Kathy Donaghy: Camping brings out the worst in me – but the golden memories keep us coming back
‘LOOK deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better,” Albert Einstein said. I’m not sure if he was talking about camping, but with planes grounded and “staycations” on the cards, out into nature is where a lot of us are headed, sleepingbags in tow.
With Google search interest for campsites at its highest since September, and UK retailer Go Outdoors reporting that its online camping sales were up 460pc last week on a year ago, it’s clear that nights under the stars are something lots of us have in mind.
I don’t think I’m alone when I say camping brings out the worst in me. A confined space with one’s spouse and children – a bit like lockdown only with no Netflix – is enough to put anybody in bad humour after weeks and weeks of being cooped up with the same people.
My family’s camping adventures have never been straightforward apart from the one night last summer when my youngest son and I pitched a tent in the back garden. ‘Pitch’ might be too strong a word. It was a warm evening and we dragged a pop-up tent into the garden and brought the duvets out. Instant happy campers.
The real ‘bells and whistles’ camping, trudging across open spaces to find the perfect spot, putting up a tent which would be worthy of its own segment on the ‘Krypton Factor’ game show, all the while batting off marauding flies, is something I have bitter experience of.
The adventures start off innocently enough with us heading off into the wild and go quickly downhill from there. No matter how we do it my husband and I seem to relish the tent assembly row, having to send the kids out of earshot so we can out-expletive the other because the tent doesn’t do what it says it should on the instructions.
When the kids come back to see how the tent is getting on, we become like the couple in ‘Father Ted’, all nice to one another in front of them before descending into despicable behaviour again once their backs are turned.
In fairness to my husband, he has reason to be wary of me and tents. About 15 years ago, pre-children, we blew all our savings on a once in a lifetime trip to Alaska. We flew into the town of McCarthy – there’s no road in – and rafted out into the open mouth of the Chitina River with a guide.
Having pitched our tent on a bank of the river our guide deemed safe for the night, we fell asleep exhausted after our first day on the river. Sometime in the wee small hours I bolted upright remembering the bag of M&Ms in my rucksack. There are many rules for wild camping in Alaska – no food in the tent is probably number one. The bears can smell food a mile off and canvas doesn’t give much protection from an 800lb Alaskan Grizzly, the biggest of the North American bears.
I woke my husband in a cold sweat to tell him about the offending M&Ms. I won’t recount the conversation here. It’s best left to the imagination. The sweets ended up flung in the Chitina (sorry environmentally friendly readers) and I was lucky to be allowed back in the tent.
There have been other adventures like the time we tried to pitch a tent in Wicklow only to be driven off by packs of midges so dense we could hardly see in front of us. We drove back to our then home in Dublin still scratching and feeling deflated.
On yet another occasion in the Macgillycuddy’s Reeks the wind and the rain pelted the tent so hard that we ended up soaking wet, miserably waiting till the first light of morning so we could beat a retreat back to the car.
And yet for all these experiences, our camping trips have been some of my favourite times. Once with a tent pitched high in the Andes, we drank hot coffee watching the sun come up as the frost melted on the tent door opening.
Last summer in mid-June we dug out the tents and the sleeping bags and drove to Kinnagoe Bay, not far from our home in Inishowen in north Donegal. We walked to the very end of this beautiful beach, the place where the Spanish Armada ship La Trinidad Valencera met its end, and began pitching our tent for the night.
It started out in its usual fashion – daggers drawn across the canvas – but miraculously, did not descend. We lit a fire and with the nights at their longest, the evening seemed to stretch on and on without end. Through my binoculars, I spotted a seal flipping a fish on its nose before eating it. We told stories and the kids laughed. Then, just before dark a lone kayaker slipped across the bay, disappearing into the shadows.
We fell asleep to the sound of the ocean. It was perfect. It made me think camping is a bit like childbirth. You only remember the good bits – you forget the pain.
The words of Brian Friel’s ‘Philadelphia, Here I Come’ spring to mind when I think of our camping exploits, that when the memory is “distilled of all its coarseness; and what’s left is going to be precious, precious gold…”
It’s the golden memories that keep us coming back. Time to dig out the sleeping bags again.
Camping is a bit like childbirth. You only remember the good bits – you forget the pain