Not a Happy Camper

by Tighe Flatley
(Boston. MA)

Are we wusses for opting out of male-bonding rituals?

The question was innocent enough.

“Are you going to join us camping this weekend?” my roommate Ben, asked.

He caught me off-guard and I didn’t have an answer right away.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, letting my reply drift into an awkward silence. I hoped that he would forget that he brought up the topic.

“You didn’t go all summer and promised you would,” he shot back a few seconds later.

He caught me. I was stuck.

“Let me think about it,” I said.

It’s not that I’m trying to avoid my friends, as much as it may seem that way to them—I’ve been charged, half-jokingly, for making up excuses not to hang out.

I just don’t like camping.

No, I take that back: I loathe camping.

There are few things in this world for which I have such a strong dislike. I hate when my socks get wet, I hate when a date is rude to the waiter, and I hate camping.

Every other month or so, I’m invited to head north for the weekend with Ben and our friends. Our buddy Dustin has some land in Vermont, which I am told, from January through December, “is beautiful this time of year.”

Yes, I’m sure it’s lovely, but oh darn, that thing is this weekend. Maybe next time.

♦◊♦

I still have some not-so-fond memories of my last camping trip. I was a senior in college, when drinking cheap beer and updating my resume for the job search held equal priority in my schedule. My fraternity was hosting a camping get-away to a brother’s property in western Massachusetts. It will be great, the planning committee told us—an opportunity to be outside, enjoy brotherly company, and, oh yeah, get wasted.

This was in January, before the start of my spring semester, when the brown, crisp leaves that fell from the trees a few weeks earlier were being suffocated underneath a blanket of snow. Iced-over earth and sub-freezing temperatures wouldn’t stop us, though. We had beer to drink and hell to raise. We were college dudes, and we were unstoppable.

I prepared for the winter trip with an overnight bag that included three pairs of socks, two skiing caps and a dozen loose cans of Natty Light, left over from the night before. This will be great, I told friends. I haven’t been camping since I was a kid!


It wasn’t long before I remembered why it had been so long since my last trip.

It was cold enough to see my breath, even while sitting next to the fire. My fingers were numb despite wearing two pairs of gloves on each hand. Cans of beer that we left in the car, we discovered, turned into cylinders of ice when we went to get them a few hours later.

And then, of course, there was using nature’s restroom. I waited until the last possible moment to stumble through the dark and find an area of privacy, only to spend ten minutes trying to loosen up my multi-layered uniform with my double-gloved hands. I was incredibly uncomfortable by the time I finally dropped my drawers, but it was nothing compared to the cold that shot at my body as I tried to go about my business.

This, I thought, is miserable.

The next morning, I woke up with the sun and hopped in the first car that was leaving our campsite. In the end, I lasted less than 10 hours in the woods. I swore that it would be a long time before I ever tried to break that record.

When I was living in the frat house, I took on an invisible competition to out-dude the guys next to me. If they drank two beers, I drank three. If they hooked up with some girl, I coyly kept mum, letting them think I did the same. And if they were going camping in the snow, goddammit, I would be there.

On that car ride back from the trip, I admitted that joining the trip was a terrible idea. I only agreed to go because I didn’t want to be the wuss who slept in my bed and enjoyed a hot shower back at the house, while the other guys went into the woods and tapped into their primal instincts of survival and beer drinking. I wasn’t ready to suggest that instead of camping, how about we all enjoy a nice night in with some wine and a viewing of The Devil Wears Prada?

After a night of putting my fertility in jeopardy, however, it was time to do some reflecting.

read more here: http://goodmenproject.com/2011/01/12/not-a-happy-camper/