I laughed at this post and it’s stand against the “environmental fascism” of tree-hugging backpackers outdoing each other in the being one with nature department. I’ve been on hikes I didn’t enjoy, and felt the peer pressure to pretend it was invigorating rather than soul-sucking Hades on a stick. I’ve been on camp outs where I was so cold that breathing hurt and everyone else was all “Oh, isn’t this bracing and wonderful?” and I know they were all secretly dying for it to be over already.

“We have brought millennia of ingenuity to bear on the problem,” of habitation, the author writes, “and, outliers notwithstanding, the structurally sound, safe, climate-controlled, cushioned, be-toileted, insect-and-dirt-free (at least as far as we are capable) have won the day.” This is someone who clearly cannot understand the desire to rid oneself of modern conveniences temporarily simply for the sake of doing so. I fall somewhere in the middle. I have never met a cat hole I liked, for example, and hereby state yet again, Dear Reader (you know my bathroom issues) that I intend henceforth to make my tent outings as “be-toileted” as possible. But I like insects and dirt, and escaping air-conditioning, and tents, oh, the tents!

For the most part, you either like camping (and hiking, kayaking, canoeing, whatever else you may pair with it) or you don’t. If you’re going to worry about “some lithe and enterprising spider… have[ing] its way with your ear-hole” while you sleep, no air mattress is going to make you comfortable. But there are ways to mitigate the experience if, for example, you are not a fan and you end up with progeny that go all Cub Scout on you, so I would encourage car camping and chillaxing at camp rather than ten-mile backpacking treks and cat holes, etc., at least to ease you into the whole experience. We have dads with the Scouts who are clearly more comfortable in their recliners watching the game of the moment, so we all know better than to expect them to build a fire, for example, but they have learned to enjoy spending time around it with their sons and the rest of us, I think.

I suspect that there will be times that I’mNotBobby, the author of this post, will wind up out in nature again. Here’s wishing him spider-free encampments– personally, I get freaked out by the prospect of bedbugs in even the most ritzy of “antiseptic hotels,” but I would never want to raise that specter to him…