The Great Escape

On returning home from my two week vacation, I recalled how, in the twenty or so initial minutes it took for me to suppress my raging disappointment – that first day at Horseshoe Bay – at having to wait for the 5 pm ferry to Vancouver Island because the next two sailings were full, I had entertained the idea of going against my modus operandi and start planning every vacation from now on, down to the exact amount of minutes I would stop to gawk at the fucking goats on the roof in Coombs, chastising myself for being so stupid as to not reserve a spot on the ferry at the height of summer, when it dawned on me that often the best things that have ever happened to me during my travels happened when things didn’t go according to plan. And this trip was no exception.

While summer makes spontaneous travelling to the islands virtually impossible, it does afford us the warmth and wherewithal to perform the glorious and oft-times orgasmic ritual of camping. CAMPING! Sends chills down my spine just typing it. But I do realize that some people just don’t share the same enthusiasm. On the topic of camping, there are often two camps (ha!): those who love it, and those who are retarded. Those in the first camp understand that everything is better while camping. I’ll skip the obvious Wordsworth-worthy stuff like swimming in the lake and joy in the stars etc., but even all that mundane shit we do at home, like brushing your teeth, becomes fun and interesting. Sitting around a picnic table playing cards, a seemingly dull way to spend an evening in the city, becomes the TSN highlight of the night. Roasting marshmallows around the campfire is akin to a night out at The Roxy, without the shame.

Every meal becomes an event. Not only that, everything tastes better. Corn on the cob becomes a delicacy while camping – the camper’s beluga caviar; which makes a cold can of Kokanee transform into a chilled bottle of Heidsieck Diamant Bleu vintage 1907. The sound of zipping and unzipping the tent becomes Beethoven’s 5th, or Anami Vice. Settling in after a long day at the beach. Putting the finishing touches to a dying fire while looking at the sexy silhouette of your lover undressing inside the lantern-lit tent.

Obviously a love for the great outdoors is a prerequisite. If you don’t like the outdoors then you don’t belong in this conversation. In trying to explain my inherent fascination for camping to the dumb-dumbs who don’t see what’s so great about leaving all the comforts of home just to create a make-shift, less-comfortable home in the woods, I say this:

Now that my 1000-word dissertation has proven my hypothesis, I want to get back to the argument that transporting all your shit from home to the woods is not really camping. You’re right. But those aren’t campers, those are RVers. People with RVs baffle me. That’s yet another camp. It’s an ongoing family feud between campers and the RVers. It goes back to the belle-epoque of stupid ideas, “Let’s invent a rolling shitbox!” Most campgrounds have us justly segregated, but sometimes we’re thrown together on the same battlefield, waging our little battle with leering sneers as we pass each other on the footpaths, where my once-serene view of old-growth Douglas Firs is now polluted with J.J. Abrams-inspired monstrosities, technological terrors complete with the rumbling, punishing drone of generators. Fuck you! Are you kidding me? You really need a full kitchen-bathroom-bedroom set? This ain’t ‘The Price is Right’ motherfucker. LEAVE YOUR SHIT AT HOME! For the sake of continuing, and my good humour, let’s just exclude them altogether.

As a result of missing our ferry, and having no fixed campsite reservations, we were able to discover new places not on our original itinerary, exploring deserted islands, camping on the beach, enjoying every surprise around the corner, and still managed to do everything we’d wanted while exceeding all our expectations. Some might say we were lucky, getting the last available spot on a campsite, for example, and maybe we were. But that’s the beauty of camping – nature is your home. There’s no shortage of spots. It’s hard to say what the definitive moment of my trip was, but one recurrently comes to mind: skinny-dipping in an ocean lit with phosphorescence, drying off afterwards by the warmth and crackle of a fire, with that sense of happiness, that high you feel when you realize that everything is perfect, in that corner of your mind, where sublime meets subliminal. As I stretched out on the sand and looked up at the dominion of night with its infinite secrets, I thought about how much I wished I was in a stuffy apartment watching TV.

– Tom Day