The Joy of Being Lazy and Filthy

I’m not exactly someone you’d call “outdoorsy.” I love to hike and float, but when 8 p.m. rolls around, I want my pillows, my air conditioning and my Netflix.

My husband, on the other hand, is an outdoorsman, a farmboy who grew up on the land. He’s the kind of guy you want for your partner on Naked and Afraid because he could build you pretty sweet housing from spider webs and spit. In the event of the zombie apocalypse, he’s apt to wrestle a bear and turn it into chili to sustain us all.

And for the past four summers, he’s gotten this city girl camping.

If there’s any test to determine if you and your spouse are apt to stay married, it’s putting up a tent for the first time.

Because our tent was the size of the Taj Mahal, it required three times the work and three times the screaming, since unlike my husband, I do not possess an engineering degree and have to read the manual. A manual that includes a divorce decree in the appendix.

Two years later, tired of sleeping on the ground, my husband decided to take it to the next step and purchase a camper. After months of searching, he finally found a pop-up that was in our tiny budget and included an interior that looked like every couch from 1991.

“How much meth do you think got cooked in here before we bought it?” I asked when it pulled in our driveway.

“Meth? We bought it from a perfectly nice family.”

“The Walter Whites were a perfectly nice family too. And then Walter all got mixed up with a camper. No good can come from this.”

The camper, nicknamed the S.S. Jesse Pinkman, has now become our summer home – lakehouse be damned.

But my heart hurts just a little for Jesse. You know that scene in Almost Famous when William’s in the bathroom, dwarfed by classmates twice his size combing their mustaches? That’s how Jesse feels at the campground. Our poor little guy looks like he was pooped out by the deluxe RVs parked next door.

But he has air conditioning and elevated beds, and that makes him glorious.

Take it easy, will ya?

Getting used to the camping life has been a challenge for me. Beyond the bugs and the humidity and the raccoons who treat our campsite like their own Golden Corral, the main thing that freaks me out about camping is the slow pace that accompanies it.

The first time everything was set up, I turned to my husband and asked what we would do now.

“We sit.”

“And?”

“That’s it.”

“You mean you just sit all day? All day? What kind of freak are you?

“Can’t you just relax? Geez!”

No, I cannot. Our lives are on 70 MPH all week between work and school and activities. If I do have a free moment, there’s a nagging, empty void that needs to be filled.

But my husband and his friends go camping for four days and don’t leave the campfire unless they’re hunting. And more often than not, they don’t leave the campfire at all. For days they stare at the fire and drink Miller High Life without a care in the world. Bastards.

The first few camping trips we took as a family, I crammed our days with hiking and biking and swimming. By the time it was 8:30 p.m., I was so exhausted, I crashed on the air mattress, leaving an irritated husband to drink alone.

“I can’t relax!” I screamed. “Don’t you understand? There’s a laundry basket full of clothing to be folded three hours away!”

But slowly, I’ve been able to let go. It’s come with compromise through – I need something like a two-hour hike in the morning to shake off my excess energy. But the rest of day is left to Hornsby’s Hard Cider and a good book while my kids traipse around the campground.

This relaxation truly resonated with me the other weekend at Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park. Earlier in the month, we had gone camping at Holiday World where our weekend was crammed full of activities. But this Saturday, I sat in the river and let the currents rush over me, washing off the stress of the week.

“Mom, this is so much better than Holiday World,” my nine-year-old said, sitting down beside me and resting her head on my shoulder.

Amen, sister. A-freaking-men.

The Pigpen of Suburbia

The other adjustment has been embracing my grossness. There is a remarkable freedom in stinking so bad you walk around in a haze. No, that’s not my aura, fellow campers, it’s my filth.

It’s especially liberating when you work in public relations and have to be coiffed and made-up all week, and live in a suburb where every mom looks like she stepped out of a Lululemon ad.

For our first trips, we would cool off in a bathhouse shower, standing ankle-deep in spiders and other people’s hair balls only to be covered again in sweat and dirt the moment we emerged, our hard work for naught.

Today, dry shampoo, baby wipes and toothpaste are all I need to survive four days in the wild.

“Oh my god,” my husband shrieks. “Are you ever going to wash your hair?”

“No. You dragged me out here and told me to relax. I’m relaxing!”

More important, after three days camping, nothing feels more luxurious and glamourous than slipping into your tub at home, surrounded by the mildew you’ve been too busy to scrub. Even among the garbage can that never gets dumped and the dirty towels on the floor, it’s a mini getaway to the Four Seasons in your head. You will never appreciate that ring-around-the-tub more in your life.

Book your autumn camping trip

With Labor Day now a distant memory, summer camping weekends are coming to a close, but there’s still plenty of time to hit the great outdoors - when the days are warm, the nights are cool, and the mosquitos have finally be banished back down to hell. It’s perfect season to hike in the day and then spend your night ruining your exercise with endless s’mores – while you stew in your own filth.

There are a variety of campgrounds to check out at Missouri State Parks or Illinois State Parks. Or take it another step and visit a national park, where kids in fourth grade can get in free thanks to the National Park Foundation’s Every Kid in a Park program now through August 31, 2016.

And as my husband – and Frankie Goes to Hollywood – says, “relax.”