I was born into a camping family. You don’t get much say as to the family you’re born into and, when you’re the youngest of three, you don’t even get to make a sour face about it if you happen to not be a fan of whatever it is your family does. If you’re born into a camping family, you’re going camping and that’s it.
I mostly enjoyed it so it wasn’t much of a burden. Besides, I didn’t know any better. It’s not like the other kids at school were standing up for Show and Tell on the first week of school in September and dazzling us with tales of European adventures in hotels and yachts. The biggest deal we heard about was maybe going to one of the amusement parks, Geauga Lake or Cedar Point, or if someone’s older sister had a baby. Hell, fishing on Lake Erie garnered respect.
For some kids, “camping” meant a two-person tent in the backyard.
So I thought I was lucky to be out in the woods with mosquitoes and skunks, watching my father struggle to get the Coleman stove to light, or my mother trying to cook a meal from supplies in plastic bins with only the one picnic table as the work space.
My brothers and I had to haul water but we also got to gather wood, swing an ax, and start a fire. That was cool.
This was the 1970s, back when a pull-behind camper was no bigger than the Ford Country Squire station wagon pulling it down the street. There weren’t any Winnebagos or Airstreams parked in the yards of our town. There weren’t any of those little Scotty campers, either. If your old man had a Starcraft pop-up camper, he was in sales and doing pretty well.
My old man’s version of a pop-up camper was a Coleman tent, purchased from Sears, carried inside a twelve-foot aluminum boat we dragged behind the Plymouth Fury. The boat afforded space for all the gear, and was small enough to be dragged to a lake at most campgrounds.
Setting up that tent demanded the coordinated effort of at least three of us at a time to properly assemble. All five of us fit inside, and that was about it: tent, sleeping bags, coolers and bins.
Our camping trips were a steady diet of eggs in the morning, hotdogs and beans for lunch, and burgers on buns for dinner. Maybe a can of creamed corn for color.
If you were hungry after all that you could roast as many marshmallows as you wanted, at least until the rain came.
I don’t remember ever camping without rain. Camping is clumsy and messy enough-there are stakes and ropes and stuff everywhere, along with the aforementioned mosquitoes and skunks-but when the rain comes it all gets wet. There are tarps, of course, hoisted around the tent, but the runoff from the rain finds its way to the tent and pushes the family cohesion to the limit.
Woe to the one who tracks mud inside the tent.
On a trip to northern Minnesota, which was a pilgrimage to visit our great grandmother, whose family had homesteaded near Chisolm at the turn of the 1900s, we stayed in a state park, making camp, eating hot dogs and beans, and building a campfire.
Around dusk, a park ranger made his way from site to site, informing people that a tornada warning was in effect, and severe storms were on the way.
A few nearby campers abandoned their sites and drove off in search of motels. My dad was visibly troubled by the situation. Camping was our only affordable option for trips like this, so he didn’t really want to spend the money on a motel. Besides, we were in northern Minnesota and it wasn’t like there were a ton of motels nearby. It’s the land of 10,000 lakes, not 10,000 Travel Lodge motels.
He decided that we’d stick it out in the tent and if things got bad we’d scramble for the car and try to outrun the tornado.
The wind pounded and the rain and lashed at our tent the entire night, and I don’t think anyone slept, but we weren’t killed, so it was an adventure, not a disaster!
A few years later, we made the last big, camping trip we would ever take as a family and it was a doozy: Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and camping the whole way there and back. I could write an entire novel about all the things that went wrong on the way there and back, but I’m limited for time and space, so I’ll try to stay on theme…
My father had bought a Ford Econoline van six months before that trip with the good intentions of finishing the interior himself. This was the era of decked-out vans, the kind with shag carpeting, stereo systems, and waterbeds in back, but he only got as far as building a thin platform of bare plywood in the back before we departed. So we drove across the country with my brothers and I swapping places between sitting on a folding lawn chair, sitting on one of the coolers, and stretching out on the plywood platform.
While camping at Yellowstone, park rangers visited more than once at dusk to warn us that grizzly bears were active in the area, and that tents were not safe.
There wasn’t a dilemma of choice because motels are not a thing out there. You’re either renting a room in one of the lodges in the park, or you’re camping.
Perhaps my father had grown cautious with age but we all crowded into the Econoline to sleep, packed like sardines, shivering in the cold, and smelling each others’ farts.
Despite the discomfort, I never worried about my safety in these situations. I was secure in the bosom of family, and didn’t get bothered.
In fact, I thought more than once that, if we are swept away by a tornado or mauled by a grizzly, at least I’ll have a hell of a story to tell once I’m back in school come September.
I thought of all this because I was reminded of a camping trip I made with my then-girlfriend-now-wife in the late 80s, sleeping in a tent as we traveled from West Virginia back to Philadelphia.
These childhood camping trips that took a left turn were offered as a setup to what happened to me and my wife in a remote campground in Virginia, far from civilization, and the only tenters in our area of the camp.
It was quiet and calm, but also spooky and disturbing, and became one of the worst nights I’d ever known in my life.
But it’s going to have to wait until the next Picayune because I have to get this set up and schedule to email in the morning.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
I’m using a new technique to try to make steady progress on my novel which I call “dropping a deuce.”
Everyday, I try to write 200 words minimum, advancing the novel. I find that, as long as I keep my book moving (BM) at least once a day, my constitution is calmer.
It’s only been the past two weeks, but each time I sit down for my BM, I quietly tell myself that if I drop a deuce, the rest of the day will be easy.
Maybe You’d Like
Welp, I’ve joined another author book promotion, this one for a short story thrillfest… so quick fun reads to meet new authors. Be sure to check it out:
Free Short Story ThrillFest (Mystery · Thriller · Suspense) – June 2026
https://storyoriginapp.com/to/pui25CJ
Next Picayune
I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with more stories and whatnot. Hug your friends and family until then…and don’t go camping alone.
All the best,
Mickey