Split Rock Blog

As I sit to write, a real effort is required to quiet my mind, the barely-above-subconscious part of my brain doomscrolling through the “I should haves” of the workday now gone, to the “I mustn’t forgets” of tomorrow.  I try to focus, but I apparently have all the discipline of a grade-one class the day after Hallowe’en.  That’s all of us though, isn’t it?  We have sold the airtime of our thought-life in exchange for shiny things, and food delivered right to our door without needing to talk to anyone. 

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not blaming anyone other than myself.  I’m not prepared to trade away all the convenience and frivolity of the 21st century - not just yet.  But I get tired of the noise sometimes.  This is not the world we were made for. 

For time out of memory, humans have worked with an immediate relationship between effort and outcome.  Yes, I am painting with a broad brush.  However, consider humanity on an evolutionary time scale, and our post-modern experience doesn’t even register.  When we were hungry, we prepared food.  When we were fearful or exposed, we built shelter.  Long-term planning was gathering supplies for the winter.  Again, forgive my oversimplification, but I would argue that those have been the forces driving our development, much more than the pressures we face today.

Thank God for camping! 

I won’t deny that camping can be a lot of work.  I prefer canoe tripping, where even getting to a campsite demands sweat equity.  Once at camp, there are tasks that can’t wait.  Starting a fire may be top priority, or filtering water.  Anyone who has waited to set up their tent or hammock until dark has regretted it. While one person sets up a tarp in case the weather turns, another gathers firewood to last through the chilly evening. 

Camping isn’t easy, but it is simple.  When I camp, I choose to do life with only what I can bring with me. The problems are easy to understand and the solutions are straightforward. There is a refreshing immediacy to it all.  It is an escape from the knotted mass of complex and abstract challenges I face in my normal life. 

Part of the escape, I think, is from the vast number of people I need to account for in my day-to-day.  I’m not special; we all have our own networks.  I think about how my activities impact my partner, my parents who live with us, my grown children, my coworkers whom I support around the world, my friends, my wife’s business and her employees.  You get the picture.  I love that I am connected to all of them, but a world that makes it so easy to connect with anyone and everyone can make it difficult to just… slow… down.   

Not so while camping.  My reach is limited to the people in my camping party, and others who use the nature area now and in the future.  Of course, I am still obligated to all the people that participate in my life, but my main job now is to get home in one piece so I can resume normal programming.

My everyday problems exist with or without my attention.  When I am in the woods, on the river, there is not a thing I can do to fix them.  I don’t have a phone call to procrastinate, an email to answer, bills to pay.  Yes, they wait for me at the end of the trail, but for the moment I am free.   

The simplicity of it all makes it easier to be present.  I have the capacity to sense things that are usually overwhelmed by the din of life. Enjoyment is - somehow - more real. It is a kind of alchemy; an unexpected product greater than the ingredients.  The best meals I will have are the ones that seem improbable while camping, like wood-fired pizza, fresh yeast donuts, butter chicken.  The most exquisite scotch will be so because I sip it on the riverbank, sitting silently with my closest friends, finding stars in the darkness between the stars, listening to the chaotic conversation of coyotes in the distance. My enjoyment is amplified because I am not just surviving in the woods but thriving.