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Get gear for a return to the good ol' days
By Reavis Z. Wortham
Contributor
Published October 15, 2009
All of a sudden the War Department and I have experienced an intense desire to return to a simpler form of camping. Those of you who follow these scribblings know we spend a lot of time utilizing our fifth-wheel camping trailer. But sometimes that monster eats up a weekend with pick up, the drive, setting up, the drive back and storage.
The other night, we were reminiscing about the times when we first got together, taking little jump trips in my old black truck. A fiberglass topper covered the bed, and inside was a camper’s dream with a carpeted bed for sleeping and tons of storage.
It was nothing for us to leave on a Friday night after work, drive to Arkansas and sleep in the back. Then we’d either move the next day to do some fishing or sightseeing, or set up our tent in a national forest somewhere.
The last time we took the trailer, we saw some folks tenting in a nice little campground too small for our big rig. That’s when we decided to return to our roots.
Back home, I dug around in the garage and found our old tent. We shook it out and found that the nylon in the twenty-something shelter had fused with the seam sealer I’d used long ago. The tent was just a big ball of mushy nylon.
“Huzzah!” I shouted. “We can go buy a new tent.”
“What about that yellow one there?” the War Department asked, pointing to a yellow bag from my backpacking days, right after the Jurassic period.
“I bought that tent in college,” I answered. “You don’t want to try and sleep in there. It’s an antique two man pup tent.”
“Prove it,” she said, mentally estimating the cost of a new tent and my propensity toward purchasing higher-end products.
I shook out the tiny shelter and demonstrated how much room we’d have.
“We can do it,” she answered.
I was ready for her. “Just remember, when we wake up, we have to get dressed laying down, because there is no head room, and then you always have to go to the bathroom first thing…”
“Let’s go to the store.”
“Huzzah! REI, here we come.”
I love the REI store, and there’s one not five miles from our house. We shot over there with the War Department shouting for me to slow down. We power-slid into the parking lot and I bounded through the doors, my arms open wide.
“I love this store!”
“Shhh,” she said, following me in.
“Don’t you love this smell?” I asked. “This is the smell of adventure, of camping, of hikes….”
She sighed and left me standing in the door, the object of numerous stares from very healthy looking young people. I recognized them for the new breed of backpackers. A bearded employee met me at the edge of the tent aisle.
“Can I help you?”
“I used to backpack a lot,” I said, “back in the days of aluminum frame backpacks, when dehydrated food had just been invented and before water bottles.”
The salesman simply stared.
“I was really into it. We weighed everything, even down to the point to save weight, we cut the handles…”
“...off of toothbrushes,” the salesman finished for me.
“How’d you know?”
“Gray haired guys usually tell that story.”
I spied the tents.
“Huzzah! Tents! We’re going to buy one today.”
“Please make your selection quickly,” the salesman answered and stepped aside, keeping an eye on me in case I did something bizarre.
“How about this one?” I asked.
The War Department checked the price. “No.”
“This one?”
“No.”
“This one only weights six pounds,” I said.
“We’re not doing that type of camping,” she said. “This is the one.”
I looked at the tent. “Huzzah! This is the perfect tent. Why aren’t you enthusiastic? Never mind. Now we need sleeping pads.”
“What?” she asked, shocked.
“We aren’t sleeping on the ground, and I don’t intend to carry a mattress with us.” I rushed across the store to the Mattress Pad section and picked two nice ones.
The War Department dug a calculator out of her purse.
“This is going to cost more than I’d budgeted.”
“We need a few other things,” I told her.
“No.”
“Sure, we need cooking gear, because we don’t have a camping skillet or pot. And we’ll need lightweight plates, oh, and we’ll need…”
While I gathered the necessary camping gear in a frenzy that became contagious to other staff members, she huddled up with the original salesman and after a short period of head nods, and shakes, they came to some kind of conclusion.
We left with the tent and pads, but for some reason they told me I had to wait until next month to buy the rest of our gear. Something about inventory control.
But the good news is that we get to go back soon for daypacks, biodegradable soap, portable stove, the tent stakes I forgot, a new battery powered lantern, maybe new sleeping bags ... Huzzah!
I just love camping.
Reavis Z. Wortham is an award-winning outdoors writer with family ties to Lamar County.
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