Alan Liere: A camping evolution – The Spokesman-Review

Wed., July 5, 2017, 7 p.m.

When I was a kid, my Uncle Pat and Aunt Molly would gather up nieces and nephews for a camping/fishing extravaganza to the San Poil River right after school let out for the summer. We would arrive early, erect a huge canvas tent, roll out the goose down sleeping bags and go fishing.

Afterwards, we would build a fire and Aunt Molly would cook the small trout for dinner. The adventure was completed with marshmallows roasted on willow sticks before crawling, sticky fingers and all, into our beds.

I loved camping back then, and would continue the tradition years later with my own family. My grown children still talk about these excursions the day we saw a bear, the day Jennifer caught the enormous sucker, the day Dad lost his bathing suit in a poetic cartwheel off a slalom ski on Priest Lake.

Sadly, when my children hit their teens they decided Mom and Dad werent cool, and slumber parties with their friends replaced family camping trips. Without their enthusiastic presence, camping wasnt as fun anymore.

I thus went many years without it, but in my 50s, I bought a camper for my pickup. There were still a lot of places I needed to explore that werent close to a motel and a caf, and it seemed logical I should be able to carry my bed and groceries with me.

I used the camper solely for these hunting and fishing and gathering adventures until recently, when a lady friend mentioned she would enjoy a real camping trip.

Real camping? I questioned.

Yes, real camping, she answered sweetly. Wood smoke. Sleeping under the stars. A pine-scented forest. The songs of crickets and frogs. Water over polished pebbles and the wind in the trees. I think she had been taking a poetry workshop at the community college.

I told her she could look out the window of my camper if she wanted to see the stars. And though it went against all my instincts to be camping just for the sake of camping, I knew a spot by a river not too far from home that would offer all the natural wonders she craved from the comfort of my camper. It was a poor compromise, she said, but she signed on.

That night I grilled salmon on a hardwood fire alongside the river. We had wine and chocolate very romantic. Then, the mosquitoes and black flies came out hungry hordes which hadnt fed in months They landed anywhere there was exposed flesh. I got out the bug dope and doused us with a bitter-tasting chemical, but the evening was ruined and we retreated to the camper reeking of insect repellant.

The lady pulled the sheet over her head, and was soon breathing deeply. I, on the other hand, was swatting at the 10,000 shrilly whining mosquitoes that had found their way in.

When I started the truck at midnight, the lady awoke. I take it this means no morning coffee over a wood fire, she whined as I shoved the grill back into the camper and told her we were leaving.

That is correct I said kindly. If we were fishing or hunting or picking mushrooms or huckleberries tomorrow, Id tolerate the bugs. But not just so we can say we went camping. When we get back to my place, Ill park down by the creek in the meadow. You can stay there as long as you want. Build a fire if you so desire. If you need anything, Ill be in the house.

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Alan Liere: A camping evolution - The Spokesman-Review