Quite Possibly My Dumbest Idea Ever

(This was originally published here.)

Once, before I had kids and therefore would even consider such a thing, I took a road trip from San Francisco to Seattle with my new husband and his college buddy. It’s a dramatically beautiful ride and I saw some things I will never forget, but mostly, I sat in the back seat and listened as the two of them regressed with each mile. It was dumb joke after dumb joke, silly insult after insult, so that by the time we reached Oregon, I’m pretty sure they were emotionally and mentally, somewhere solidly in their sophomore year.

They argued over which mixed tape to play, which cereal was best, and debated who was better at their vast range of individual skills; I didn’t see many. When they were getting along, they high fived their brilliant ideas over the steering wheel, including one that had us venture 50 miles off our route to hit a casino. The casino had no air conditioning – in 90+-degree summer heat – but it had a lot of lukewarm Pepsi (no diet) in paper cups. They found a “camp” nearby in what was ostensibly a parking lot with water flowing through it and that was conveniently placed near one of our nation’s biggest supermax prisons. I knew it would all go horribly wrong after I read a sign above the public toilets forbidding “hair-dye flushing.” Um, what?

Of course, it did go horribly wrong. If the snoring and the slurp of sweaty skin ripping off plastic tent floor wasn’t enough, it was the animal (a wharf rat? a badger? a land shark?) that attempted to claw in directly under the spot where I was “sleeping” that finally pushed me over the edge. I spent the next six hours wide-awake in the car, on the look out for any sneaky hair dyers or invading animals. When the morning finally came, I threw one of my more historic temper tantrums.

My camping days were officially over. The road trip would continue only under new rules -- my rules, which consisted mainly of hours of silent meditation until we found the nearest (clean) motel. Luckily for us all, my rules were heeded: I’m still married and the road-tripping college buddy remains one of my favorite people.

I have not gone camping since.

But I’m about to.

When my friend mentioned the overnight tenting trip her family took last summer, I thought --what??! Are you nuts? And then, so shockingly quickly that I shocked even myself, I decided that maybe we needed one too. With all the rush and race of our summer, a little North Country quiet tempts me: some water without salt, some roads without street lights, some place where this Small Town seems massive and noisy. I’ve been researching spots and scouting out gear to borrow and I am rallying my somewhat wishy-washy troops for the trip.

The irony is not lost on me.

Truth be told, I’m even getting a little swoony, just imagining it. There we’ll be: gathered around a perfectly maintained and non-threatening campfire, mosquitoes and land sharks far, far away, singing James Taylor songs in perfect tune and eating non-sticky s’mores. Our tent will miraculously build itself. A cool breeze will blow, crickets will chatter, the lake or river or creek will ripple gently in the moonlight. Not a drop of rain will fall. No one will fight or feign boredom. We will be Swiss Family Robinson and Grizzly Adams and the Duggars (minus a couple dozen) rolled into one!

Fantasy? Perhaps. After all, I imagined that San Fran-Seattle road trip to be the stuff that National Geographic documentaries are made of; instead, it was your basic D-list reality show. But I’m older now and while my expectations might remain high and undoubtedly delusional, I am fearlessly going for it -- even if it means picking a spot in short driving distance of my Vermont aunt and uncle whose tidy bathroom and hard-working stove might come in handy. Last time, it was three clueless young adults. This time, it’s two clueless adults and three young kids.

What could possibly go wrong?