\n<\/p>\n
If I was honest enough to remember the whole truth<\/span><\/strong> I\u2019d probably recall some very uncomfortable or even miserable experiences while dirt camping as a kid. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n But why would I want to do that? <\/font><\/span> Anybody who intentionally spends hundreds of dollars plus weeks in excited preparation for the opportunity to sleep on the ground, live in a perpetual cloud of dust and mosquitoes, eat food from a milk-sodden, meat-bloodied, melted-ice ice chest, and to pee and occasionally poop into an open, fly-infested pit has no grounds for complaint on any level, least of all personal convenience.<\/font><\/span> These days Carolann and I visit the great outdoors in luxurious, indoor comfort.\u00a0 We have an air-conditioned 34-foot motorhome with a queen-size bed, full shower and toilet, complete kitchen and two TVs.\u00a0 It\u2019s wonderful, it really is.<\/font><\/span> But camping, it ain\u2019t.<\/font><\/span> My dad had a big, unbelievably heavy canvas tent.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0 It was bigger than some honky tonks I\u2019ve been in and smelled almost as bad.\u00a0 He had to prop the thing up with a couple of huge wooden poles I think he bought from a circus fire sale.\u00a0 As far as I can recall that tent performed no useful service. If it rained, the canvas would soak through and drip on us long after the rain had ended. Then it mildewed.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n If it was eighty degrees outside it was ninety-five in the tent. If it was sixty outside it was forty-five in the tent.<\/font><\/span> By the time I started taking my son Jeremy camping<\/span><\/strong> in the early 80s the equipment had improved dramatically.\u00a0 Our tent was lightweight nylon.\u00a0 It was the first of those now ubiquitous domed things supported by three long, flexible poles.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t have to be lashed to steel stakes in the ground by twelve ropes poised to grab a foot and trip you every time you walked to the outhouse. <\/span> The downside of my new nylon igloo was its height, maybe four feet tops, which was fine for a kid but forced me to mimic a horizontal pole-dancer, writhing and wriggling on my back just to get out of my sleeping bag, pull on some pants and exit on hands and knees through the little flap at the front that was secured by three or four maddening zippers.<\/font><\/span> Like my father before me, I taught my son to build a campfire the old-fashioned way:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0 with paper under kindling, under twigs, under sticks, all in fastidious layers beneath three logs wigwammed in the center.\u00a0 It was a thing of beauty.\u00a0 We would stand back in solemn appreciation of our half-hour handiwork before we lit the match.\u00a0 Me, with a proud fatherly hand on my son\u2019s shoulder; him scratching madly at dozens of festering bites on his legs and neck.<\/span> After Jeremy mastered campfire-building I introduced him to \u201cfire-starters,\u201d those wonderful, waxy chunks of compressed sawdust that make it possible for any idiot with a Bic to start a campfire.\u00a0 Boy Scouts need not apply.\u00a0 My dad would have refused to purchase them.<\/font><\/span> Dad taught me to fish, of course,<\/span><\/strong> just as his dad had taught him, in the fast and frigid trout streams of Wyoming.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t very good at it\u00a0and, frankly, I hated it. But that\u2019s what fathers and sons do. It\u2019s tradition.<\/span> My kid broke the curse. Oh, I taught him and he caught his first fish when he was five or six. But the next time I asked him if he wanted to go fishing he asked with a gentle degree of pity, \u201cDad, you know you can buy fish at the store, right?\u201d That finished the sport for me and I still owe him for it.<\/font><\/span> But I miss it all…<\/span><\/strong> …<\/span><\/strong>the laughter from nearby families, the smell and WOOSH<\/em> of a white gas-powered lantern sputtering to life; the crackle and smoke of a jolly campfire properly-built of wood chunks gathered and chopped by hand. <\/span> I even miss the dirt.<\/font><\/span>