This issue of The Working Waterfront features a story about the emerging trend of “glamping,” a term coined to describe a version of camping that’s a bit more glamorous.
I’ve had some camping experiences, most of which weren’t glamorous.
My father, being a schoolteacher, had summers off, and after several summers of working odd jobs during the break, he purchased a small travel trailer and lugged my mother and my three brothers and I off to various national and state parks.
A memorable trip came in 1965 when we and another family traveled from home in New York across the country, visiting many of the iconic national parks—Grand Canyon, Zion, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Teton, Glacier, and Crater Lake among them. Even at the tender age of six, the images of those dramatic landscapes—reinforced by home movies—left their mark on my understanding of the beauty and scale of our country.
We would be able to stay up as late as we wanted, reading by the light of a Coleman lantern and listening to New York City AM radio stations…
Later summers included trips to Florida (way too hot and buggy), Maine and Quebec (my father’s home movies captured the last of the log drives on the Kennebec), and then we settled into a series of two-week stays at state parks on lakes in New York’s Adirondacks, working our way north through the summer.
By the time my older brother and I were teens, we rankled at the confines of the small trailer we all shared, and Dad bought us an 8-foot by 10-foot cabin tent, and we would be able to stay up as late as we wanted, reading by the light of a Coleman lantern and listening to New York City AM radio stations beaming the Top 40 hits off the ionosphere.
Being away from our friends for eight weeks during that long school break had my older brother and I longing for home.
Once, when the boat’s outboard needed work at the dealership back home, we returned for a few days in late July, and I gleefully biked to my friends’ houses to join in whatever fun and mischief they’d gotten up to. I was surprised to find them lounging in their living rooms, watching re-runs of Gilligan’s Island and Bewitched.
Later, I understood our parents were wise in giving us a more active and wholesome summer.
When I was about 12, I won a floorless pup tent for selling chocolate bars as a fundraiser for my Boy Scout troop. The scouts provided a different version of camping, more akin to Lord of the Flies.
My father tells the story of me returning home after a weekend scout camping trip, ranting about the terrible state of the food we ate—undercooked burgers, chicken that had fallen into the fire, dirt on everything. Who did the cooking, my parents asked. “I did.”
Our scoutmaster left us way too under-supervised.
After sleeping with another six or seven boys in ancient canvas tents that leaked, I was pleased to use my new pup tent on one scouting trip. It didn’t leak, as I learned when an older boy decided to empty his bladder on it as I readied my bedding for the night.
For one summer—a full eight weeks—I slept in that little tent by myself, before we had the cabin tent. With the family inside the trailer every night, I would head out to my little tent, the only thing between me and ground a piece of hard Styrofoam.
To this day, I wonder what I was trying to prove to myself. I relented in sleeping inside the trailer on the very last night as the temperatures dropped in late August.
I relish being outside in glorious summer, in Maine and elsewhere in New England. But at night, I’ll take a nice Airbnb over the fresh air.
Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront and Island Journal. He may be contacted at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.
