Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a smart phone in the woods.
H’lo.,
Now that it’s Memorial Day, the camping season has started up for real. This is good news for us bears, because more people in the woods means more food in the woods. And more food in the woods means more food in the woods! Pretty simple.
Some bears think having people in the woods is a bad thing, but I say it all has to do with the type of people we’re talking about. Not all of them are the same! Most bears don’t get this, but I’ve been online a lot so I know it’s true!
The type of people you don’t want are developers. And by that I mean contractors, resort builders, industrialists, etc. They’ll knock down trees and put up stuff that draws more and more people and before long there are no bear-friendly spaces left. Bad!
The type of people you DO want are nature-lovers. They come to be in the wilderness and because they love it so much, they don’t want it to change. Although those really strict and passionate environmentalists are a little too earnest for me. They don’t bring any bag snacks with them – it’s all pea pods and hummus in their backpacks, which stinks!
Give me Fritos any day.
And the type of people who will give me my Fritos are the very best kind of people in the whole world, and they’re especially wonderful when they come to the woods – children!
Children love to eat terrible food – the best kind of food there is! And they’re really sloppy. There is no better camping human than a child, unless it’s a child who really, really does NOT want to be in the woods in the first place. Unhappy campers are the best because they’re so dramatic! Many of them become so upset they don’t eat anything – mom and dad send a plate of brownies and they just throw it into the woods out of spite!
And that’s at least one scenario where I say “spite makes right!”
So I would recommend that all adult humans consider doing something special for the major wildlife groups of the north woods this year – please Force a Kid to Go To Camp!
Why, you ask?
It’s true some child development experts say you shouldn’t force a child to do anything major like this, but I have to disagree. Forcing a Kid To Go To Camp is one of the best and most memorable things you can do as a parent. You’ll always remember it, for one thing. And it helps you develop your shouting voice, for another thing. And also it can transform you into a whole, complete person in a number of important ways.
- Independence – You feel a lot more independent because your kid has gone to camp and is out of your hair, and it’s summer!
- Confidence – It’s a great boost to your self esteem when you realize you can make your child do something she doesn’t want to do, especially after that epic battle over the dishes!
- Relationships – You’ll find you make friends quickly when you can tell other parents how awful it was when you tried to force your child to go to camp. They know just what you’re talking about, and once you share your story somebody is bound to open a bottle of wine. Especially if the kids are away at camp!
So camp is great for everyone, but it’s especially great for us bears when you send kids who are going under protest. So if you haven’t seriously considered it, please take another look and then pack a small suitcase and a big sack of junk food and put them on a bus or in a church van or something and send them up north!
We’re waiting with open mouths!
Your pal,
Bart
What makes you an unhappy camper?
Trail Baboon 
Bugs, especially black flies and mosquitoes. But let me state for the record, my camping days are behind me. I can think of nothing that would entice me to go camping again. The notion of sleeping in a sleeping bag that is slithering off a thin pad onto the rocky ground is enough to make my back hurt. That’s just for starters, don’t even mention the ordeal of getting out of and back into the bag for multiple forays into the undergrowth to pee during the night. Book me at the nearest lodge with a gorgeous view, a comfortable bed, and good food, please.
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No argument here, PJ. Creature comforts were created for a reason, and only through great effort and expense! How can we turn our backs on our forebears by going back to sleeping in the woods, especially after they created all this so we would not be food for bears?
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I think bears have been given a bum rap, Dale. Being food for bears was never one of my concerns, even while camping in places where there were plenty of them.
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Yeah, bugs. I cannot wear bug spray with my sensitivities.
Also unending rain.
But we camped with our two children in a tent and then a small pop-up teepee Bethany camper for ten years all over northern MN, Northern WI, the UP, In Canada from the Soo to Winnepeg, the Black Hills, a trip to my ex-relative in Virginia and in Missouri. Both my kids say camping is their favorite family time memories. We had to have spent 100’s of days camping. We would camp 9 miles away from home at Gooseberry while my wife drove into town to work in the library. My kids both would wander the campground, often at a quite young age, to meet people. Now my two MN grand kids will do that. My seven year old daughter once got to talking in a bathroom at Side Lake north of Hibbing. In the course of their conversation the woman realized that Becca was the daughter of one of her best HS friends.
We did our first camping trip when our daughter was coming up on 1 year old and our son wound have been three, In a tent at Kawishawi River up by Ely under huge white pines. Both of our kids were enthralled by the wind in the tress above us.
So you see despite Dale’s funny list of three things to gain, my kids did learn some of those things. My son is waiting for when he can take his son camping next year, wherever it is they end up living.
Sandy and I both miss camping. We go to state parks around here and drive through the campgrounds feeling nostalgic.
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I should add that Sandy loving camping is very out of character. It was her idea for us to go to Kawishawi that day. It was a very rustic form of camping we did that trip (2 nights) and she loved every moment of it.
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got to ely last summer with my son and will again this year. great great stuff
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Good morning. Like PJ, I currently do all of my camping in motels. I do like camping and still have camping gear. I might give camping a try again some time.
There are a lot of things that can make me an unhappy camper. Getting through those unhappy camping experiences is actually part of the fun of camping. On one of my camping trips a tree fell on my tent. It was terrible at the time. Latter it became a very memorable experience that I now think of as one of the high lights of that camping trip.
I must admit the numerous times that air mattresses leaked and I had to sleep on the ground with no padding were not memorable experiences in any way.
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Add to that all of the clammy,cold and uncomfortable gear after days of rain, bug bites, and rashes from contact with certain weeds and you have the making of some not so memorable trips. But you’re right, looking back on the near disasters can be fun even though they weren’t so enjoyable at the time. On my first ten day camping trip in the BWCA many years ago, I think it rained six out of the ten days. Only the company of a bunch of very good friends made that fun. That and a plentiful supply of gorp.
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Actually, Jim, it sounds like those times when your air mattress leaked were very memorable.
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I would love to go camping more, but we seem to be incapable of getting far enough “out” to do so.
We did take a little hike on Fri at Crosby Farm (thank goodness there are bits of “the wild” tucked in here and there in our fair city).
Someone has very industriously built all sorts of rustic shelters along the river, mostly out of trees and cording-the one Involving chunks of lumber nailed into living trees made me unhappy, but the others were interesting. There is also evidence of campfires. No idea who is doing this and not being evicted.
Mosquitos and ticks- the downside of the woods.
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Wood ticks. I hate wood ticks. Or any kind of tick, really. Icky icky icky. Once I find one, I can’t not feel them crawling all over me.
These days, what little camping I do is “car camping.” Daughter enjoys it, so I have purchased a tent and borrow what other gear we need & don’t have yet (see above: slim little mats that you slide off of during the night). One of the happy discoveries with our blended church family (3 congregations sharing one building) is that one of those three congregations has a long tradition of a weekend of car camping – a tradition they now share with the other 2 congregations. We went last year. And it did rain – but these folks came prepared as it had happened before. In the middle of the shared campground there were enough tarps strung together from the trees to create a shelter plenty large for most of our group to hang out, play cards, sing, and still enjoy ourselves while it rained. And then the sun came out and everyone scattered to ride bikes or go for a hike.
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How could I forget about ticks. And you KNOW there’s NEVER just ONE.
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Thought I was going to sleep well tonight, until I read this.
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Sorry Linda, I hope you didn’t spend too much time outside today.
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Daughter is maddeningly mum on her job at the lake resort near Park Rapids, only saying that it is going great and she loves it. She is not an outdoor girl, camping for her being in the tent in the front yard with her best friend. My philosophy has always been that if I am going on vacation I don’t want to work, hence our lack of family camping experiences. I hate mosquitos and ticks.
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I can think of so many things that make me an unhappy camper, whether car camping or canoe trips or whatever.
Canoe trip leader who insists we don’t have to hoist the food pack high up because he doesn’t think bears will bother it if we leave it on the ground. A wet sleeping bag. A sleeping bag that is not warm enough so I spend 3/4 of the night trying to get warm enough to sleep and just when I get warm enough, I have to get up to go to whatever serves as the bathroom. Or a sleeping bag that is too warm and I spend the night adjusting zippers and experimenting with leaving feet and arms out enough to be cool enough but not cold.
Skunks that trip you in the dark as you make your way to the restroom (I thought the Porcupine Mountains really should be named the Skunk Mountains).
Being the one in charge of planning and preparing all the food and gathering all the equipment before we start, when the person in charge of storing the equipment likes to store it in about 45 different places, always behind at least 3 peaks of “Mount Junk.”
I better stop there.
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Oh dear, you REALLY don’t like camping, ljb, do you?
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Actually, I used to like it, but that last paragraph about getting ready to camp – that’s what killed it for me.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jjiWS__Mp0&feature=kp
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We gardened today, and I am covered in big bites from little gnats. I forgot about them and they got me!
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The big question in my mind, Renee, if you had remembered about them, was there anything you could have done?
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vanilla behind the ears
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Copy that on everyone’s mention of the ticks, black flies, mosquitoes, bears, etc., but I got really unhappy really fast sitting through a 6-hour super thunderstorm featuring nonstop lighting at the rate of about one bolt per minute, along with torrential rains for a couple of those hours and 50+ mph winds that collapsed the aluminum tent poles on our tent and dropped a decent sized branch on my uncle’s tent, which came very close to injuring him. Not a fun night, even though it was on the Fourst of July.
Chris in Owatonna
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Correction: Fourth of July.
*d’oh!*
C in O-town
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cant spoil my camoping unless it 40 below. then all you need is a good sleeping bad and a day of work
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When I was 10 or so on a camping trip with the family I woke up to find a raccoon outside the tent with his little hands inside my tupperware, he was stealing my snacks. At the time it made me unhappy but now I just wonder if that candy made him and his pals sick.
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