The Camping Curse: At Some Point It's Time to Walk Away

by Greg Easterling

Some folks argue that camping is as American as baseball and apple pie. They insist it’s part of our national identity, and simply mentioning the word can make them nostalgic. But I contend that camping is as overrated as Nicolas Cage’s acting ability, and I speak from experience as someone who has given camping a fair shot.

There was a time when I considered myself a fan of camping. Sleeping in a tent with only a paper-thin sheet of fabric protecting me from the weather, bugs, and beasts; walking a quarter mile to take a lukewarm shower in a moldy bathhouse; smelling like Deep Woods Off for an entire week – I held these experiences in high regard. But in my defense, I was young and naive.

These days, I ask myself why an otherwise normal American family would feel compelled to hop into their SUV and drive in the exact opposite direction from civilization? I don’t usually subscribe to conspiracy theories, but this mystery has all the markings of a government mind control experiment. That would explain a lot.

As you can tell, I don’t get warm fuzzies from camping. While I love spending a few daylight hours with Mother Nature, I don’t trust her when my eyes are closed. She can be vindictive toward those who have overstayed their welcome. And I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve fully embraced the Electronic Age, the Air-Conditioned Age, and the Posturepedic Age. The idea of sleeping in a tent when I own a perfectly good house is as appealing as shoveling out the elephant exhibit at the San Diego Zoo. Despite my personal feelings, I try to be tolerant of all those mindless, unenlightened souls. I simply roll my eyes and keep scrolling as their social media posts try to convince their followers that they’re doing something remarkable.

Before describing my journey to enlightenment, let me tell you my definition of camping. Camping is the act of voluntarily denying oneself basic human rights by temporarily living outdoors. It may or may not include sleep, because if someone snores in a tent, every camper within two hundred yards is in for a miserable night.

I definitively reject the notion that RVing is camping. Eating microwave popcorn while watching satellite TV and surfing the Web in the pop-out living room of a climate-controlled RV doesn’t resemble anything close to camping; it’s more in line with spending the weekend at the Waldorf Astoria.

Would you like your bed turned down, sir? A mint on your pillow?

If you truly believe you’re roughing it in a vehicle that costs more than my house, please put me in your will. Just don’t take me camping.

Let me share some of my camping experiences. The following stories are all based on actual events, and might—or might not—be facts I’d be willing to swear to in a court of law. And even though none of my experiences resulted in a loss of life, being frisked by a hungry bear, or burning down a national forest, you will soon understand why I no longer camp.

When I was a child, my family went camping three or four times a year. We would pile into our 1966 Dodge Dart station wagon and drive to a scenic campground off the beaten path. Dad drove the entire campsite loop at least once, looking for that one site that was “The Best.” He cruised through the campground as long as it took until he found it. The Best. Honestly, Dad had a special gift, because I didn’t have the ability to see a difference between his selection and the other sixty-five sites he rejected. If not for his uncanny talent, who knows how many subpar campsites we would have endured over the years.

Having arrived at the best site in the whole campground, we fell into a routine: Mom and Dad unloaded the car while my sister and I ran off to meet the other juvenile inmates of our middle-class refugee camp. While the kids played, the adults had much work to do before the revelry could begin. Tents had to be pitched, for one thing, and a ‘70s tent could be a formidable opponent that required a community effort to subdue. By unspoken dictum, all the neighboring campers gathered to assist the newest arrivals. Picture an Amish barn raising, except the laborers wore Bermuda shorts and Brylcreem. One group of Bermudas wrestled with sixty pounds of stiff, musty canvas while an alpha male leaned over several pages of instructions spread out on a picnic table. The ladies sifted through a pile of aluminum pole sections and began inserting Pole A into Slot B. And there was always that one guy who stood around telling jokes, mallet in hand, waiting to do his one and only job: hammering the stakes into the ground. Eventually, the community completed the tent-raising. If all went well, it would still be standing the next morning.

At mealtime, every campsite broke out a propane stove and one or both parents prepared dinner. We always ate on a picnic table covered with a red-checkered plastic tablecloth. And everyone’s tables had the same centerpiece: a can of Off. We sprayed this noxious concoction all over ourselves to confound the swarms of blood-sucking creatures intent on feasting on us. My food always had an Off aftertaste. I probably could have repelled the little monsters by simply breathing on them. Not that mosquito bites were a big deal; they were an integral part of the camping experience. I relished the thought of showing off my welts to envious friends at school as proof that I had indeed been braving the wilds.

After dark we congregated around the campfire and popped Jiffy Pop or made s’mores. Burning marshmallows became my area of expertise, but I refused to eat them. What’s the point of turning perfectly good sugar into charcoal if you’re planning to eat it? But if burning marshmallows allowed me to play with fire, I happily engaged in a child’s version of alchemy: turning sucrose into carbon. And the sight of a flaming marshmallow being held aloft was glorious!

Sometimes my sister and I ran into the darkness with newfound friends while our parents got together with other pretend-Amish adults to play cards or chat. One evening, while my parents sat around a bonfire talking with our Amish neighbors, I caught a snake. Proud to show off my new pet, I walked up behind my mother and let the snake slither onto her shoulder. She turned, but instead of seeing her son, she made eye contact with a terrified snake. From my mother’s throat erupted the most inhuman sound to ever pierce the starry night, sending the entire campground into DEFCON 2 lockdown. The snake fell to the ground, rolled over, and pretended to be dead. My father and the other men laughed helplessly, while the women tried to comfort my mother. This event ruined my weekend and permanently affected my hearing, but my snake and I became legends at Caloosa River Campground.

One night, after an evening of scary stories around the fire, I awoke with a full bladder. I can still recall the creepy walk down the dark path to the bathhouse. At that time, stories about Bigfoot and aliens abounded, so on top of being watchful for lions and tigers and bears, I also had to avoid being abducted by Martians and giant smelly swamp creatures. I struggled to delay the imminent release while hustling along the dark, wooded path, armed only with a flashlight and a bursting bladder. If any creature—even a chipmunk—had made its presence known during one of my bathroom trips, I wouldn’t have needed to complete my trip, and the unfortunate chipmunk would probably have drowned.

Fast forward a few years, when I transitioned effortlessly from poor bachelor to poor husband. My new bride Cindy and I scraped together a few bucks to buy a two-person dome tent. I’m not sure how the manufacturer determined that two people could fit inside that thing, but I’m sure they didn’t have them both inside at the same time. For Cindy and me, though, it was perfect, and being newlyweds, we both enjoyed camping. Cindy thought camping was romantic; I thought it was cheaper than a hotel room.

I instantly noticed that many things had changed since my childhood. For example, our new tent was a lightweight nylon dome that looked like a green igloo. I could literally pick it up with one hand, and thanks to its geodesic design and flexible shock poles, it was unbelievably quick and easy to set up. Another difference I soon realized was how well light shone through the nylon walls. Here’s a tip: don’t keep the lights on inside your tent if you plan to get frisky.

The meal situation was also quite different from my youth. Neither Cindy nor I knew how to cook. I couldn’t even boil water without melting the pot. We made it work, though. For dinner, we usually drove to the nearest town and found a local diner. On camping trips, we would never settle for a chain restaurant; we were roughing it after all. Then, after dinner, while we were still in town, we prepared for breakfast by purchasing a bag of mini donuts. There is just something special about eating a powdered donut gem in the great outdoors.

Before long, our camping trips often turned into fiascos. On one such occasion, Cindy and I found a beautiful Mom-and-Pop campground on the shore of a North Carolina lake. The campground was practically deserted, so we were able to claim a secluded campsite right on the water. It couldn’t be more perfect. After setting up camp—it took all of ten minutes­­­--we drove off in search of a nice Southern meal. Later, we went for a moonlight swim, and then snuggled before a cozy fire. We soon became entranced by dancing flames and gently lapping waves. This, I remember thinking, was heaven.

Sometime during the night, the sound of approaching vehicles woke us from blissful sleep. I unzipped a window flap and watched headlights bounce along the gravel road, moving in our direction. In a few moments, two pickup trucks slid to a noisy halt about fifty feet away, and shadowy figures swarmed out of each truck and began unloading their gear. Terrific, I thought, a mostly empty campground, and these locals had to choose the campsite right next to us.

Although irritated, I tried to paint the situation in a positive light for Cindy. “Let’s give them time to set up their camp,” I said. “They’ll quiet down. They probably just got a late start because of work or traffic.”

She nodded, and we snuggled back under the blankets, but as the minutes plodded by, we found it impossible to sleep. An hour went by, and then two, and our neighbors still hadn’t pitched a tent. What’s more, a tent didn’t seem to be in their plans. What their plans did include was an abundance of alcohol, a monstrous fire, and a dozen lawn chairs ringing the inferno.

“Do something!” Cindy demanded.

“Shhhh!” I hissed. “Do you want them to hear you?” Like there was any chance of that happening.

She continued to fume. “I can’t stand it anymore! Make them be quiet!”

“They’re not going to be quiet; it’s a party! And we’re outnumbered!”

Our back-and-forth continued, but the result was that either I would deal with the problem, or she would. Shamed into action, I pulled on my pink Izod polo shirt and khaki shorts. I slid into my Sperry’s and prepared myself mentally to do battle with the drunk bonfire worshipers.

I stepped out of the tent, but before zipping the flap closed, I looked at Cindy. “If I get my brains beaten in by a bunch of drunk rednecks for your highness, be sure to finish your beauty sleep before calling 911!” If I was about to sacrifice myself, I wanted to leave her with some biting last words.

I approached our Bacchic guests, who still didn’t see me in the shadows. Be strong, I told myself. Take control. I took a deep, calming breath and in a loud, clear voice I said, “Hi guys, how’s it going?”

All sounds instantly ceased—even the crackling fire seemed to mute—and twelve drunk pairs of eyes tried to focus on me, bravely standing outside the firelight.

“Nice shirt,” someone said. Another partier snickered.

“Is that pink?” a husky southern accent asked incredulously. More laughter.

“Um, yeah. Listen, we’re trying to sleep,” I pointed toward the little tent. “Could you please keep it down?”

Again, there was total silence from the drunk rednecks, and in that moment I realized that I had probably achieved one of my goals: it appeared that I wasn’t going to get assaulted.

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” I said, before retreating toward the safety of my nylon fortress.

Before I had even reached the tent, they began cackling. Then a voice doing a pretty good impression of me floated in the air. “Could you please keep it down?” This elicited roaring laughter. I now had the answer regarding my second goal: the night would not be getting any quieter.

And it didn’t. Cindy and I suffered through a long, sleepless night as the revelers thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Then, just as the warming glow of daybreak began lighting up the tent, our neighbors from Cretin County packed up their trucks and left, putting an exclamation point on the wonderful evening by peeling out in some loose gravel that peppered the sides of our tent. Cindy and I looked at each other with tired eyes.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Time to go home.”

We packed in bleary silence and hit the road. We were ten miles gone before we thought to open the bag of donuts.

A few years later, after our family had grown to three, we decided it was time to have another go at camping. We packed our five-year-old daughter, Laura, and our gear into the minivan and set out for a state park in the mountains of northeast Tennessee. I purchased a larger tent for the occasion and pitched it in a beautiful spot nestled among towering elms and oaks. Our dinner plans involved impaling wieners on sticks and roasting them over our fire, practically gourmet cooking by my standards. Laura had never done this before and loved being allowed to play with fire. She became more interested in lighting her meal on fire than in eating it, and this being a special occasion, we allowed it.

After dinner, Cindy pulled out graham crackers, chocolate bars, and marshmallows, and explained the art of making s’mores to Laura.

“Put the marshmallow on the end of your stick like this, and put it in the fire,” she demonstrated.

“Why?” Laura asked, dangling her stick over the flames.

I watched my marshmallow catch fire. “So you can burn it before you eat it.”

“Why are you burning it?”

I realized I didn’t know, but I couldn’t admit it to a five-year-old. “That’s what you do when you go camping.”

Laura thought about this for a moment before deciding she didn’t have room for dessert. She offered me her marshmallow, a charred blob of dripping goo. I politely refused. I won’t eat that crap either.

Since the s’mores weren’t a hit, I suggested that we drive down the mountain for ice cream. After forty-five minutes of driving, we discovered there was no ice cream parlor in the little town, so I pulled into a Bubba Mart and bought three ice cream sandwiches. As I paid the clerk, raindrops began to spatter the store’s windows. Strange, I thought. I hadn’t noticed any clouds earlier, and I said so.

“One thing’s for sure in the mountains,” the clerk replied. “If you don’t like Tennessee weather, just wait five minutes.”

I smiled as I left, refraining from telling him people say that in every place I’ve ever lived.

The rain was coming down with a purpose by the time we returned to our campsite. There would be no primal bonding beside a fire tonight, unless the clerk was right. But fortunately, Cindy had brought some games. It’s always good to have a Plan B.

We waited in the car for a lull in the rain, then made a mad dash for the tent. Not until I zipped the door flap shut did Cindy tell me that the games were in the back of the minivan. My mind recited a dozen unspoken epithets before I mastered my emotions and smiled at little Laura.

“Be back in a minute!” I dashed into the rain.

By the time I returned with the games tucked under my arm, I looked like I had fallen into a lake. Finding some dry clothes, I turned off the lamp and changed in the dark. When I flicked it back on, I saw Laura drawing smiley faces on the side of the tent with her finger. Small drops of water seeped through the nylon where her finger had touched it.

“NOOOOO!” I yelled. “Don’t do that!” My sudden outburst caused Laura’s whole body to quiver as if I’d just tased her. The quivering soon subsided everywhere except her lower lip. Her big blue eyes brimmed with tears and she buried her head in Cindy’s neck. Cindy gave me The Stare—the one that all women seem to have in their arsenals - and all conversation ceased.

I sat there gloomily, watching water droplets soak through the tent wall. They slowly swelled, then rolled down the inside of the tent and collected on the floor. The puddle grew as slowly as a glacier, but I noticed. When one’s choices are between watching raindrops puddle on the floor or enduring The Stare, the raindrops win every time.

A sudden crackling explosion of a nearby lightning strike brought us to our feet, and we expertly performed an impromptu rendition of Riverdance. A second strike, even closer, spurred us into action, and we burst through the tent flap. As quickly as I could, I herded Cindy and my terrified daughter to the car. They waited in the car while I broke down the camp in record time, fully expecting a lightning bolt to blast me into a pork rind any second. During the two-hour drive home, Laura compulsively repeated that she didn’t like camping, and she demanded assurances that we would never do this again. Cindy sat in the back seat with Laura, comforting her. And I drove through the storm in silence, feeling the Death Stare on the back of my skull.

It took a few years, but I finally convinced Laura not to melt down if we tried another camping trip. By this time, I had two girls. Laura was now eleven and Amy was five, and since she had never camped, we needed to let her experience the magic of camping at least once. Laura was as stoic as a martyr facing the lions. Amy, being the second child, was up for any adventure.

We packed the minivan and drove fifteen miles out of town to a family-owned campground we’d heard good things about. We picked a campsite beside a small creek, thinking the girls might enjoy playing in the water.

I was surprised there were so many RVs, big ones, as big as a house. And almost no tents. Most of the RVs had thick black cables snaking across the dirt road like pythons heading to a constrictor convention. What in the world was all that about? My eyes followed the cables into a nearby meadow where they plugged into satellite dishes that pointed skyward. It looked like we had stumbled upon the SETI array. No indication of intelligent life, here, though.

Trying to change our fortunes, we had borrowed a popup camper, which is basically a tent on wheels. It would take a downpour of biblical proportions to flood us out this time!

The popup was soon set up and leveled, and before long the girls were happily splashing in the creek. They were having a blast, and I began to relax. Nothing bad had happened! Cindy and I leaned back in a couple of camp chairs and watched the kids play. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing in this place. Looking around, I tried to identify the source of my unease, and then it hit me: there was no sign of children anywhere. I was sure I hadn’t seen so much as a swing set.

As I was pondering this, a four-wheeler pulled up and the campground owner stepped off. He was a paunchy older man with the name “Gus” stitched on his shirt and a Smith & Wesson holstered on his hip. He eyed the girls suspiciously as he walked up to me.

“Howdy,” I began in my most neighborly voice.

“They cain’t play in the crick,” he drawled.

“Excuse me?”

“Cain’t play in the crick,” he repeated.

“Why not?” I asked, dumbfounded.

Gus narrowed his eyes. He must not like to be challenged. “They’ll disturb the natural surroundings.”

“Oh, you mean like the satellite dishes in the meadow?”

He eyed me coolly out of one eye while he spat a big brown mess on the ground. A hand now rested on his holster, the ultimate show of force in his little kingdom, a sign that he was willing to escalate this encounter if I was.

I wasn’t, and I glanced at Cindy. She couldn’t have looked more stunned if she had just learned the earth really is flat after all.

“Fine,” I replied. “Do you have a playground where they can play?”

He confirmed my guess with a headshake, then motioned toward the SETI project. “Take ‘em over there if ya want to. But don’t let ‘em mess with them satellite dishes or I’ll throw your asses out.” He spat again, climbed onto his four-wheeler, and drove off.

I stared after him, speechless. Cindy had recovered from her initial shock and was building up a good boil. Her eyes showed me she was contemplating murder, or at least trying to decide if the prison time would be worth the crime. I realized I had no other option, so I told the girls they couldn’t play in the creek anymore. They whined as they climbed out, and Cindy continued to stew in her juices. Fortunately, I quickly convinced the girls to go on an adventure with me.

When we entered the meadow, we discovered the grass was almost as tall as Amy, which scared her. It also made Laura itch; who knew she was allergic to grass? Before long, Amy was riding happily on my shoulders and tugging my hair left or right to steer me. Laura, meanwhile, was close to tears and asked repeatedly to go back to the camper. So much for my “adventure;” maybe after dark we could return and sabotage the satellite dishes. Cindy would be game, even though we had left our saboteur outfits at home.

Dinner that night consisted of hot dogs cooked over the fire and veggies that Cindy prepared on the propane stove. Afterwards, I brought out the sticks and a bag of marshmallows.

Laura immediately said no thanks and pulled some Gummi Bears out of some secret stash. She had obviously planned for a S’more substitute in advance. But Amy was interested, and we showed her how to put a marshmallow on her stick and hold it over the fire. Most of her marshmallows dripped into the fire, but she ate what remained on the stick. She wanted another, and then another, and she soon surpassed her monthly sugar quota. When Cindy tried to wash the goo off Amy’s face, the sugared-up child giggled and squirmed so uncontrollably, Cindy appeared to be trying to dress a flopping fish.

We finally reached that special time in a camper’s day, when the last rays of the sun stopped filtering through the leafy surroundings. The fire crackled, the crickets chirped, and the cool breeze whispered through the trees. It would have been wonderful therapy, if not for the irksome glare of electric lights and the unwanted sound of televisions tuned to Wheel of Fortune. No children played hide-and-seek among the trees. No one caught fireflies.

I heard Pat Sajak ask a contestant what they wanted to do. “Solve the puzzle already!” I yelled into the night. Cindy slapped my arm to shush me, but I continued. “The answer is ‘Take me home country road,’ for Pete’s sake!” A curtain fluttered in the nearest RV and Cindy clapped her hand over my mouth while I gestured at my offended neighbor like a full-blooded Italian.

Later, I walked the girls down to the bathhouse so they could brush their teeth and use the restroom. We didn’t need our flashlights. Tacky plastic lanterns lit up the path like Bourbon Street. And even though I didn’t want to, I caught up on the day’s news by lingering near an RV tuned in to CNN. That’s when I decided that my camping days were over for good.

Little did I know that this camping trip wasn’t quite over yet. In the middle of the night, Amy awoke with an upset stomach. I rushed her to the door, which she christened with explosive marshmallow vomit. The foul stuff splattered all over the floor and also found its way into Laura’s hiking boots.

Evidently feeling better, Amy wiped her mouth with a dirty sock and climbed back into bed. Cindy and Laura, meanwhile, pretended to be asleep, leaving me to clean up the mess by myself. Using an entire roll of paper towels, I cleaned marshmallow vomit by flashlight, gagging the whole time. Being in a foul, vindictive mood by this time, I used Cindy’s last clean pair of undies to give the floor one final wipe. Was it childish? Absolutely. But it certainly made me feel better.

Never say never. A year or two later, I agreed to have one last go at it. This particular camping trip was to be a guy’s-only weekend on my father-in-law’s rugged land in the mountains of North Carolina. I had half-convinced myself that all my previous experiences had been the result of not enough testosterone at the campsite, so I welcomed this He-Man Weekend. I must be a very slow learner.

Four of us signed up for this retreat: my father-in-law Dick, my brothers-in-law Brandt and John, and me. We were a mismatched set: Brandt and John were both 6’0” clean-shaven professional types, Dick was a 6’4” mountain of grizzled gray hair, denim, and flannel (in season), and I was the stunted 5’9” polo-wearing suburbanite.

We planned to camp on Dick’s mountain where it meets Pisgah National Forest. He had chosen a campsite in a ravine next to a small creek you could jump over. The old guy knew his land well; it was a gorgeous spot. The weather forecast called for perfect weather and we were stoked.

The only sign of civilization was an ancient, derelict cabin that had decades before been the base camp for hunting weekends. It was no longer inhabitable, but due to its remote location, Dick had never bothered to remove it.

Neither hot dogs nor donuts made the menu. Since the old guy was the only capable cook in the bunch, he had taken charge of the food, and we had gladly let him. He brought a cooler full of steaks, as well as potatoes from his garden.

“Real men eat steak,” the mountain man crowed as he started a fire. Watching him, I was tempted to ask if real men start fires with cigarette lighters and lighter fluid, but I refrained.

As we waited for the fire to heat up, we pitched two tents in the ravine next to the creek, where its gentle gurgling would help muffle the sound of Dick’s snoring. Returning to the fire, John pointed to some ominous storm clouds rolling in.

“Zero percent chance of rain,” I intoned, hoping to drive away any thoughts the clouds might have of dumping on us. “The Weather Channel and Weather Bug both said ‘zero.”

“Looks like those weather fellows might be wrong again,” Dick observed.

Sure enough, within a few short minutes, raindrops the size of water balloons began pounding our camp. Dinner would have to wait. We retreated into the nearest tent as the downpour quickly doused the fire.

“Don’t worry,” I quipped, “If you don’t like the weather in North Carolina, just wait five minutes.” None of them appreciated my joke.

It was during those first few minutes inside the tent that I had a revelation. It’s probably not a great idea to pitch a tent in a ravine, because this is the perfect place to demonstrate Bernoulli’s principle: if you funnel wind through a constricting area, its velocity increases. We had pitched our tents in a wind tunnel.

A second revelation hit me immediately after the first: ravines are nature’s drainage ditches. Every drop of water that falls on a mountain ends up in a ravine. The runoff fills small creeks, which dump into larger ones, which eventually overflow their banks and flood downstream. We had unwittingly demonstrated these two laws of ravine-ology, and it didn’t take long for us to find ourselves standing ankle-deep in runoff as the gale buffeted the tents.

“To the cabin!” Dick bellowed. We grabbed sleeping bags and flashlights and sprinted through the storm toward the sagging ruins. Thanks to our present circumstances, the building didn’t look nearly as dilapidated as it did an hour earlier. In fact, it looked downright homey; the tin roof appeared to be mostly intact, easily trumping our tents as the driest place around.

Upon reaching the cover of the front porch, Dick’s enthusiasm returned. He shook the water out of his hair and shaggy beard like a dog. “Isn’t this great? I always wanted to sleep in this old place! Wow! That wind is really blowing!"

I didn’t feel his enthusiasm. “Not to rain on your parade, but we’re hungry and wet.” Being the veteran of camping fiascos, I thought it was definitely time to rain on his parade.

Brandt nodded. “Very hungry and very wet.”

“I vote we go home and come back for the tents in the morning,” I suggested.

Dick scoffed. “Go home? “Real men don’t go home!”

“Real men do if they’re hungry enough,” John countered.

“Grom say, ‘If no fire, no steak,” Brandt added, doing his best caveman impersonation.

Dick ignored him. “We still have the potatoes.”

I shook my head. “The spuds drowned.”

“So? They needed to be washed anyway.” The mountain man seemed to be enjoying this, as if he had been praying for just such a calamity. I made a mental note to learn more about my father-in-law’s mental health history when we returned to civilization.

“And how do we cook them?” I challenged. “We can’t make a fire.”

“Hasn’t the city boy ever eaten a raw potato before?” Dick taunted. “One of you whelps run out there and fetch our dinner.” (As an aside, I later learned that Dick had never eaten raw potatoes before that night either.)

We drafted John for duty since he was the youngest, and he accepted his assignment stoically. While he stumbled around in the storm, the rest of us forced the front door open and stepped inside, testing the floor for soundness with each step. We scanned the room with our flashlights, and to our immense relief, we found a mostly dry interior. It measured about twenty by twenty, with years of dirt and clutter as its only tenants. Water dripped from a few holes in the tin roof onto the floor, and there was a baseball-sized hole in the floor in one corner, but overall, it was a sight better than our tents. It didn’t offer room service, but this Airbnb might work out just fine.

John returned with the potatoes, and Dick sliced them into chips with his pocketknife. We shivered on the porch and ate quietly as the rain came down. I had no trouble biting off chunks of potato; my teeth vibrated like a reciprocating saw. It was the most tasteless meal I have ever eaten, but it relieved the hunger. And having food in my belly improved my spirits.

We lounged on the porch, talking and chest-thumping like real he-men, and we had a good time despite our circumstances. The storm eventually played itself out until it was little more than a light drizzle, and when the conversation stalled, we went inside to bed down for the night.

To say that the cabin was sparsely furnished would have been a stretch. My flashlight found a rat-gnawed easy chair that sat alone in the center of the room, so filthy none of us would even touch it. Leaning against a wall was an ancient twin-sized mattress with a hole chewed in one end. Judging by appearances, Davey Crockett himself may have used that mattress at one time. I flashed the beam around the room, but there was nothing else to see besides the dirt of ancient civilizations.

Brandt dropped his sleeping bag on the floor, triggering a cloud of dust. He unrolled it and wasted no time zipping himself inside, a look of tired relief on his face. John followed suit beside his brother, then me. Dick was in the corner, checking out the mattress.

“I’m gonna sleep in style tonight, boys!” he hooted, dropping the mattress next to me. A musty cloud of dust and who-knows-what-else puffed into the air in my general direction. I coughed violently, thinking I must have just inhaled a centuries-old disease, lying dormant all this time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to start a new epidemic.

“Did you check it for rats?” I choked, pointing the beam of my flashlight at the hole in Davey Crockett’s mattress.

Dick laughed disdainfully. “Ha! The city boy is afraid of rain and rats!” He clucked like a chicken and pranced around like a spastic Big Bird. He stopped his dance long enough to pick up the mattress and bounce it off the floor a couple of times. Nothing happened.

“There, are you satisfied? This place is so old even the rats avoid it.” Once again, he dropped the mattress on the floor and unrolled his sleeping bag on top of it. The flashlights clicked off, and the room went dark. It was black as pitch, except for a lighter shade of darkness where the moonless gloom framed the two windows. The big man flopped down on his bed with a grunt and a satisfied sigh. I closed my eyes, thankful that I’d soon be asleep and would awaken to the blessed end of yet another crummy camping experience.

Suddenly, somewhere in the cabin’s darkness, a woman screamed, and I was aware of a frantic scramble next to me. The high-pitched voice screamed hysterically, “SNAKE! SNAKE!”

And then I realized it wasn’t a woman screaming at all. It was Dick, the 6’4” mountain man! His shadowy form vaulted over three supine bodies in one graceful bound, looking more like a springbok than a sixty-year-old man. Then I heard him clawing frantically at the doorknob, followed by the frenzied scramble of the rest of us as we struggled out of our sleeping bags. After a few petrifying moments of screaming and cursing, we bull rushed through the door, landing in a heap on the porch outside, all except for Brandt, whose momentum carried him all the way across the porch, through the rotten railing, and off the edge to the ground below.

I was the first to stand, and I peered through the open doorway with a flashlight that I had somehow grabbed during my escape. The beam illuminated the back half of the largest snake ever seen outside Hollywood before disappearing through the hole in the floor. I slowly backed away from the doorway until I bumped into John and Dick. We just stood in a little knot on the porch, and I glanced around us uneasily, half expecting another monster to appear out of the gloom and have a go at us.

That’s when Brandt popped up, covered in mud, and tried to climb onto the porch the same way he had left it. Still jumpy, I hovered between flight and fight for a moment before regaining my composure.

“Did you see that?” Dick’s voice now approached a more normal octave. “Did you see that?” he repeated, to no one in particular. “I didn’t know God could grow ‘em that big!”

“Where did it come from?” John asked.

“The pit of hell,” I answered with conviction.

“The mattress. It was in the mattress.” Dick looked awestruck. I’d never seen the big guy out of sorts before.

We huddled in front of the window, shuddering—not from the cold, mind you—and peered through the dirty panes at our belongings. No one seemed eager to go inside and retrieve them. We just stood there, rendered mute and paralyzed by a demon snake the size of a light pole.

I began to relax enough to resume teasing my father-in-law. “Did you get a picture, He-Man?”

Dick stared daggers. “Not a word of this to anyone, got it?”

I smiled and nodded, but then a sobering thought struck me. “Listen, that thing is under this cabin right now, and I don’t know where it’s going to pop up next.” Everyone took a step away from the porch edge.

“Let’s go back to my place and get some sleep.”

I expected Dick to resist, but he was the first one to the truck. On the drive back into town, we created an elaborate story about the wonderful adventure we’d had. The story failed to include raw potatoes and snakes.

So there you have it. I’ve reached my limit of unpleasant camping experiences and I choose to not have any more. I’d rather stay at the Holiday Inn Express than at Leroy’s Shady Glen. In a hotel, I can relax in the air-conditioned comfort of my room after swimming in a heated pool. I can watch the game of the week on my television, and in the morning, I can enjoy a breakfast that I didn’t have to prepare. They usually have doughnuts, too, or at least cinnamon rolls. I don’t worry about floods, keg parties, snakes, or cranky campground owners who don’t like children. I don’t give a second thought to mosquito bites or Big Foot. My only concern is whether my pillow will be feather or foam. Tell me I’m wrong.

My one regret is that my children haven’t banked any camping memories like my childhood ones. I suppose they look back with fondness at other memories I helped them make, and they might observe with some degree of sadness that the world has changed yet again. Life is all about change, after all. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin himself who once observed that in this world, everything changes except death and taxes. Smart man, that Ben Franklin. I’ll bet he hated camping.