by Dave Barry
Chapter Eight. Camping: Nature’s Way Of Promoting The Motel Industry
So far we’ve discussed many exciting travel destinations, but all of them lack an element that is too often missing from the stressful, high-pressure urban environment most of us live in. That element is: dirt. Also missing from the urban environment are snakes, pit toilets, and tiny black flies that crawl up your nose. To experience these things, you need to locate some Nature and go camping in it.
Where Nature Is Located
Nature is located mainly in national parks, which are vast tracts of wilderness that have been set aside by the United States government so citizens will always have someplace to go where they can be attacked by bears. And we’re not talking about ordinary civilian bears, either: We’re talking about federal bears, which can behave however they want to because they are protected by the same union as postal clerks.
You also want to be on the lookout for federal moose. I had a moose encounter once, when my wife and I were camping in Yellowstone National Park, which is popular with nature lovers because it has dangerous geysers of super-heated steam that come shooting up out of the ground, exactly like in New York City, except that the Yellowstone geysers operate on a schedule. Anyway, one morning I woke up and went outside to savor the dawn’s ever-changing subtle beauty, by which I mean take a leak, and there, maybe fifteen feet away, was an animal approximately the size of the Western Hemisphere and shaped like a horse with a severe steroid problem. It pretended to be peacefully eating moss, but this was clearly a clever ruse designed to lull me into believing that it was a gentle, moss-eating creature. Obviously no creature gets to be that large by eating moss. A creature gets to be that large by stomping other creatures to death with its giant hooves. Clearly what it wanted me to do was approach it, so it could convert me into a wilderness pizza while bellowing triumphant moss-breath bellows into the morning air. Fortunately I am an experienced woodsperson, so I had the presence of mind to follow the Recommended Wilderness Moose-Encounter Procedure, which was to get in the car and indicate to my wife, via a system of coded horn-honks, that she was to pack up all our equipment and put it in the car trunk, and then get in the trunk herself, so that I would not have to open the actual door until we had relocated to a safer area, such as Ohio.
This chilling story is yet another reminder of the importance of:
Selecting The Proper Campsite
Selecting the proper campsite can mean the difference between survival and death in the wilderness, so you, the woodsperson, must always scrutinize the terrain carefully to make sure that it can provide you with the basic necessities, the main one being a metal thing that sticks out of the ground where you hook up the air conditioner on your recreational vehicle. I’m assuming here that you have a recreational vehicle, which has been the preferred mode of camping in America ever since the early pioneers traveled westward in primitive, oxen-drawn Winnebagos—Of course there are some thoughtful, environmentally sensitive ecology nuts who prefer to camp in tents, which are fine except for four things:
1. All tent-erection instructions are written by the internal Revenue Service
(“Insert ferrule post into whippet grommet, or 23 percent of your gross deductible adjustables, which-ever is more difficult”).
2. It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles against the prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent, which is bad because:
3. Tents contain mildews, which are tiny one-celled animals that are activated by moisture and immediately start committing one-celled acts of flatulence, so that before long it smells like you’re sleeping in a giant unwashed gym sock.
4. Tents are highly attractive to bears. When bears are young, their parents give them, as a treat, little camper-shaped candies in little tent wrappers.
So I’m recommending a major recreational vehicle, the kind that has a VCR-equipped recreation room and consumes the annual energy output of Syria merely to operate the windshield wipers. Other wilderness survival equipment that you should always take along includes:
A hatchet, in case you need to fix the VCR Cheez-Its A flashlight last used in 1973, with what appears to be penicillin mold growing on the batteries
And speaking of penicillin, you need to know:
What To Do In A Wilderness Medical Emergency
Experts agree that the most important rule in a wilderness medical emergency is: Keep your head down on the follow-through. No! My mistake! That’s the most important rule in golf. The most important rule in a wilderness medical emergency is: Don’t panic. To prevent the victim from going into shock, you must reassure him, as calmly as possible, that everything’s going to be fine:
VICTIM (clearly frightened): Am I going to be okay?
YOU (in a soothing voice): Of course you are! I’m sure we’ll find your legs around here some place!
VICTIM (relieved): Whew! You got any Cheez-Its?
Once the victim has been calmed, you need to obtain pertinent information by asking the following Standard Medical Questions:
1. Does he have medical insurance?
2. Does his spouse have medical insurance?
3. Was he referred to this wilderness by another doctor?
4. How much does he weigh?
5. Does that figure include legs?
Write this information down on a medical chart, then give the victim a 1986 copy of Fortune magazine to read while you decide on the correct course of treatment. This will depend on the exact nature of the injury. For example, if it’s mushroom poisoning or a broken limb, you’ll need to apply a tourniquet. Whereas if it’s a snake bite, then you need to determine whether the snake was poisonous, which will be indicated by tiny markings on the snake’s Stomach as follows:
WARNING! POISON SNAKE!
ACHTUNG! SCHLANGE SCHNAPPENKILLEN!
In this case, you need to apply a tourniquet to the snake.
Fun Family Wilderness Activities
There are so many fun things for a family to do together in the wilderness that I hardly know where to start. One proven barrel of wilderness laughs is to try to identify specific kinds of trees by looking at the bark, leaves, federal identification plaques, etc. This activity is bound to provide many seconds of enjoyment for the youngsters. (“This one’s an oak!” “No it’s not!” “You suck!”) Later on, you can play Survival Adventure, where the children, using only a compass and a map, must try to figure out what city Mom and Dad have driven to.
But the greatest camping fun comes at night, when everybody gathers around the campfire and sings campfire songs. Some of our “old family favorites” include:
I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad
Oh, I’ve been workin’ on the railroad,
With a banjo on my knee.
We will kill the old red rooster
We will kill the old red rooster
We will kill the old red rooster
And you better not get in our way.
Michael Row the Boat Ashore
Michael row the boat ashore, Alleluia!
Michael row the boat ashore, Alleluia!
Michael row the damn boat ashore, Alleluia!
Lenore threw up in the tackle box.
Camptown Races
Camptown ladies sing this song: Doo-dah, doo-dah
Camptown ladies been off their medication
And they are none too fond of the old red rooster, either.
After the singing, it’s time for Dad to prepare the children for bedtime by telling them a traditional campfire story. To qualify as traditional, the story has to adhere to the following guidelines, established by the National Park Service:
1. It has to begin Many Years Ago when some people camped Right in This Very Forest on a night Exactly Like Tonight.
2. People warned them not to camp here, but they paid no attention.
3. People said, “I wouldn’t go back in there if I were you! That’s the lair of the [select one]:
a.
Snake Man!”
b. Swamp Devil!”
c. Giant Radioactive Meat-Eating Box Turtle of Death!”
4. But the campers just laughed.
5. “Ha ha!” were their exact words.
6. Until they found little Jennifer’s gallbladder on the Hibachi.
And so on. Dad should tell this story in a soft, almost hypnotic voice, lulling the children into a trance-like state in which they are aware of nothing except the story and the terror and the still, sinister darkness all around them and
OH MY GOD! IT COMES
And then it’s time for everybody to “call it a night” and climb, all five of you, into the sleeping bag with Mom.
Welcome Home! Or: “That’s Odd! Our House Used To Be Right Here!”
As we have seen in the preceding chapters, traveling is a tremendous amount of fun, but eventually, you become too tired and broke and diseased to continue. Then it’s time to come home, drop your suitcases right at the front door, kick off your shoes, and stagger into the kitchen to quench your thirst with a nice cold ... NO DON’T OPEN THE REFRIGERATOR AIEEEEEE ... You have no idea what kinds of fierce predatory meat-eating fungi have been growing in there (Sometimes in less than an hour) while you were gone. They’ve been feeding on the highly nutritious Chinese take-out food that you’ve been wisely storing in the back of your refrigerator for several months in case it suddenly appreciates in value. Your refrigerator has developed individual mold spores the size of Doberman pinschers, and they are going to be very angry if you just barge into their territory and try to grab something. The American Medical Association, in an alarming 1989 report (There is no further information contained in this footnote) stated that the leading cause of death
among Americans returning from trips is being attacked by refrigerator mold. “Never enter your kitchen after a trip without a working flamethrower in your hand,” advises the AMA.
This is assuming, of course, that you still have a kitchen. There’s always the possibility that your house has burned down, and the only thing that survived the fire is the stack of credit-card bills documenting all the shrewd purchases you made on your trip, such as the $197.50 Authentic Souvenir Limbo Stick that was confiscated by U.S. Customs because it contained lethal parasites.
And even if your house is still there, there’s always the chance that your plumbing—which has sophisticated electronic sensors so it knows the instant you leave home—has developed a leak, which doesn’t sound like such a big deal until you consider that the Grand Canyon, for example, is basically the result of water damage.
And speaking of damages, you should check the dense growth that has sprung up around your house in case it contains the moaning, semi-deceased body of a mailperson or door-to-door salesperson, or meter reader, or one of the dozens of other people who could have visited your house while you were gone and tripped on a Dangerous Hazard in your yard, such as the ground, causing him to fall and severely injure his back, resulting in so much Pain and Suffering that he has been unable to move, except of course to notify his attorney and put a down payment on a motor yacht the size of Utica, New York.
But never mind these temporary problems. The point is that you had fun, right? Remember the Old Traveler’s Saying: “You may lose your money and your health and your sanity and some important organs, but they can’t take away your travel memories unless they hit you hard on the head.” These are the words I live by, as a traveler, and in these pages I’ve tried to share my vast knowledge with you as a way of saying “Thank You!” for buying this book.
Unless of course you just borrowed this book, in which case I hope that the next time you travel, your luggage winds up on a space probe.
About The Author
Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist at the Miami Herald. His books include Homes and Other Black Holes, Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits, Dave Barry Slept Here, and Dave Barry Turns 40, among others.
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