Camping is really wonderful.

Especially if the mosquitos leave you alone for a while.

I like camping in california with fat people.

that's mean, nate.

it's what you bring to it. my favorite camping buddies are huge people. 6'4", pushing 300lbs. we always camp in california. last time i went backpacking with one of them, he packed a 5 lb jar of peanutbutter. we had a blast. we smeared peanutbutter on all the tree trunks in the area of our camp. you can imagine the ruckus that ensued that night. a skunk ran over my sleeping bag (with me in it.) it was novel. i was in the bag, not the skunk. once we bbq'd a huge quantity of ribs. we ate like primal men, ignoring mess, grunting like the possessed, throwing our bones into a pile behind us.

I swore I'd never do this, but: LOL!

You get a lot of props from me, nate. Aren't there bears in Northern California? or were you trying to lure Bigfoot?

What the infamous e-mailing yeti?

i was camping in the "point reyes national seashore" area, where there are very limited numbers of bears. if any. i've never seen them. supposedly there are black bears, but big deal. just climb a tree. there are bobcats and mountain lions. mostly bobcats that close to the coast. but they will generally avoid you. even if you have peanutbutter. we saw skunks, opossum and mule deer that night. the mule deer was the scariest. a buck with a rack. very spooky in the middle of the night with a dense grown fog, especially by flashlight.

i don't remember how old i was, at least younger than 12. we were staying at a roadside motel that we stayed at every year on the way up to this 'rustic' vacation place in canada. we usually had to go to bed just as we got there, and my grandfather decided to tell us what i guess he thought would be a didactic story. this place we went to had bears, moose..etc. around, but i never saw them. i don't remember enough of the story, (i tell stories badly, no?) but the gist is that this lady came across a bear. instead of doing whatever she was supposed to do, she stayed there and tried to feed it or something. the bear swiped out his claw and TORE HER BREAST OFF. this was the story my grandfather told me just before bed. i was simultaneously terrified and embarrassed for ages after that.

I hate camping. I've hated camping since I was a Girlscout. It'a all bugs & mosquitos & no hot running water & outhouses & critters crawling into yr tent at nite. Ugh! Roughing it is not fun when you live at poverty -level in real life. My idea of a great camping trip is a winnebago w/a fully stocked bar & fridge/a killer sound system/& a built in grill on the stove. And Nate waiting for me in the waterbed. ;)

oh. you were serious. nevermind.

Well, camping is also being woken up by the sunrise and seeing eagles fly over your tent and listening to the wolves and stumbling across scenes of beauty that would take your breath. I recommend Isle Royale, no matter what your income.

Where's that? In Cali? Plus/camping's expen$ive. Requires tons of gear. You can't just toss some clothes in a duffle bag & show up.

I believe it's in Michigan, R.C. I like roughing it as well as the next chick who was a hardcore granola except for that I hated hippie music and loved punk rock thing. But I've done that. Maybe I'll do it again some day. What I want is the stuff I've not encountered: I want to go to the Poconos and take a bath in some tacky heartshaped bathtub before I die. I don't care if anyone else is there, it's not about romance. It's about seeing the things that struck you as exotic when you were a small child. I knew I was not supposed to be in love ever because I was bad at it when I was in 9th grade (but I keep forgetting at inopportune times). I was on a camping trip with my boyfriend (11th grade, Dave Fleming, goofy as hell but very cutegoofy) and a bunch of folks from school. In the middle of the night we were all awakened by a blood curdling scream. There were more screams. Noone spoke. I lay in my mummy bag (dad got it at army/navy, smelled VERY strongly of mildew) and though "well, if there's a psychotic killer out there, I should sort of tuck myself under Dave here, maybe he'll think there's only one of us and kill Dave instead of both of us." It was, btw, a loon.

fuck loons. and fuck money. camping is free.

My buddy will would often just go off in the woods with a sleeping bag and a knife. I recommend a tent and food besides. it was probably a screech owl. or bigfoot.

Loons do make quite a racket. I've heard them before.

i'm hearing them right now.

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