sea of suburban "civilians" surrounded by the Missing Links bike club.

The audio system started to blast. The kegs in the support vans were broken out and there was an odor in the air much like burning leaves, but a little different. My three-year-old had a hand put over her mouth a couple times just as she was pointing and saying things like, "Mom look at that man, he went pee-pee!"

By now it was dark and we got to discover the other fun feature of this campground that Woodall's had neglected to mention in their description. The wildlife, and I don't mean the women dancing without tops. I mean the skunks.

Skunks were EVERYWHERE in this place. Everytime we turned on a flashlight, eyes would gleam back at us in the dark, and we found we were not only surrounded by a biker group notorious in Missouri for a few murders in the Ozarks, but dozens of animals that will spray you with noxious pooey stuff if you piss them off. They had no fear of us whatsoever. Everytime we trekked to the primitive outhouse with the flashlight, skunks, and sometimes mama skunks with babies, would be on the path with us. We were now nervous about two things. Might an intoxicated biker mistake our tent for his own and sleep with us tonight, or would the skunks get brazen enough to come into the tent for our foodstores, sleeping bags, or whatever else skunks might want.

The music faded out about 3 a.m. Things started to get quiet with just an occasional "Motherf****!" punctuating the humid night air. The kids finally went to sleep. We adults finally drifted off to sleep. That's when the train came.

Another little factoid the Woodall's forgot to mention. There was a train track just over an embankment, about 50 feet from the door of our tent. We woke up with our hair standing on end clutching each other. The ground was shaking, the bikers were cussing, the kids were crying. It went on and on.

Although we'd paid for two nights for our reservation, we decided to move on to another campground the next morning. We were the only things stirring at 7 a.m. as we quietly pulled up tent pegs and rolled up sleeping bags. Even the skunks had disappeared.

Down the road a few miles was a state park campground. No bikers, no six feet tall speakers, no train and the only wildlife we saw were chipmunks and at night a foraging raccoon who ran from our flashlight. It was one of those camping memories that we laugh about now. Sort of.

— Vicky Shultz

The Rafting Germans

My husband, then boyfriend, and I were camping with another couple in Narrowsburg, New York, on the Delaware River. For those unfamiliar with the area, the river divides New York and Pennsylvania. We decided to go rafting one afternoon. As we rounded a particularly treacherous turn we were greeted by flying rocks being flung from the Pennsylvania side. We looked up on the bank to find two children, a boy and a girl throwing rocks in our direction.

“Get off our river!” the boy shouted.

“Yeah, get off our river!” his sister echoed.

The boy picked up a baseball bat (and another rock) and slugged the rock toward us. I started to shout back that the river didn’t belong to them, when my all-too-sensible husband shushed me. The other couple, however, let the kids have it. He is Brazilian and she, Hungarian. As they both rattled off in heavily-accented English telling those kids where they could go, the boy retorted (I suppose as a result of hearing their foreign accents), “And we don’t like Germans!”

Luckily, we were on a boat and they weren’t and the current of the river eventually steered us clear of their projectiles.

It was the most Deliverance-like moment of my life.

—Kate Paixao

About ten years ago, when our kids were young, my friend Bernice and I decided to take them camping for a night at a local state park. She and I both worked retail, so weekends off were few and far between. Our trip would have to be on a week night.

We decided on a menu and set to packing our camping equipment into the van, after work on a Wednesday afternoon. When we arrived at the park to check in, the female ranger warned us that there had been alot of bear activity recently, and advised us to re-think our plan, as the campground was nearly empty. We had promised the four kids and we were already there, so we thanked her for her advice and drove to our site.

We struggled a bit with the tent, (How do the guys make it look so easy?) but we finally got it up and filled with sleeping bags and pillows. Then we proceeded to make dinner over the fire, which took forever to light! (Again, must be a guy thing.) By the time our foil packets were ready, darkness had set upon us. We lit our lanterns and sat down at the picnic table to eat, kids on one side, and us on the side closest to the trees. Bernice and I were enjoying our meal when we noticed the kids had gotten really quiet. We looked up to see all four of them looking past us, open-mouthed. We looked at each other, mouthed an "Ut-oh" and slowly turned around to see what it was that had the kids scared speechless. A raccoon! We both exhaled and burst out laughing. Mr. Raccoon took offense and ran into the woods.

After we finished eating dinner and made the requisite s'mores at the campfire, we gathered all the garbage and placed it and the cooler safely in the van and covered it up with a blanket, as instructed by the ranger. We got everyone situated for bed, turned out the lanterns and off to dreamland we went, praying not to be eaten by bears as we slept.
During the night, a gentle precipitation began, and the tree branch above our tent, heavy with rain, bent down to lay on our tent. We woke up early in the morning to the sound of pouring rain and realized we were all sleeping in puddles. We, and our sleeping bags, were completely soaked. One by one, we took turns changing in the van, and then each donned big black trash bags to keep us dry. We fed the kids cereal, scrapped our plans for the lake, packed up our wet, muddy equipment, and headed for home.

NOW it's funny.

—Demelza888

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