August Camping Adventures, Part 5: Art, Rain, and Realizations

I vaguely remember making a silly promise somewhere that I would wrap up the August camping trip by the end of September….and here I am the afternoon of September 30, wishing I had not procrastinated.  So much to say about such a little trip…but a promise is a promise, and I’ll do my best.

Chicago traffic is sometimes just the reminder you need that living in a small-ish town has its advantages.  Taking I-94 through the heart of Chicago at 5:00 p.m. on a Friday tests even the most patient of souls, and our little car was not filled with patient souls; bickering alternated with silence alternated with cussing.  The back-seaters bore the boredom with as much grace as they could summon, and eventually we were out of the worst of it and could stop for dinner as the sun was setting.  Patrice kept gamely trying to find campsites, but I put my foot down; tonight would be a hotel room, pure and simple.  We made it as far as Janesville, Wisconsin, finding a reasonable room at a run-down Ramada.  There’s something incredibly sad about these has-been hotels.  Despite a grand atrium in the center with a swimming pool, the carpet was shabby and the lobby smelled like onion rings.  But the room was clean and the rate was appealing, and it was downright luxury compared to the outdoors.  We enjoyed the shower, the pool, and finally the pillows to their fullest extent.

Refreshed and full of Perkins breakfast, we drove the small distance to Madison.  The plan was to explore the capitol and city center, and buy some provisions at the farmer’s market on the square.  We bought some cheese curds of course, and a block of aged local cheddar.  We wandered inside the capitol building, and climbed to the top for a tiny museum visit and a lookout over the city.  Madison has always held a fond place in my heart:  Midwesterners who love beer and cheese, who built their capital city between two pretty lakes, who effortlessly combine university town with bustling city of politicians—what’s not to love?

The gorgeous interior of the Wisconsin Capitol

Downtown Madison

Back into the car, we set off for our final destination, Devil’s Lake State Park.  For several years we have been camping with the same group of people at Devil’s Lake.  We met these folks when our kids were together at the same daycare, and we’ve been friends ever since.  We are five couples, averaging two kids each (one couple has three for our one), and life has been such that we rarely see these folks outside of our annual camping trip, but we dutifully reserve every February, work out the meal schedule in June, and pull through the entrance at the south end of Devil’s Lake every late July or early August.  This year, we decided to drop off the tents first; while Patrice got everything set up and Gaël went in search of his buddies, Aude and I would go into the nearest town to get food for dinner.  We were first up on the dinner schedule, since we were leaving a couple of days sooner than the others.  I had decided to keep it simple with brats and buns, sauerkraut, potato salad and chips.  I forgot dessert, but another couple came to the rescue with some sweets for the kids.  The weather was lovely, but rain was brewing on the horizon, and would plague us the entire weekend.

We always enjoy catching up with these people, even if we’re huddled under a tarp against the elements.  Sleeping in the tent was damp to say the least, and we woke up to a mildly frightening network of daddy-long-legs seeking shelter under our rain flap.  Making breakfast, chatting with others, going to take a shower--everything was twice as difficult while dodging raindrops.  The consensus after breakfast was to skip the beach for obvious reasons, wait for the weather to clear a bit for an afternoon hike, and spend the morning at a local curiosity, Dr. Evermor’s Forevertron, the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world.  Surreal is not sufficient enough an adjective….

Baraboo, Wisconsin is home to the Circus World Museum, the International Crane Foundation, and Dr. Evermor’s Forevertron.  For a small town in the middle of nowhere, it’s got a lot going on.  The Forevertron is a park of sorts which is located behind a surplus store.  There’s not much parking.  There is a lot of scrap metal.  A LOT of scrap metal.  Made into one of the most gorgeous artistic arrangements I’ve ever seen.  The late morning mist added to the mood as we wandered from strange object to strange object—a lifetime of collecting, visualizing, and welding spread before us.  Words are insufficient to describe, and my photos don’t do it justice.  Take the time to visit if you ever have a chance, you won’t be disappointed.  More information can be found at: http://worldofdrevermor.com/.

They move!

I don't think he could even make sense of it upside-down

That afternoon we ventured to Parfrey’s Glen trail.  The park guide describes it as, “Gently ascending moderate walking trail enters the sublimely spectacular hushed narrow gorge with moss and ferns and a small stream in the bottom of the glen.”  I describe it as “Joy realizes she doesn’t like slippery rocks”, or, alternately, the “is that my child that just climbed 50 feet up and is now precariously hanging from a small tree limb?!” trail.  Pretty sure that harmless little hike took years off my life.

Dinner was fajitas expertly made by our friends while more rain fell and finding the exact perfect angle to pull a tarp so as to not get pools of water that suddenly shower unwitting folks underneath.  By this time, the four of us had had enough of camping.

The next morning, while I was in the bathhouse debating whether or not it was worth it to take a shower, a mother and four tiny, adorable girls walked in speaking Spanish.  They were not dressed like the kids we were with; they were not wearing expensive little Keen’s shoes or Columbia jackets; I don’t know where they were from, and perhaps they were on vacation from Chicago or Madison or Milwaukee, but hearing their language transported me to places I’ve visited in the world where camping isn’t a past-time, it’s a way of life.  In many many places in the world, children and adults sleep every night together in one room, or in hammocks strung from trees, or in makeshift shelters more rudimentary than a tent.

I felt a sudden sense of shame.

Here I was, schlepping my fancy tent and expensive camping equipment around in a very nice car, choosing to sleep outdoors for “fun”.  Among our group of friends, there were easily thousands of dollars worth of tents, sleeping bags, lanterns, air mattresses, mini-grills, camp stoves, thermoses, tiny espresso makers, coolers, tarps; not to mention the minivans and station wagons we’d bought to fit them all into (and this group are fairly modest campers by comparison).  And, worse yet, I’d complained about having to sleep outdoors on hard surfaces, in rain, getting dirty and bug-bitten; at any minute I had the option of going back home to my four walls with clean, hot, running water and a soft mattress.  Where I could close the door, lock it, and be safe. Camping suddenly felt like a farce, a purely first-world activity where people “rough it” for “fun”, then go back to their normal lives again, having achieved a moment of serenity in the Great Outdoors; or at least enjoyed a beer beside a campfire.  Granted, sometimes you have to sleep outdoors in order to remember what silence sounds like, or what the stars look like in a purely inky-black sky; but the exercise of going camping felt empty to me suddenly.  Some people are always “camping” and do not have a choice.  Am I not mocking them by attempting to live temporarily the way they’re forced to live every day?

It was certainly food for thought as we packed up the 3D jigsaw puzzle of our gear for the last time and said our goodbyes.  And when I arrived back home, I felt even more grateful for the abundance in my life.