Make Camping More Memorable

Summer is almost here, which means it's camping season. I've done some camping in my day, and, while I'm no camping expert, I can tell you one of the best parts about camping is the memories you make. 

So, today, I have for you three surefire ways to make your next camping trip more memorable.

1. Prepare poorly. 

Leave something essential behind. Don’t check the weather. Or DO check the weather and plan your packing list based on feeling instead of fact.

For example: I recall a weekend trip with my youngest sister. The goal was get there in the evening, get a good night’s rest, and get up early to complete a 9-mile hike with a suspension bridge over a waterfall in the middle — a hike I'd dreamed of doing for years.

The long-awaited waterfall, circa several years after the original plan.

We arrived and set up camp just before the rain started. And it never. Stopped. And we had no bug repellent. No raincoats. No water-resistant footwear.

After spending an hour pouring lighter fluid on damp firewood, we ate cold hot dogs and went to bed in hammocks tied under a tarp (our only raingear). We did not, however go to sleep, thanks to the South Carolina Thunderstorm Symphony of thunder, rain tack-tack-tacking on our tarp, and the endless whine of mosquitos.

At first light, we cut our losses and cut our trip short and dragged everything back to the car, dripping, in our pajamas, shamefully passing well-equipped hikers in raingear and boots on our way.

For creating memories, this is a really solid strategy. I’ve tested it several times. Having everything you need doesn’t create indelible memories. Being miserable until you have to decide to go home early does.

2. Pick a fight

I think this one is pretty self explanatory, but I’ll set the scene for you:

Picture it — you’re having a perfectly peaceful (and forgettable) day with your partner. The two of you decide to go for a swim. He swims too far away too fast and then can't even hear you shouting, “Brian! Slow down! I can’t catch up!”

So, you get out, get a towel, and get nice and angry. And you wait. And when he finally shows up on dry land, you absolutely fall apart and cry and ruin the whole day for both of you!

This is what a perfect summer lake day looks like.

This option is not only highly effective for creating memories but it comes with a bonus: Now, you have a great story for your next therapy session. (You might even uncover something important like abandonment issues!) 

And my last (and favorite) tip for making a camping trip memorable: 

3. Injure yourself

My most vivid camping memory of all time is the time I busted my nose all alone in the wood. I set up a 4-person tent by myself. I set up the hammock. I set up the fire, and thought I'd just gather a little more firewood before relaxing.

Yes, this is the fated site on the fated day. Look how beautifully prepared.

I found an excellent piece of driftwood, and threw it at a rock in an ill-thought-out attempt to break it. At which point it ricocheted back into my face.

I imagine at this point you have some questions:

• Did my nose need stitches?

• Have I ever had a good camping trip?

First: Who knows? I bandaged it and rolled with it. It seems fine. 

Second: Yes. In fact, the point I actually want to make is this:

The trip with the busted nose was not only one of the most memorable, but also one of the most fun camping trips I ever had. We salvaged someone’s slightly broken pop up canopy on that trip. The water was high and we found a picnic table submerged in the lake, so we dragged it out a little further and drank beers sitting at a picnic table waist deep in the lake. It was amazing.

The show must go on! With bandages.

But would I have remembered it so well if my nose hadn’t been throbbing and oozing all weekend? Probably not.

In conclusion

What I’ve learned in my time camping, and in life in general, is this:

A little discomfort for contrast tends to make the nice moments even nicer. None of my picture-perfect camping trips stand out in my memory.

What I really want to communicate is this: You should never not do something because it might not be perfect. Don’t avoid doing something just because it might not go as planned. I don't even remember any perfect camping trips. Or vacations. Or outings of any sort.

Forget the raincoats! Set up a paper-plate picnic in the wind! Call your children out from their dry tent into your leaky one during a thunderstorm! It doesn't matter.

Don’t go for perfect. Go for memorable.

Don't Make Your Bed

Think back to this morning. You did the same thing you’ve done nearly every day for most of your life: You got out of bed. But what did you do after that?

Quick question:

Do you make your bed neatly, religiously, every day?
Do make your bed most of the time?
Or, do you make your bed almost never

That’s me.

And it’s not U.S. Navy Admiral William H. McRaven. In 2014 McRaven gave a now-famous commencement address at the university of Texas. “If you want to change the world, make your bed,” he said. Making your bed would, he said, set the tone for the day, import a sense of pride and accomplishment, reinforce that small tasks matter, and set yourself up for a strong start for tomorrow.

Throw all of that away. 

I’m here to tell you NOT to make your bed. And to give you three undeniable reasons why.

Reason 1: Making your bed is gross. 

I was appalled the day I learned that basically every bed is home to about 1.5 million microscopic dust mites. (I was more horrified the day I learned about Demodex mites – which live IN YOUR EYELASHES and are apparently NORMAL. But I digress). TEN PERCENT of the weight of a two-year old pillow can be composed of dead mites and their waste products.

And here’s the kicker: Dust mites thrive on human dander and warm, moist conditions – like the inside of your bed after a cozy night’s sleep. Making your bed traps your residual warmth and moisture in, leaving the mites to happily feast on your leftover skin flakes. They THRIVE in a made bed. So, leave those covers off and let things cool off and dry up. 

(As an aside, I’ll be totally honest with you – there doesn’t seem to be actual research proving that an unmade bed makes a more hostile home for dust mites, but do you really want to be tucking those guys in every morning?)

Reason 2: An unmade bed is more comfortable. 

It just is. I know this is getting into subjective territory, but getting into a freshly made, edges-tucked bed is like slipping yourself into a crisp paper envelope. Rigid. Restricting.

I don’t want the sheets tucked in. I want myself tucked in. I want the fluid freedom of rumpled, flowing sheets and blankets cascading around me and burrito-ing me close. the first thing I do at any hotel is kick-kick-kick out the bottom of the sheets out so I can swaddle them around my feet.

Another thing: let’s assume you have a spare blanket for if you get chilly. A bed-making person (like my husband, for instance) will have it neatly folded across the foot of the bed. But do you really want to fool with reaching all the way down there and unfolding it when you’re cold and asleep in the middle of the night? I don’t. Unmade? Reach down, yank up, sleep.

Reason 3: You have better things to do. 

Let’s be honest. Let’s say making a bed neatly takes 2 minutes. That’s 12 hours per year spent making your bed. Over 60 years, you’ve spent a WHOLE MONTH—that's thirty twenty-four-hour days—making your bed. You could take that 2 minutes to meditate, which has proven health benefits, unlike making your bed. You could pour yourself a cup of coffee, which, in my opinion, is much more energizing than making your bed.

You could even use that time to do legitimate chores: If you don’t wash your dishes, your kitchen gets gross and you have to eat everything with your hands. If you don’t do the laundry, you’ll stink and look unappealing, to say the least. But nothing bad happens if you don’t make your bed.

Think about it. 

Does making your bed matter in the grand scheme of life? Unless your name is Admiral William McRaven, I doubt it’s going to come up on that fated day your family and friends share fond memories at your funeral.

It’s not a popular message, but someone had to say it: Save time. Stay comfortable. Starve the mites. Don’t make your bed.

 

P.S. This piece was written and presented as a humorous speech in participation with my local Sunrise Toastmasters' Speechcraft program. Thank you to all who humored me and laughed at my presentation.

If you're interested in more content like this, I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes good stuff comes to me. Most of the time I'm a dry well. Also, you should know this is not up to my usual level of journalistic integrity. I did not bother to find and cite legitimate sources. However, unlike last week's listeners, you at least have the benefit of clickable links to sites of questionable authority.

Looking for a fresh read?

So, I gave myself the challenge of reading a book a week. Not since college days have I read at such a clip. It is turning out to be a little challenging, especially since I keep getting sucked into TV shows (Vikings: Valhalla, Dark, and Sweet Tooth, to name a few).

If you're interested, here are the 15 titles I've read so far this year. (I'm behind by two! Yikes!)

There should be a dramatic genre shift in the next months, as I have a LOT of nonfiction on my shelves waiting to be read. Which is going to slow me down even more. Maybe I need to squeeze in a few novellas, or else start counting the children's books I've been nibbling on. 

Anyway, because I'm a big fan of sharing my unasked opinion (in a low-risk zone), here are my thoughts on my top two reads of the year so far plus scathing criticism for my two least favorites. Enjoy.

My top favorite read so far...

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

MAGICAL. I don't know how to write a review that does this book justice. I suppose this is another novel we owe to David Mitchell for the groundbreaking form of Cloud Atlas, but dear lord, it's so much better than Cloud Atlas. Not that reviews need to pit books against each other, but...

Reading this book is like being caught in a frantic, bewildering fever dream, but a cozy one that you never want to end. Just lean into the chaos. Embrace the labyrinthine journey. It's warm and candlelit and there are cocktails. Are they posioned? Maybe. But the experience is worth the risk.

I'm sensing a trend. All my favorite novels are about the power of story and how story both drives us and makes us human. This one's about that, plus about how story is so many things to so many people and not necessarily the same thing to more than one person.

Don't try to figure it all out. It will drive you mad. The symbolism and the yarn-on-the-wall connections... you can get a loose map of meaning, but you won't find the 1:1 key because it never existed. I know this review doesn't make a ton of sense. It's not my fault. I'm still lost in the Starless Sea. Read it.

My absolute least favorite...  

Island by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It took me 3 weeks to read the first 200 pages of this book. I read the second half today, skimming, to get it over with.

I can see how this book would be a valuable and intriguing introduction for some into asking some of the bigger questions and reconsidering some of the Western structures so often taken for granted as normal and good.

But I did not enjoy it and I don't think it's fair that Huxley got to publish such a long and boring philosphical thesis under the thin guise of a novel. This is no novel. It is a sermon. And the novelish dressing on it is incredibly underwhelming. Sorry to Huxley and the friend who recommended this to me.

The only other book I rated 5 stars so far this year...

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't believe I read this at age 11. It's incredibly difficult after a long string of contemporary reads to readjust one's brain to the cadence and density of Dickens.

But my lord. It's so good.

Melodramatic. Charicaturized. Torturously winding. And all the freaking better for it. I love Dickens.

I remember WEEPING when I read this as a child. I also remember being absolutely horrified by Madame Defarge. This time around, I only misted up a little, and was not nearly so affected by Madame Defarge - In fact, she struck me as brilliant when I was reintroduced to her. No less evil, of course, but more fascinating.

Also: the comedic relief in this piece is SO GOOD. I had at least 3 lough out loud moments and several chuckles. Observations on Tellson's. Jerry Cruncher and his floppin' wife. The sturdy Miss Pross and her interactions with the steady Mr. Lorry. The cast of characters is incredibly broad, but each one fits so well.

The strange thing about this novel is that its flat characters (most of them) are flat, flat, flat (could Lucie be a more boring heroine? She's less even of a heroine and more of the saintly thread that happens to join all these other characters) and round characters (Carton and only Carton as far as I'm aware) are more like double-sided cutouts - first one way, then another, and you hardly know why. But it works for me. Five stars. Again.

---
I have an additional thought that I'm going to put here: as as is my wont, I'm reading Goodreads review after the fact, and many people have criticized Dickens/this novel for having uninteresting, unrelatable characters that are impossible to care about.

And while I do agree that the characters are largely flat and unrelatable, I disagree that that's a problem.

This is a A Tale of Two Cities, not A Tale of Lucie Manette and Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. This is a tale of Paris and London, of Unrest versus Peace, of Vengeance and Sacrifice. The characters are human vehicles through which the principal themes play out. No one character is truly that important in this book - they're all just playing their part in the great drama of illustrating the cause, effect, defeat, victory, and passions of the French Revolution.

It's also been criticized as dry and humorless in comparison to his other works. If you found no humor here, that's entirely your fault as a reader, because if you can't see the comedy in every single scene with Jerry Cruncher, or the references to the old workers at Tellson's bank, or the narrator's critical eye toward Mr. Stryver, you're clearly skipping whole passages!

Sure, if Dickens isn't your taste, I get it. But don't accuse him of falling short when you didn't pay attention to the book!

The other book I hated...

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

1) omg this was so boring.
2) what posessed D.H. Lawrence to write as if he understood everything there was to know about a woman's sexuality? That level of presumption may be bolder than the sex scenes themselves.

IDK what I expected from this book, but pages on pages of rants outlining the decline of true human civilization, dialogue by imbelicic characters on the vast differences of the classes, antisemitism, and weird references to ancient races and womb-feelings was not it. This book was so weird that the p€n!$e$ were among the least of its problems for me. I read it out of sheer curiosity and now I have zero remaining curiosity for anything else Lawrence may have written. Sure, it was graphic and unabashed. But mostly it was philosophical in a wildly boring way.

In conclusion: Most of my reviews land somewhere in the middle, and I would recommend 13 of the 15 with caveats, so if you just can't get enough of my opinion, you know what to do: View all my reviews

On remembering

This is a story about what's been true for me. Maybe it's not the same for everyone, but here's what I've found, really, in just the last couple of years.

Unaddressed hurt covers your eyes with big, cold hands. 

But when you address it? When you name it? When you have the courage to pull the hands away and see what they're made of? They lose their strength. 

Your life, your self, appear with so much more color. And the most magical part, for me, is the way the beautiful things, so long out of sight, come creeping back.

Indulge me in a flight of poetic illustration:

In sleep, I looked back and saw a mist.

A flash of memory here and there, but little clarity. Flares of harmful words, and sparks of sweetness.

In awakening, I looked back and saw darkness — and myself inside it.

A sister too much a mother.

A daughter looking for nurture and connection, receiving criticism and distance. 

A girl looking for safety and understanding, receiving fear and abandonment.

A child navigating hurt, loneliness, threat, and injustice in a world with no place for sadness, fear, anger.

"But it wasn't all bad," was my mantra. I felt something like shame, putting a name to the hurt I spent years ignoring. No, it wasn't all bad. But it was all stained with the darkness I finally named.

And I'm still working on healing the wounds left from that hurt. But now I'm self-aware, self-actualizing, self-integrating, self-confident.

In awareness, I look back with clarity.

In clarity, I see both and. I see a fuller truth.

I see a man choking down his own demons for years, fighting to give his kids a better life than he had.

I see a woman contending with her own mental health, committing to raising kids in intellectual independence.

I remember more. 

Now that I've named the suffering, the sweet comes back. More specifically:

I see my dad, strong, sweating, clearing out what seems like miles of go-kart track with a machete. I hear the rumbling motor, smell the exhaust, and I'm back in the woods, pealing around a curve, hitting a root, throwing up a cloud of red dust I can still taste.

I see my mom gently stirring a pot of chicken and dumplings while I stand on a stepstool, glasses fogging, softly dropping in one dumpling at time. Mama open up a space for me in between the floating drops of dough, and the hot steam dampens my hands and I'm warm with the deep satisfaction of wordless teamwork.

Now that I've given a voice to the pain, cried over it, sat with it for a while, treated it with respect, I can look back and see an astounding mix of bitter and sweet. Neither negates the other. I don't know how it works, but honoring my pain and healing the wounds has freed my brain to find the forgotten good.

Mama stirring food coloring into salty homemade play-dough on the stove.

Daddy bringing home plums in his little Coleman cooler in the summer.

Mama sitting in the rocker, reading aloud from Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little.

Daddy reading aloud from the Bible, too early in the morning. At bedtime. On Christmas.

The family crowding around the computer to see what's next in the Netflix DVD queue. 

Us crowding around the piano to sing an old hymn like Southern Von Trapps.

Mama making the babies laugh with "ONE BIG EYEBALL."

That last one came to me just now! I don't think I've ever, since the last time it happened to a sibling, given a single thought to the way my mom would bring the baby to her face, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, eye to eye, and say ONE. BIG. EYEBALL! prompting that infant belly laugh that brings you both to tears.

And that's what I'm talking about. I have a regular old bad memory, but for so long, I seemed to have nothing. And then a lot of ugly. 

But now, every so often, a fresh, soft, warm and sweet memory uncovers itself, and I am so grateful.

Who I am now...

I began this blog in 2007, cross-posting with my Xanga account. (Remember Xanga? It died in 2013. Which is roughly the last time I blogged here with any consistency.)

Mostly hosting the minutia of my daily life and angsty, philosophical ramblings from my late teens and early twenties, this blog has been home to amusing little personal tales, promotions and giveaways for my long-defunct Etsy shop, favorite recipes, and scores of selfies and other photos.

Now, I'm not sure what it will be. I'm not even sure it should still exist, but I'm loathe to let it go after all these years! I'm sure I should be cultivating a "professional" online presence (and thusly disappearing my online past) if I want to be A Serious Writer, but hey. I am still me, after all.

Now, in 2023, ten years from my last public ponderings, I am thirty-three. I am a professional marketing copywriter and strategist with a degree in English. I know some stuff about SEO, B2B marketing, content marketing strategies, and #agencylife.

I am married with no pets, no children. I moved to Colorado from the South in 2020. I have a children's book in processes, and I try to keep the creative juices flowing with other minor creative endeavors. 

I hike, run, read, climb, write, and drink craft beer — all as an enthusiastic novice. 

And, perhaps most notably, I no longer decry decaf coffee. Anxiety has made a convert of me.

For now, I intend to keep the blog alive with an infusion of  Goodreads book reviews. My Goodreads use is maybe the only part of my online presence that has stayed consistent since 2007! I tried Litsy, but I kind of hated it.

So. Until I figure out what's next, here's this! 

-Caitlin