The Great Outdoors

“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Two years ago, I decided to buy a vehicle.  For me, there was never really a question that this vehicle would be a truck.  Although this might not be an immediately apparent association, one of the reasons I wanted a truck was so I could spend more time doing outdoorsy activities like hiking and camping.  I would be able to transport necessary gear and I also had some romantic idea of sleeping under the stars in the back.  For two years, this did not even come close to happening.  In fact, for the better part of those two years, the bed of my truck was actually too filthy to lay even a suitcase, as it was covered in a fine white powder and spots of coagulated dark liquid—the result of improperly sealed and tipped over Oxyclean and a leaky motor oil container.  I had to explain this to passengers on a regular basis; otherwise it looked like a coke deal gone terribly, terribly wrong.

My friend Pam (who is also an exceedingly busy person) and I had talked about camping for months, with nothing doing.  Recently, I got word that she was in New York and not working for the span of a few days.  I had planned to go to Dakar, but since my stint in the hospital, I decided it better to cool my jets for a while and not venture across the Atlantic immediately after my release…at least for a couple of weeks.  That left me with a few days open also, and being incapable of sitting still, we decided to make camping happen.  Morning of, I took the truck to a car wash to clean out the bed, which is nothing short of miraculous.  I’m still kind of reeling from it.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day in my delightfully Caribbean neighborhood, the kind where you take a walk while your truck is being reborn and discover a little Jamaican spot that makes homemade raisin rumcake ice cream.  I also purchased a cooler, and for whatever reason the totality of these events made me feel completely superhuman.

Bravely, I drove into Manhattan to get Pam before continuing on to Jersey (also very brave).  In route to the campsite, we stopped at a diner that looked as though it had been plucked out of 1955 and landed with a twirl and a thud in the middle of the New Jersey Turnpike.  In all seriousness.  It was in the middle of the road.  To add to the surreality, we were the only customers, (too) well attended by the friendly son-of-the-owner who was vegan but enjoyed cooking with bacon.  The back of the diner was covered in plants.

GPS did some weird things and it took a little longer to find the grounds.  Once there, we checked in, purchased firewood, and submitted to a mandatory vehicle check for alcohol.  We hadn’t brought any, but since they went to such great lengths to keep it out, we figured it must be TOO awesome to drink and camp, so we doubled back to a CVS to purchase and hide a six pack.  Tent erected, we turned our attention to starting a fire.  How mankind ever managed to discover methods and utility of firemaking is for me a true testament to our innovation and persistence as a species.  If it isn’t redemptive, it is at least very admirable.  Because that sh*t ain’t easy.  Pam had the foresight to bring matches, but they were no…match…for our ineptitude.  We quickly ran out.  With our wood piled in a tee-pee like structure and desperately shielding a small Bic lighter on lone from the family one campsite over, we struggled and cursed and burned our fingertips trying to get a pinch of kindling to ignite. An hour and several false starts later, I got back in the truck and drove to a nearby convenience store, covered in shame.  There I found a firestarter log and purchased a whole handful of Bics.  Yes.  S’mores are that important.

The following day, we made our way up through a section of the Appalachian Trail to the top of Bear Mountain.  It was a lovely hike, especially for someone who’s nothing but citycity these days.  But nature and I had unfinished business.  The following weekend, I went out for a spelunking adventure with another friend, Mae.  For her, it was old hat—she makes her way somewhere awesome every weekend, hiking, exploring, caving, climbing, and rafting her way through every nook and cranny in the northeastern US.  She just rocks that way.  I was invited to go with her and two of her like-minded sofa-hating friends on a trip to an area near New Paltz to explore a cave that only a handful of people are aware of.

I went caving once many moons ago under Budapest and thought I was pretty tough then, but that sort of pales in comparison to exploring a cave that hasn’t been entered in probably well over a year, not as part of a tour, just as something to do on a Saturday.  From the outside, it looked like a small rabbit hole in the ground, but if you decide you’d like to find out what’s inside (and some people do), you can leave your backpack behind and slither in and down a narrow, muddy tunnel until the space opens up into a dark, rocky silence made heavy by moisture.  From there you’re free to explore it all from sudden 30 ft cliff like drops to tiny passageways you can contort your way through if you’re willing to get a little dirty and unafraid of enclosed spaces.  Hope you brought a headlamp.  I learned proper tooling and technique for repelling off the side of a cliff, which is always handy.  Ok, sometimes handy.  I will make it handy.  Leaving the cave, we drove to and scrambled around the ruins of an old steel mill nearby.  Not on any trail, but known to my hosts because again -awesome people- the overgrown walls and machinery are scattered down the banks of a river boasting something like 7 waterfalls.  The water was cold, but this was also pretty rad.

It was a lot of outdoors adventure in 2 weeks, but it made me happy with my decision not to get on a plane.  (Although, that said, I am currently on a plane.)  I always say it, but there’s much more to traveling than getting a new passport stamp.  Perhaps spelunking is an extreme example, but for me, traveling is less a way of getting out of my zip code and more a way of getting out of my head.  There is a real innate aversion to discomfort, but really, you’re going to run into it anyways, so you might as well find the silver lining in arranging your own.  And trying to find the silver lining when you didn’t arrange it.  For me, immersing my daily experience in unfamiliarity (traveling) is an effective way to do this.  Paradoxically, it keeps me on my toes by occasionally giving me a good solid shove nose-first into the pavement.  And I like time spent on my toes because even though the added height seems negligible, I can see that much further.