Flint & Steel Camping Prompt

We Go to Camp Runamuck

Actually to something much colder

I was never much for camping, something I didn’t announce to my wife until years after we’d been married, and after more camping experiences than I ever thought I’d encounter or agree to encounter. So consider this a story from those days when I covertly hated camping but didn’t want to let the person I loved down.

My wife likes the rugged outdoors, not something you would immediately think of or recognize in a woman who immigrated from Iran during the early days of the nightmare also known as The Islamic Republic of Iran, not to be confused with the once and hopefully never again Fascist Republic of T***P.

Ok, back to friendlier topics.

We cross-countried; we camped on the Outer Banks; we camped at the Black Mountain Folk Festival many times, the last time when it got down to 28 degrees and we found an unheated cabin because it occurred to us much too late that our nine-month old baby daughter might freeze to death were we to stay in our drafty tent.

Did I mention that I hate camping?

Camping works for some people, but not those who consume so much coffee and water that the older they get, the more times they have to get up in the middle of the night, and you know how much that person surely loves trying to stand in a tent, grope around for a few minutes, unzip everything, and then stumble out into the Blair Witch Project woodsy night where any sound can interrupt the oceanic flow. And do this at least twice more before dawn, when it all starts again.

Mentioning no names.

But on the adventure I want to narrate here, it was early November, and we were going to spend a weekend camping in Montreat, next to Black Mountain and a setting commandeered by Presbyterians, which we had heard about only because I became a member of the faculty of Presbyterian College that year.

I grew up Methodist, though it didn’t take, and what also didn’t take was my wanting to go to any summer church camp. But on a fall Friday night, this all seemed so harmless.

Right.

We found the campground in a woodsy bend by a meandering creek.

“Oh, we’ll hear the water all night! How soothing,” my wife said.

I always hate to dampen her enthusiasm. Doesn’t mean I don’t dampen it, just that I always hate doing so. But we set up camp and then noticed that we were all alone…except for a strange deep gray tent about 200 yards away.

I’ll save you the worry at least. We never saw any sign of life from that tent. Not one. Which worries me more today than it ever did on that night.

What worried me more at the moment — other than rumors of bears — was that the temperature started falling about 4:00 and was dipping into the 40’s by 5. We had our bags and blankets, but no means of making a fire. I know, the thought occurs:

“What did we expect, and what were we planning to do out here?”

Fortunately, the Montreat Lodge was only a half-mile away, and we’d heard they served supper. So it was worth the hike up and back. Or at least I think so, the hike back I mean. When we got inside the lodge, oh wow!!!

Real bathrooms (though the textured walls and the odor reminded me so much of my old Sunday School rooms that again, memories flowed faster than what was needed more).

But in the main or “Great” room was a fireplace with rocking chairs set by it. Was I that old in 1988 to think this was bliss — a good rocker by a blazing wood fire? We sat and got warm, and I almost forgot about food. But the dining room was only a room away, and you know, from heat to the belly is only a phone call away.

It was a buffet, full of roast beef, new potatoes, string beans, and hot rolls — all fresh out of the lodge oven, and all tasting…

really bland, as befitting my experience of Protestantism.

Still, we ate and ate heartily, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone approaching us, which might mean that someone would be trying to save our souls tonight.

Sort of.

It turned out to be one of my faculty colleagues, a generous, and altogether sweet man, once again befitting my experience of Protestant Church leaders. Actually, this man, a Professor of Religious Studies, had served on the committee that interviewed and hired me.

I remember our hour in his office, which consisted mainly of a discussion about the virtues of Flannery O’Connor novels and short stories, something decidedly not so Protestant. I thought on that day that anyone who loves and can discuss Wise Blood is someone I’d like to be associated with. After all, there’s a lot to argue about in the novel and not everyone is up for unpacking a story about a crazy war veteran who decides to start his own church and call it “The Church of Jesus Christ Crucified, Without Christ.”

And warning: when this guy, Hazel Motes, mortifies his flesh, he goes whole hog.

Standing at the Montreat Lodge buffet, my good colleague welcomed my wife and me and seemed so stunned to see us there. Stunned, maybe because at that point in my life I tended to look like those portraits of Jesus, long flowing hair and beard, but not so much the olive skin and robes. I told him we were camping nearby and he got this confused look on his face that meant either he was disappointed that we hadn’t come for devotion or retreat’s sake, or he thought we were complete idiots for camping out in the freezing cold with only a stray gray tent nearby.

And really, both of us, after supper, were reluctant to head back out to the cold ground.

But we did. And, of course, there was absolutely nothing to do but lie close to each other, which might have led to something better, except that my wife, that rugged individualist, couldn’t stop thinking about the tent 200 yards away from us and what rough beast might come slouching out of it.

So neither of us slept so well, and when the dawn’s early light appeared, we were out of there, in search of lost Waffle Houses, and deciding to head on to Knoxville and spend that next night with my wife’s parents.

We arrived in Knoxville where we had warm Persian food, even warmer beds, but get this: My wife suggested that we pitch our tent in the backyard because this was supposed to be a camping weekend.

And so we did. Because, dampening spirits is an act wisely chosen.

Our last camping trip came a few years later when we had two daughters and my wife asked that such an adventure be her Mother’s day gift. A few baby copperheads and lights out at 7:30 later, we packed camping in for good.

Or at least I did. One day, get my daughters to tell you about that island off the coast of Georgia.

And my colleague, after serving a long and happy life at the college, retired and then just last year, passed on. So strangely, whenever I think of camping or Wise Blood, or un-sanctified churches, I think of him.

Thanks for reading, and please know that I mean no harm. But I’m not going camping with you, my wife, or anyone else.

And thanks Ellie Jacobson for bringing this all back to me. I wonder if Paul Combs or Steven Hale have camping stories?