Camping Alone

Last night, I read this during the open mic at Story Club Chicago. It was the very first time I've ever done a live performance of something I wrote that wasn't part of a class.  It went really well and I'm excited to make my billed-reader debut at Story Lab at Black Rock Pub on January 19th.

“Looks like its going pretty good now.  I was worried for a minute there.”

 

She is talking about my campfire. 

I smile through the firelight at my neighbor as she cuts though my site on the way from the water station in a blatant violation of campground etiquette. 

“I asked my husband, aren’t you going to go over there and help her? But he said ‘no, it wouldn’t be any fun for her if I did that.’

I have been at Orchard Beach State Park for approximately 5 hours.  I pulled into my campsite featuring a view of Lake Michigan and set up my tent, despite a moment of panic when the instructions said “have one person gently lift the roof of the tent while the other flexes the pole into the canvas pocket…”

I’m here by myself, which has caused nothing but interest and consternation since my arrival.  Before I even began wrestling with the tent poles, an athletic, tan woman from the next site came over and introduced herself as Kari.  “Are you by yourself, too?” she asked.  “I thought I was the only person crazy enough to come out here alone.”

“Out here” is a state park campground.  It’s the height of the summer season in Michigan, and there are fellow campers set up in tents and elaborate recreational vehicles within ten feet of us in every direction.  Huge motor homes with names like Daybreak and Big Country and Sport Hornet by Keystone.  We’re not talking back country roughing it – more like a hotel, only outdoors and with 100% less privacy. 

Because I was being polite, I don’t point any of this out to Kari before she returned to her own campsite to chat with her boyfriend on her cellphone. 

Once the tent is up, I get going on dinner.  I have opted for a charcoal grill and the flame is like a beacon to the kids from the site to my west.  Three or four of them plop down unbidden on my picnic table.

“Whatcha cooking?”

“Sweet corn and brats”  I answer

“Cool.  We’re roasting hot dogs”

“Cool” 

“Are you here by yourself?” asks the oldest girl.

Thankfully, their mom, a sweet faced blonde woman in khaki Capri pants who could be anywhere between 26 and 45 comes through in a few minutes and tells them to “Go help your dad..  I say hello to her and expect to return to my business, but it’s clear that the kids were really just on a scouting mission.  She’s got follow up questions for me. 

“So you’re here by yourself?”  she asks brightly.

“Yep.  It’s just me.”

“I told my husband, no, she’s too cute to be here by herself.  But then you only had the one chair so…”  she trails off.

I feel compelled to provide more details.  “Well, I’m a writer.  So I thought I’d come here, get away for a few days and do some writing.”

“Oh, have you had anything published?” 

“Not yet!” I chirp, with the creeping feeling that I’m coming off as pathetic, delusional and possibly a danger to myself and others.

“What did you do before?” she asks. 

“I was in public relations.”  Her face remains blank. 

And then I feel it coming…I shouldn’t say it.  The back of my brain is chanting don’t say it, just leave it at that…

“But before that I used to work in politics.” I blurt out, like a sneeze. 

God damn it.  I have to learn to quit telling people that.  Because, A) who cares?  And B) it leads to her next question.

“Are you a Republican or a Democrat?”

See?  I have already lost.

When I fess up, she starts the inevitable monologue.

“I used to be a Democrat, when I taught in Detroit for a few years, but now I’m a Republican.  My husband’s a Republican and I’ve been a Republican, too, for the past few elections.  Because now I teach in Muskegon?  And I see all of these kids who don’t have anything to eat because their parents sell their TVs and washing machines for drugs.  I believe in giving a person a fishing pole, you know?  Instead of just handing them a fish, you need to, like, take them fishing.  And I’m not so sure Obama should be cutting back on our nuclear weapons?  Especially since North Korea has all kinds of nuclear weapons and their leader is so crazy.  We should be able to defend ourselves, I think.”

I know I hang on to it because I want to prove to this woman I don’t even know that I had an interesting life and a demanding career.  So it’s OK I’m out here camping by myself.  It’s OK that I’ve been collecting unemployment and sleeping late and trying to scratch out some stories in my notebook.  I’ve earned it.  I’m special.

“Well, I think it’s just great that you’re out here on your own,” she says in a tone usually reserved for my aunts and grandmothers.  It’s so adventurous!  I wish I were that independent.”   

 “Thanks.”

“Well, I’ll let you get back to your supper,” she says, releasing me. 

After washing my dinner dishes with hot water from the kettle on the grill, I tackle the issue of the campfire. 

But at the fire pit, I realize I have a problem.

I have built a little teepee out of the firewood, with dry sticks and some of the paper trash from dinner in the center.  What I have forgotten to do is bring along a pile of newspapers to ignite the kindling, starting the campfire chain reaction.   

The first three matches light up a few of the skinnier sticks.  But it’s not enough fuel to reach the top and catch the small logs that will eventually feed their bigger brothers piled at my feet.  As the flames lose their enthusiasm, I bend over to encourage them with heavy puffs. 

It’s sort of working when I hear the husband of my good friend Capri Pants, offering commentary.

“…she doesn’t have enough dry kindling…” I hear him say to her, knowingly.

Fuck off!  I want to yell.  I have enough dry kindling! 

I grind my teeth with the certain knowledge that not only is Mr. Capri Pants over there watching me smugly, but everyone who has a view is probably checking my progress.  If I can’t build this fire, it just proves that no woman camping alone can build a fire.  And everyone will go home to Grand Rapids or Fruitport or wherever they’re from secure in their place in the world and the choices they have made.

For a second, I consider the lighter fluid sitting on top of the picnic table.  But just as quickly, I vow to never go down that road.  It’s sacrilegious.  Like pulling out a hand grenade at a fishing trip – it’ll do the job, but it’s not worth losing your humanity over. 

What saves me from the ultimate campground humiliation is a remembered roll of paper towels in the back seat of my car.  I saunter over very casually, pull off a hefty wad, and return to feed the beast.  A couple more matches, and my fire goes from puny to substantial.  I feel like the Queen of the Forest. 

As the dark sky squeezes out the very last of the sunset, I’m sitting in my canvas chair, sipping sharp Pinot Grigio out of a blue tin cup as Capri Pants returns from the camp bathroom with her scrubbed up kids. 

“Yeah, that’s a good one!” she salutes me from her own camp chair.  “My husband never lets me touch the fire.” 

The night air is chilly and the fire hypnotic.  I start to think about the campers that must have been here hundreds, even thousands of years ago, following big fish around the big lake, tending to cookfires and children.  I wonder what those women thought about as they stared into the flames, their fears, their plans.  I listen for the waves lapping the shore that would have carried their canoes, carried the lives of their loved ones away.  I listen….

Is that AC/DC?  Jesus Christ.

Strains of classic rock blare out from the site across the dirt road from me.  I can’t see their faces, but it appears that a father and son have decided the serene wilderness needs to be jazzed up a bit with the musical praises of an American sex goddess who is not unlike a motorcycle.  I desperately look for a ranger.  We are well within the campgound’s stated quiet hours and they are violators.  I shouldn’t have to say something – I’m a child of divorce, I hate confrontation.  Mr. Capri pants, who was soooo interested in my fire’s progress seems oblivious to the aural assault. He should step up and say something.  Why isn’t he saying something? 

Three electric guitar-heavy songs later, there is no ranger to be found.  Steeling myself with a shot of Pinot, I leave the comfort of my fire. 

Hey!  I try to sound firm but non-threatening.  “It’s after quiet hours.”  I point at the radio.  “Do you think you could turn that down? ” 

The man shifts his weight on the picnic bench, belly straining against his flannel coat and turns the knob with barely a grunt of acknowledgement. But I’ll take it as a victory that he didn’t refuse or call me a bitch or force me to march to the ranger station. 

“OK, thanks!!” I smile so hard it hurts my face and turn back to my campsite, heart pounding and praying that he doesn’t throw rocks at me as I walk away or come murder me in my tent as I sleep. 

I hope he hasn’t noticed that I’m here by myself.