Camp Whacked

By Alan Tivol  |  July 22, 2010

When it comes to camping, misery loves company—but sometimes, love accompanies misery

The sound, muffled by sleep and a pair of cheap earplugs, wafted across our backcountry cabin, mysterious but vaguely familiar. Was it the low hiss of someone’s camp stove? The faint rumble of distant thunder? Or, heaven help us, the husky growl of a hungry bear?

That’s when it hit me—literally, as in with a shoe, apparently thrown by one of my fellow campers in an effort to figure out who the heck was snoring so loud. It wasn’t me, but I understood the thrower’s frustration. After all, there’s nothing like a little communal camping to put the grrr in group dynamics.

Fact is, I’ve shared tight spaces with all sorts of trail hounds over the years: Happy campers, cranky campers, high-tech gearheads hauling every gadget known to man and at least one Rambo-wannabe who got by with little more than a large knife and loincloth.

But these days, I do most of my camping with a local outdoors club—it seems safer, you know. This is how I ended up in that cabin with the snorer, the shoe-thrower and a half-dozen other instant “friends.” Between the cramped quarters and near-constant rain, the tension was so thick it made the cast of The Apprentice look like a prayer circle.

There was the chronic weather checker (“Yup, still raining.”), the serial cell phone checker (“Nope, still no signal.”) and the incessant whistler (tone deaf, of course). There were little quibbles and increasingly loud discussions and even an argument between two guys over whose socks smelled worse. (Congratulations, gentlemen, you both win. The rest of us? Not so much.)

And then, in a rare moment of silence, someone let slip a decidedly non-vocal sound seldom heard in more polite company. There were sheepish looks and furtive glances, a snicker here, a suppressed giggle there, and within minutes, all of us were cackling like kindergartners. Just like that, squabbling took a back seat to shared laughter and a common bond that I suspect would never have formed in more “civilized” surroundings.

Better yet, it’s a bond that’s endured. I still hit the trail with the whistler and the cell phone checker, and I’ve shared more tents and cabins with the snorer than I can count, although throwing shoes is no longer necessary.

Now that she’s my wife, I just roll over and give her a nudge.