More Seasoned

 

A painting by gay painter Glyn Philpot of his friend and sometimes model Jan Erland in 1933. This painting fits my autumnal mood as it drizzles outside and I am tucked away upstairs in my office with lamps glowing on the corners of my desk. I enjoy Jan's serious gaze, the hand gripping the barrel of the rifle and the dangling booted foot of the crossed leg. The model is obviously gay too, but there is plenty of dangerous masculine potential like the rifle.

 

On Monday I pulled out an umbrella and walked to the end of the driveway to the mailbox. Oak leaves were scattered on the grass and I had to get out in the rain instead of only watching it through the windows. We have had so little rain since August. During my short walk under the tapping raindrops with temperatures in the forties I turned over in my mind a topic I have been thinking of for the last couple of months. I have been thinking about camping and it resurfaced when I was in the mountains of Rabun County last weekend. 

The teacher who founded Foxfire. Image from a 1974 documentary produced by McGraw-Hill.

 

I passed by Foxfire on Black Rock Mountain too and it reminded me of what happened to its founder at the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School and the scandal in the early 1990s that time has forgot, but that is a story for another day.

 

My camping gear has sat stowed away on a shelf in the garage for the last four years without being used. I have been too busy with the house, I have been too busy writing, I have been traveling, I have allowed life to get in the way. It hit me, it is very likely I will not go camping again in my lifetime. For most people that would be okay, but it made me sad. It was part of a more significant realization too.

My brother, my grandfather and me at Lake Allatoona in the late 1970s.

I camped as a child in the seventies at Lake Allatoona, then camped in my tree house at home and camped in a tent in the woods behind my house in the eighties. I camped as an adult in various places in the mountains. I loved sleeping outdoors to the sounds of nature and a crackling fire and that smoky, rustic scent that only a campfire emits. Now getting older or more seasoned by time, I realize that my body would be less enthusiastic and agreeable about sleeping on the ground or a cot. I could still do it, but I would probably not enjoy it. I realize my limitations that have begun to settle in over the last year. With aging, I am in my early fifties; it is natural that there are activities and places that you will never do or see again. It is not from a lack of desire but more of a result of practicality. Aging has not bothered me too much, but never going camping again bothers me.

 

I do not want to camp in an RV, that is not camping but driving an ugly, gas guzzling motel room on wheels. True camping involves a tent or a tarp or just a sleeping bag. It means not sliding between Egyptian cotton sheets and not using electricity to keep yourself from becoming bored or to make a pot of coffee. It means using a fire to cook meals, heat water, to see after nightfall and to keep warm. Camping means putting the modern noise away and to stop existing as an overstimulated human zombie.

 

My tent and one of my bikes when camping in the Bankhead National Forest in Alabama. Photo by me, 2010.

Also I consider the decline of society as civil norms breakdown and I read of horror stories of how camping has changed. Consideration and respect for others in public has been stomped out under heel like a dying fire and unfortunately that is not exclusive to camping. The experience of camping is not the same with people using camping as an excuse to get drunk and party, bring loud untrained pets, drag along loud electrical generators and impinge on the solitude and peacefulness of nature. What's the point of going into the woods if it is louder and more disturbing sleeping near rude and messy strangers than staying at home?

The only viable option I could see is hiking in for miles and doing back country camping. The likelihood of that also remains low. My camping gear will stare at me in my garage tempting me for some time longer and for as long as I can I will continue day hiking and sleeping at home.

 

Photo by me, September 2025.

Happy Halloween from Lula, Georgia and in the spirit of the time, Camille Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre.