Lucia Frangione is a storyteller of the highest degree. We’re honoured to have her as a new C&D contributor.
- Danielle

When it comes to camping I am a good sport. In other words, it’s my husband’s idea of a good time, not mine, but I’ll go to prove I am a well rounded earthy woman who is capable of surviving without my espresso machine and orthopedic pillow.

But admittedly, I don’t get it. Never in a million years would I choose a blow up mattress that smells like Walmart over a feather bed in Paris, say. My husband must know I love him when I hang my tender bare essentials precariously over a gaping hole full of flies and a six foot pile of fecal matter…wondering, “how many days before I get a bladder infection?” And as for the great outdoors being romantic? I don’t want my mouth anywhere near anything that has been bug sprayed, sun screened and left to sweat in Gortex for a week.

That said, some holiday is better than no holiday, right? And we go camping because it’s cheap. Wrong. It isn’t cheap when you’re married to Mr. Gear-And-Gadget. He can’t walk past a Canadian Tire without re-mortgaging our home. It sucks him in like a black hole and spurts him back out again with enough provisions to make it through the apocalypse. Yes, alert NASA, forget The Canada Arm. We have enough equipment to hitch a pop up camper to Mars. And guess who has to wipe it all down and pack it? Houston, we have a problem.

But…I am a good sport. I disinfect the coolers and stuff them full of suspicious meat products, canned and dried food and a few precious fresh fruit and vegetables…sighing over the general lack of nutrient value, colour spectrum or fiber. I am already constipated just looking at it. And I don’t even want to know what kind of petroleum product makes up a Marshmallow. One whole cooler is dedicated to beer. Likely the healthiest item we have on board.

This is my daughter’s first camping trip. She’s two and a half. She isn’t sure what’s going on, but Daddy is humming and that’s a good sign. We need some fun. It’s been a hard year.

We’re finally packed and off we head to Golden Ears park, Maple Ridge, BC. My husband is a bit disappointed: it isn’t exactly “deep woods”. I’m thankful we’re still within an hour of a hospital. Our two dogs steam up the windows in the backseat with anticipation as we rumble into forest, into mountains…into…rain?!

My husband admits he didn’t check the forecast either. And who cares? Nothing should deter us. It’s our only family holiday all summer, we can’t reschedule. At least the food won’t go bad and we won’t be too hot to sleep. And God knows…we’ve come prepared.

Once we arrive, Mr. Gear-And-Gadget unfolds his limbs like a Swiss Army Knife: stretching tarp, tying ropes…”I said get me the carabina clamp, not the bungee cord!” I thought carabina was a country in Africa.

My daughter and the dogs are romping around the camp site, splashing away in the puddles, blissfully unaware that there are no bathtubs, heaters or blow driers in the wild…”please stay away from that steep cliff honey, no, slugs aren’t good for eating…don’t jump on the propane stove…!”

My hearty husband tries to start a fire. He loves a challenge. The wood is wet. But he has brought a blow torch and dag-nabbit, he’s going to have his blazing pit. The tarp overhead funnels all the black smoke snugly back across the picnic table, sitting down with us to dine like the Ghost Of Christmas Future. My daughter cries, rubbing her sore eyes and coughing over her crispy hamburger, “I hate campfires, they’re scary!”

Her mattress refuses to inflate despite the multipurpose light/air pump that plugs into our cigarette lighter (curse Canadian Tire) but by then she’s so exhausted she falls asleep anyway. My muddy cherub, cocooned in her sleeping bag…clutching her burn victim dolly. My husband and I struggle through a game of backgammon but the smoke wins. We shiver zip and drip off to our individual sleeping bags.

I wake up at approximately three in the morning. Snap! goes a twig. The dogs bark. My husband and child are sleeping soundly. Rain is pelting down and I notice a herd of spiders crawling over our domed shelter. I think of the ten plagues. It’s so quiet. Our campground is nearly deserted thanks to the weather and I suddenly remember it’s berry season. I ponder, “Never mind the flood…what kind of decent mother lays out her entire family to sleep in the middle of the forest with no protection, save a sheet of breathable rip stop nylon?” Something tells me the nylon would not be rip stop when confronted with Grizzly claws. I lay there, heart pounding, counting the spiders on their pilgrimage. “What are they running from?” I listen for any rustle in the brush, working out my brave defense. “If the bear or cougar attacks through the North wall, I will cover my child’s entire body with mine and roll in a southeasterly direction…likely getting my spleen ripped in half but saving my offspring if my husband can fetch the hatchet, frying pan or blow torch in time, five hundred yards away, and attack while the animal is devouring my left buttock”.

The next morning, I am still awake, exhausted, and still not entirely confident with my predator defense plan. I consult with my husband and he chuckles, “Oh man, it would be so cool to see a cougar! But don’t worry about bears, honey. It’s the moose that will get you. Kick you to death until you’re an unrecognizable pile of mush. Relax. You’re more likely to be struck by lightening or killed by some crazed camper with a machete.” Somehow this is cold comfort when I stare at that very thin sheet of nylon over my head.

Four days of rain.

By this time, everything is soaked and mud streaked. It’s too cold to go in the lake, too rainy to take the toddler on much of a hike…the dogs huddle under their little doggie tarp, tails tucked under, ears plastered to their wet little doggie skulls, begging us with their eyes, “What in God’s name are we doing out here?! We want CARPET!”

Over breakfast, my “good sport” nature is gone. I bang pots, I splash around the picnic table in my rubber boots, cursing. I do the dishes and set them out to “dry”, an effort in futility. I head back into the tent to find some clean clothes. Everything is damp. I shiver with indignation when I become aware of the fact that I can now, indeed, despite best efforts, smell my own bum. I trudge back out, yanking down the zipper on the tent that always catches (curse Canadian Tire again). I march over to the picnic table and huddle by the propane stove warming my hands like an old crone. Finally I look up and my husband is sitting there in hang dog silence, watching me.

“You hate this, don’t you?”

I look into his big blue eyes for the first time in…how long? Mr. Gear-And-Gadget is actually about six years old right now…looking up at me…he’s having a blast out here with his do-dads and toys.

“We can go home if you want…” he says, heartbroken.

I peer over at our daughter who is digging a water trench with her boot, arranging twigs for a dam, giggling, her little ringlets poking out from her rain hat.

I’m the only one not having a good time.

“I’m going for a pee.”

As I trudge off to the outhouse, I pass an elderly woman in a long skirt, pushing a stroller down the campsite path, happily cooing. “Where does she think she is? Baby Gap?”

I stop to look at the little wriggling brown eyed boy. What a cutie. I try to converse but the woman tells me warmly, apologetic, “Oma…Ruski.” I wave her on. And as it is with Grace…it starts to seep through my protective layers…like rain. Darn it anyways. I think, “She’s Russian” and then I think of Georgia under attack…and then I think how good we have it here in Canada with our coolers full of food, our skies raining nothing but water, our children sleeping out in the forests with few predators to fear…even, yes, our Canadian Tires…what good sport, what a privilege it is…to pretend at “surviving”.

So, why do I hate camping so much? I didn’t used to. It’s not just the wetness and the dirt and the endless search for the right cooler that has the ketchup in it…it’s the possibility that I might have to slow down, free from all my telephone, computer, urban traffic distractions…the idea that I’d have to just “be”. When was it so important to avoid the stillness of really living? I turn and watch the baby carriage making its way over the muddy pot holes with Oma.

The baby.

My baby.

My lost baby that would have been born this month.

No. I really don’t want to have to think about that.

I rush to the out house…that stinking little room of waste, and cry a river with no dam in sight. I cry until the clouds clear above my head. Yeah. I guess Grace is big enough to not worry about being terribly cliché. I cry until I have to pee again. Might as well. I’m here anyway.

I walk back to our campsite. I won’t say the sun is out but I will say the rain had stopped. Mr. Gear-And-Gadget has put all the dishes away and has started taking down our tent. His face is dark. He’s obviously had time to think about things. Here we go. He starts in on our marriage, on our future, on my anger, on his fears around having another child…

“Wait,” I say. “I think it’s going to clear. Let’s stay another day.”

He puts down the fly sheet transverse pole.

“Really?”

We stand in the shaft of light for a moment, then go in for a rain proof embrace. Our daughter shyly flutters into our circle, I think I even see a doggy tail wag in my peripheral vision.

“You’re a good sport, wife.” He says, giving me a bittersweet camp coffee kiss and snuggling into my neck. “A very good sport”.

Photo courtesy of Shizhao