Given that most of the people I camp with have tended to have a great deal more experience at camping than I do, I have often tended to think that it is somewhat unusual that I had no real camping experience until I was an adult and started camping with some of my friends in Southern California.  Humorously enough, though, the sermonette speaker had a great way to talk about his own lack of experience camping as a child when he talked about a particularly traumatic experience where his family attempted to camp in Florida in the summer.  It is difficult to imagine less pleasant places to camp than Florida in the summer, where every bit of standing water tends to attract millions of mosquitoes and where the continual heat and humidity makes living in a tent that lacks air conditioning not very enjoyable or pleasant for anyone unless they have trouble maintaining their body heat, which I suppose could happen for at least a few people who would want to camp.

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One of the more fascinating aspects of camping is watching the attention to logistics that people pay when it comes to camping.  For example, there are various logistics about what days to rent the campground, since the day that one ends one’s reservation people have to leave at 1PM or so.  This was a problem a previous time we rented this particular campground near Beacon Rock a few miles west of the Cascade Locks on the Washington side of the Columbia River, when we had planned some fun activities in the morning and then had about ten minutes or so to pack up and leave in a mad rush [1].  So, this time we were more prepared for that and had rented the place from Thursday to Monday so that people could arrive early and stay late if they wanted.  Of course, I arrived Friday afternoon after work and left early this afternoon, although some people will be staying until tomorrow morning because they have a slightly less full schedule.  Also impressive is the way that people plan for the eating aspect of logistics, where at least a few people have enough extra food and cooking supplies that those who are less prepared are able to make do, especially with the two pot lucks we generally have on the Sabbath for brunch and dinner, which is tasty and of course full of a lot of food (except for the guy who didn’t bring enough eggs and then gently made fun of himself when he was giving the announcements before his split sermon).

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For me, one of the more fun aspects of going to camp is talking to people I might not spend a great deal of time talking to in a different environment.  For example, I had a fun time laughing about the fact that I was a bit disappointed that the various dogs present this year (there were at least four) did not form a clique with each other the way that people would have if thrown together, because Portland.  I generally know that I am not usually going to sleep very well over the course of such a weekend, because camping, but there are a variety of ways this can happen.  For example, one time I went camping I ended up putting my tent over some tree roots that made sleeping a bit awkward, and this year I managed to have a leaky air mattress and failed entirely to see its replacement hanging near my tent last night until I got up this morning.  Of course, socializing tends to take up a fair amount of time and serves as one of the reasons why I don’t tend to sleep very long, at least, even when everything is working out well as it sometimes was.  For me, camping is one of those activities that reveals the way that sleeping in general is a difficult thing that does not go easily and camping is merely one of those occasions where it is particularly obvious.

[1] See, for example:

Overstaying Your Welcome