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camping misadventures

by john ryan gallagher

i spent this past weekend camping with twenty friends on lake elmore in northern vermont. it was a blast. there were tears, laughter, sunshine, rain, food, drinks, and numerous threats of expulsion from the campground. we hiked a mountain, jumped cliffs into rivers, and had an amazing sissyfest singalong around a campfire. i heard wild animals, my friends having sex, strangers having sex, and a whole bunch of old men taking shits. the trip brought up some other camping memories that i figured i would ramble on about:
 
my friend big mike and i went camping alone once. that was super weird and creepy now that i think about it. to make a long story short, we got totally bombed and bored with each other. there’s only so much two dudes can talk about. we thought it’d be a good idea to go into the nearest town and hit up their saloons. big mike wasn’t a hit, but i made a few new sketchy friends. i didn’t realize he’d been thrown out for basically sleeping in his beer. eventually i got thrown out too, and i vaguely remember an expensive cab ride back to our campsite where we promptly turned on one another. i may or may not have had a drunken crying meltdown after i told him to go die in a hole. i think at one point he literally shat while swimming in the saco river. the next morning we got up and walked for hours to find his car. the whole time we acted like nothing had happened. we then went and used some hotels facilities to clean up.

 
 
i remember camping once on a school night on the salisbury beach reservation with my dad. i think i was in the eighth grade. it was weird getting up and going to school the next morning. felt kinda whash. i’d recently watched deliverance and spent most of my time there afraid we were going to be raped. the other campers were scary. around that same time my dad and i went camping in new hampshire, and it started to downpour on us. we tried to stick it out but ended up back at my mom’s house. we asked if we could stay there for the night and she said no. i think she had company. we had to drive all the way back to melrose and then back to new hampshire the next day to get our wet shit. the following day was quite pleasant, and my father and i rented a canoe. we found an indian arrowhead on one of lake pawtuckaway’s islands. i still have it. i think i made my dad listen to two public enemy albums in their entirety that day. that drove him nucking futs. he hates rap music more than anything. in high school some of us  started going to this campground to party and rage. one night these state cops made us pour out all of our beers, and i swear the six of us had to dump out almost two hundred cans of keystone. that shit makes you crazy.

there have been a few instances when i’ve camped and spent most of my time fearing rape. last summer jenny and i went to kampersville in vermont a few days after nascar had just gone off in new hampshire. a lot of the campers had come from the race and the campground had a totally different vibe than other times we’d been there. i’m not trying to knock nascar fans in any way, shape, or form. my dad watches it every weekend with a stopwatch in his hand. why? i have no idea. he has a fu manchu moustache and sends me dolls that look like me. why? i have no idea. note: a few times (when i was younger) the dolls made me mad so i cut the hands off them. my mom threatened to have me committed for doing this. she said i was really messed up in the head. bottom line: nascar fans are a different breed and i respect that. it was just scarier there that time. it was about a hundred degrees and we’d bought a new tent i couldn’t figure out how to set up. i threw a rock and said some evil shit. it was weird. when we tried to sleep we kept hearing our camping neighbors talk about butt sex. we got up the next morning and went to a resort. it was awesome there.

 
 
one time i went to this hippy festival in vermont with some friends. going was a mistake. smoking weed and shrooming on brown beer is cool for a few hours, but then you’re just hot and smelling other people’s body odor and stepping in mud that probably has shit in it because the porta potties are overflowing. sorry for the long sentence. there was a cool part when we went to a swimming hole and chicks were topless. they had hairy armpits. i spent a lot of time wondering why white kids that get dreads usually come from wealthy families. i think everyone there drove a volkswagon. again, different breed. the next day, after waking up in a tent with people i had no recolection of meeting the night before, i wound up catching a ride out of there and back to boston. never again

i could use this final passage to describe nights i’ve camped on park benches in downtown boston, or times i’ve passed out on plum island beaches, but i feel as though i’ve highlighted enough drunken shenanigans thus far. one of my favorite trips camping was on lake bomoseen during labor day weekend 2007. there was a hoedown, an alpine slide, and a state fair involved. i burped all night for some reason. it was probably the hot dogs. i think jenny drank like nine vermont beers and then woke up in the middle of the night with a christer of a headache. i told her to down a whole gatorade and take six ibuprofins, but she had a semi meltdown and threatened to drive home. this whole ordeal woke up scott and karen who later accused me of then pissing so close to their tent that they felt moisture pellets. we were all good, though, the next morning. that’s one of the beautiful things about camping: you let go of a lot of the bullshit and do your best to have a good time and relax.

thanks so much for taking the time to read this. the post below this one has pictures from our camping trip last weekend. i would love to hear your crazy camping stories. please send them to me. hope you are having a nice summer, and i hope you get a chance to camp in the near future.