Camping as a Voluntary Renunciation of Civilization

In summer, we reconnect with the caveman within. Some people bring him out in other ways, but that’s not the point of this article. During the rest of the year, the comfort of home keeps us rested and healthy enough to deal with work and domestic life. Then vacation comes, and for some inexplicable reason we seek out whatever makes us most uncomfortable, exhausted, stressed, and miserable. In other words, we go looking for a campsite.

Of all the extreme activities people engage in during the summer, camping may well be the craziest of them all.

Materials

The first home was a tent. It was made of branches, logs, leaves, and animal hides. It can’t have been very comfortable, because as soon as humans could, they discovered agriculture and animal husbandry and got out of there as fast as they could, around 9,000 BC. From then until the nineteenth century, nobody (absolutely nobody) did anything as stupid as sleeping in a tent in the middle of the woods. This unfortunate trend began in Britain, led, naturally enough, by naturalists (the same people who love sunbathing naked), who took to the hills carrying heavy canvas tents. After the Second World War, camping became fashionable, and, surprisingly, not just among prisoners. Suddenly, everyone seemed willing to spend several weeks each year giving up a solid house with running water, electricity, and protection from our natural predators.

The fly was born to annoy man. The mosquito was born to kill him.

Setting Up a Tent

To set up a tent, the first thing you should do is pitch it on level ground. But “level ground” doesn’t exist, so as soon as you discover this for yourself, life presents you with a unique opportunity to make a phone call and book a suite at a luxury hotel. If you still insist on putting up your tent, start assembling the poles (I don’t know what they are, but you’ll surely find something pole-shaped in the bag) and insert them into the frame (I don’t know where that is either, but if you can find the poles, you’ll surely be able to find some empty pole-shaped holes).

Next, raise the tent and secure it to the ground with the pegs. This is the trickiest part, because it’s only when the tent is standing that you realize it looks absolutely nothing like the manufacturer’s product photo. Survival tip: if your tent resembles a menopausal turtle, don’t panic; that’s exactly how it’s supposed to look. Finally, you’re supposed to attach the rainfly and guy lines, but honestly, nobody without an abundance of free time bothers. By then you’ve spent two hours wrestling with the thing in the blazing sun, and all you want to do is crack open a beer and sit back to admire your turtle.

Living With Bugs

At a campsite there are two kinds of living creatures: those who pay rent and obey the weathered list of rules hanging on the bathroom door (that’s you), and the squatters who couldn’t care less (insects, small rodents, birds, and the occasional reptile). Just as in modern democracies, although you’re the one who ought to have rights, it’s the squatters who enjoy complete freedom. Confronting them would be a mistake. There are more of them, they know the territory better than you do, and they’re carrying far more poisonous ammunition. Your best strategy is to convince them you’re all friends. Perhaps you could even hold their hands and invite them to say an Our Father together.

Hygiene

Experts believe that if a campsite bathroom doesn’t have a three-centimeter layer of mud on the floor, it isn’t a “real campsite.” That’s probably why nobody bothers cleaning them. The last time I took a shower at a campsite, I came out noticeably dirtier than when I went in. The naturalists who invented this pastime are fascinated by filth because, they say — or so I think — it helps them connect with nature. Personally, call me old-fashioned, but I’d rather connect with soap than with humus, however fashionable that disgusting substance may have become in expensive restaurants where supermodels eat (in case you’ve ever wondered why they’re so thin: they obviously stir it around, but they don’t actually eat it).

Climate Enemies

Modern houses are designed to protect you from rain, wind, heat, and almost everything else nature can throw at you. Tents are not. When your tent develops ten leaks at once and frogs start hopping across your stomach at dawn, thank God you were born in the 20th or 21st century rather than 10,000 B.C. Camping has only one redeeming quality: it inevitably makes you thank God for everything that makes life more comfortable back in the city. You’ll also pray for help when a bear eats your backpack. And by the second night, you’ll definitely be praying to get back home as soon as possible. You might even make it back home a saint.

Making Friends

There’s nothing heavier in the world than a die-hard camper. If you put a pile of uranium on one side of a kitchen scale and an equally sized pile of die-hard camper on the other, the uranium would be launched into the air. This simple lesson in density, weights, and measures should be enough to discourage you from making friends with the people in the next tent.

Survival Kit

I suppose you should pack mosquito repellent, snake antivenom, a couple of bears (they say that if you bring your own, the others won’t come into your tent), a knife, a compass (even if you don’t know how to use one, it looks terrific in selfies), a bottle opener, and several cases of beer. But to tell you the truth, the more beer you pack, the less important everything else becomes, until it becomes completely dispensable.

Mosquitoes

The fly was born to annoy man. The mosquito was born to kill him. It’s true that, in principle, a mosquito, which weighs about three milligrams, wouldn’t have an easy time killing you in hand-to-hand combat, but its bite, if it’s repeated often enough and on enough parts of your body, can irritate you so much that you lose your mind and end up getting yourself killed doing some perfectly ordinary and harmless countryside activity, like changing a shotgun cartridge or lighting the gas on a camping stove.

Going Home

One night at a campsite is painful. Two nights are twice as painful. Three nights amount to a worrying display of masochism. From the fourth night onward, there are only two possibilities: either you die, or you become a Bushman and never want to go home again. I’ve never spent more than one night at a campsite, and even now, 30 years later, I still regret having spent that wretched night. What possessed me to give up my hot bath, clean sheets, and cold beer at home? Everything we’ve ever been told about ourselves is a lie: man a thoroughly irrational animal. All right, but if you gave me the choice between magically ending poverty in the world or getting rid of campsites, I’m terribly sorry about everything that’s happening in Africa… but you know.

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