Lessons When Camping Goes Wrong

What is life without a little bend?

If there is one thing to be held true in all of the truths- it is that life is just, life. Unpredictable, messy, fast, sometimes slow, painful, happy, filled with love, full of adventure, and most of the time completely unexplainable.

There are those of us who do our best to share the unexplainable thing called life. Those of us who enjoy sharing the stories of the plans gone amiss or the countless falls that come with the unimaginable ups. This is one of those posts.

Upon our early spring camping trip we got a little reminder that life is what we make of it, not made up of the plans we make FOR it. It was our first and one of our only times in our busy schedule this year to get away, just our family of three, in the woods for a weekend in the tent. We were supposed to have our best friends along but as you know schedules are unpredictable. In the end it was just us.

It began with a routine supply trip in which we realized we spent nearly all of the cash allotted for the trip before we even hit the road. If you’ve never had choice words for your significant other in the grocery store parking lot, are you really even significant others? haha. We re-grouped, packed our packs from REI and left them by the door waiting till morning to seal our fate. The next day we left mid morning Yeti full, and after a four hour trek north we reached one of our favorite sections of the forest and never looked back.

Our camp was heavenly, straight out of an outdoors magazine, and our spirits were back up once among the tall swaying pines of northern Michigan. What could go wrong? Further into the afternoon vehicle after vehicle began frequenting the two track we were camped next to. Gunner, who is all about being on guard when in the wild, felt it necessary to bark and jump in the path of every car as it went by, as if he was going to intimidate the car! Moron. What was going on!? We had came up north for a weekend AWAY from people! Where were these cars even going!? How were they fitting!? Our spirits dwindled but we fought back with the most amazing camp fire dinner, and we drank wine and whiskey and danced in the woods most of the night. We were determined to live our best camp life, and we did, for about 12 hours.

The night was sleepless, filled with the crunching of leaves from every tiny eight legged spider that lived in the woods, the sound loud and unbearable for someone with anxiety sleeping on the ground and terrified of spiders like myself. Little tip, when wearing a headlamp at night their eyes glow and its awful. I attempted to upload one of those apps that play sounds for sleep…I ended up killing my battery instead.  The next morning camp was littered with massive webs and sightings of monster arachnids as they skittered across my sketch book and yoga mat. By 10 am it was humid and 90 degrees, with no sight of shade and zero source of fresh cool water, we tried everything we could to be comfortable without inducing heat stroke. By noon it was 98 and sunny, we were miserable, cranky, soaked in sweat, and the dog was digging himself a grave under the car to stay cool. We looked at Gunner as he dug holes to rest in for relief and watched as the hundreds of flies attacked him without avail. We made breakfast on the fire, but that nearly killed us it was so hot, and we knew cooking dinner over open flame would be just as miserable if not more.

We looked at each other and tossed around the idea of sleeping in the car that night, then we realized that this was what it was and we had to make a choice. Before this trip we scoffed at the idea of going up north with no less than three days off. We looked down on the idea of giving in and going home, and then we looked at ourselves and we realized, was pride and ego really going to drive us to inflict such misery on ourselves the entire weekend? It was time to cut our losses.

It was time to adjust and accept. We packed up and were home by 7. We ate takeout and watched movies and laughed and looked back on the most enjoyable parts of our short, short trip, choosing to leave the negatives behind. For the most part we had gotten everything we wanted. It ended up being a lovely weekend, we learned a day trip to our favorite forest really wasn’t that hard to pull off at all, and we reminded ourselves that when surrendering to mother nature there is no room for ego. One of the many reasons we find ourselves drawn to a life of outdoor adventure.