Camping

 As the Wise Woman and I were leaving Cloudland Canyon, a fellow camper asked me about our rig. I confessed that I was only a pretender. We had rented a camper. We have been trying different kinds of vehicles because we don’t know what might suit us.

The fellow who asked had an enormous coach that reminded me of a touring bus. He was towing an enormous cargo trailer to carry all the stuff that wouldn’t fit into the enormous coach.

It made me wonder about what we’re doing when we go camping. I wondered about the point of getting away from it all while trying to drag it all with us.

“Camping” is a strange idea. Before I met the Wise Woman, I used to hike alone in the wildernesses of East Texas. I usually didn’t carry a tent. I traveled with a tarp that could be rigged as a shelter if it rained.

I was interested in seeing the country. Sleeping under the stars and cooking over fires made me feel closer to the place in a way that I didn’t understand — and still don’t. I went to the woods time and again. I guess you’d call that camping, although what I was up to had little to do with the wondrous technology available through the gazillion-dollar camping industry.

I wanted to see the places I loved, but I was also after something else. While a tent seemed an unnecessary burden, I always packed a book and a notebook. I seemed to need to hike and camp most when I had questions I wanted to think about.

On this recent trip I carried a copy of Gandhi’s The Way to God, a collection of his newspaper writings about his spiritual or interior life — or maybe the writings are about his own psychology. Gandhi’s ideas seemed vital to me as a younger man, and I wanted to see if that were still true.

We were expecting rain on our recent trip. I wanted to read and think while it rained. I once did that under a tarp, and now I’ve done it in a recreational vehicle.

The way I camp has changed and will continue to change as the Wise Woman and I get older. But I still camp. And if I had to account for my rig, I’d start with a book and a notebook. I would start with a state of mind.