A recent MSNBC article on what some people call “camping” inspired me to grouse at Saturday lunch. See, when I was growing up, camping involved tents in the middle of what seemed like nowhere, with a stream for water and holes in the ground for bathrooms. We cooked our food over fires*, kept both eyes wide open for snakes, and checked ourselves for ticks at night. One year Alice Roberts and I shared a tent and I hogged her Nancy Drew book.**

So then I moved to Michigan and started camping with friends and church groups and suddenly it didn’t feel like camping. We camped at state and county parks, usually next to lots of other people. The only thing that got cooked over a fire was marshmallows. There were toilets and showers.*** It was fun, but it wasn’t what I would call camping.

So at lunch on Saturday I mentioned the kind of camping I grew up on, and one of my friends said that was the kind of camping she liked to do. One thing led to another, and we began talking about a backpacking trip to Isle Royale, one of those places I’ve  been meaning to go to ever since I found out about it.

There are many details yet to be worked out in order to make this happen. First on my list is assembling gear, since I don’t have much to speak of. I am making it a challenge to do it for as little money as possible. I have a few things that will work, but the rest will have to be either borrowed or purchased. Second is to work out a date with Dawn that will work for both of us. That’s as far as I’ve got—I’ve been too busy reading about Isle Royale and other people’s backpacking trips.

*So we carried in everything by car. It still felt like real camping to me.
** Sorry, Alice, for hogging the book. At least that was the year I was sick and miserable and it was pouring rain and I went home early.
***I wasn’t so high and mighty that I refused to use them, either.

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