Tag: Camping

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Camping by Will Stanton

I am one of those fortunate
people who grew up in an era that was not overwhelmed, as we appear to be
now-days, with digital technology.  We
found ways of entertaining ourselves and choosing enjoyable activities that
were more natural.  Camping was one of
those.
My mother and father thought
that camping was a good way to spend summer vacations.  Part of that stemmed from the fact that we
did not have much money and were not well-healed enough to take world cruises,
go to luxury resorts, or stay in fancy hotels. 
My father was able to pick up some army-surplus camping supplies, all of
it rather primitive by today’s camping standards.  He bought a heavy-canvas tent, big enough to
stand up in and to hold the five of us. 
He bought five army cots made of heavy oak supports and canvas.  We had a gas Coleman lantern that, when lit,
hissed and provided us with plenty  of
light.  We had a plywood icebox that he
made, lined with Celotex for insulation.
So for several summers, we
traveled in our station wagon to various states in central, north, and eastern
U.S., setting up camp in preselected campsites. 
Undoubtedly, these travels sparked my love of nature that has lasted all
my life.
Unlike many other boys who
found enjoyable experiences camping through joining the Cub Scouts, Boys
Scouts, or (as portrayed in the movie “Moonlight Kingdom”) the Khaki Scouts, my
brief participation in the scouts included almost no camping trips.  I don’t recall whether our local troops just
did not offer that many trips, or if my mother just did not bother to sign me
up.  As a consequence, I missed out on
some scouting experiences, enjoyable or less so, that many other boys have had.
I do recall that one of the
older boys, seventeen-year-old Bruce, apparently was very proud of his
developing masculinity, which was expressed in his being the hairiest
individual I ever had seen, to that date, outside of a zoo.  Between his questionable personality, very
chunky build, rather common features, and a mat of black hair covering almost
the entirety of his body, I did not find him to be a particularly attractive
person.
Bruce was noted for two
exceptional habits while on camping trips. 
One was that he prided himself on carrying with him a battery-pack and
electric razor to mow each morning the inevitable black stubble on his
face.  The other habit, which to this day
I have not been able to explain, was that he liked to spend the night in his
sleeping bag nude.  Boys being boys,
neither of these facts went unobserved.  And
boys being who they are, they decided to play a practical joke on Bruce.  All they had to do was hook up his electric
razor to his battery-pack, slip it down into his sleeping back, turn it on, and
then shout, “Snake!  Snake!” 
Bruce, waking up to the
warning shouts, along with the buzz and vibration down in his sleeping bag,
naturally panicked.  Terrified, and
struggling to extricate himself from the sleeping bag, Bruce quickly wiggled
out of the bag, stood up, and without stopping to further assess the situation,
took off running into the woods.  It took
a while for the boys to coax Bruce back into the camp.  He was relieved but also irritated to find
that there never was a snake in his sleeping bag.  He was even more irritated with the new
Indian name that the boys assigned to him, “Running Bare.”
© 23
January 2014    
About the Author 
 I have had a life-long fascination with people
and their life stories.  I also realize
that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too
have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones.  Since I joined this Story Time group, I have
derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my
stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.
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Camping by Ricky

In the summer of 1986, I was in the Air Force and stationed at Little Rock AFB in Jacksonville, Arkansas. While there my wife, Deborah and I got the irresistible urge to buy a tent trailer in which to go camping with our three children. We looked at several models and finally decided to purchase the top-of-the-line Coleman tent camper. We were mesmerized by the quality and creature comforts built into the unit.

It had a queen size bed at one end and a double bed at the other. The table could be converted into a space for one or two small children. The refrigerator could be run on propane, electricity, or the battery. There was an outside compartment for the Coleman stove as well as a stove on the inside. An electric air conditioner was mounted in the roof along with a fresh air vent. The hot water heater ran on either gas or electricity. Besides plenty of storage space, there was a room for a standup shower and another room for the indoor port-a-potty. Completely prepared for travel, the unit was slightly longer than our Chevy Astro van.

We promised each other that due to the cost, we would go camping at least twice a month. That promise was easy to make but hard to maintain in the short to long term. My duty schedule enabled me to have weekends off but not consistently. So, gradually our commitment to camping waned.

Deborah and I loved to visit and camp in state and federal parks. Our thought was that the camper was a good deal because many parks do not have motels or hotels within their boundaries so the camper would be our portable home at a park.

In February 1987, Deborah became pregnant with our last child and that spring, I received orders transferring me to Ellsworth AFB, near Rapid City, SD. We were all excited to go but me most of all, as I had finally “had it” up the “ying-yang” with a completely incompetent commander and really “could not wait” to get away from there.

We left Jacksonville in late May or early June enroute to Ellsworth. Deborah was feeling pretty pregnant and enduring morning sickness, fatigue, and gestational diabetes. Greatly adding to her discomfort was the oppressive muggy heat. We only made about 150-miles that day and spent the night in our camper in northern Arkansas in a “mom & pop” tiny campground where other RV‘s were parked within 3-feet on either side.

The next day we only went about 50-miles because Deborah was so stressed and uncomfortable. We camped in a Missouri state part a few miles off the main highway. Our spot was under a canopy formed by overarching trees which kept out the direct sunlight and provided much shade to keep the temperature way down. There was even a children’s play area close by.

The next morning, Deborah was feeling better and we and the kids all took a walk along one of the park nature trails. This one was about ¾-mile long and remained in the forest mostly under the trees where it was shady and cool. Along the trail we discovered wild strawberries and raspberries. We stopped and ate a few each then finished our walk. The trail began and ended very near our campsite. By this time Deborah was a little “tuckered out” and wanted to rest quietly (i.e. without the kids making noise), so she made an offer we did not want to refuse. Deborah suggested that while she rested, that all of us go back along the trail with some small buckets and pick as many strawberries and raspberries as we could. She said that when we got back, she would then make us some pancakes with the berries included. She didn’t need to say it twice. In a couple of minutes we were off and she was asleep.

We stayed at that campground another day and Deborah recuperated quite well and the kids had fun playing in a new environment with other kids whom also were camping overnight. The next day, we continued our journey to South Dakota without any further significant problems except for the “Are we there yet?” and “How much longer?” routine as the endless miles of the Great Plains rolled by.

© 17 March 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Camping (It Up) by Pat Gourley

I am opening here today with a short read from Larry Mitchell’s iconic The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, a few personal photos documenting just a few of my own campy experiences and a quote from someone else’s work.

“… Camp itself should almost be defined as a kind of madness, a rip in the fabric of reality that we need to reclaim in order to defeat the truly inauthentic, cynical, and deeply reactionary camp – or anti-camp – tendencies of the new world order.”
Bruce LaBruce from GLR, March-April 2014

A short definition of camp I found on Wikipedia: “Camp opposes satisfaction and seeks to challenge” seems a very appropriate definition of the gay male act of being “campy”. Camp can be a form of almost spiritual acting out sometimes in private but often as public street theatre that on the surface seems to be just silly. Not that there is anything wrong with being silly. Society could use much more silliness it seems to me.

Though being ‘campy’ is certainly not exclusively the purview of gay men we really have a corner on that market and have and continue to this day to take it to new and challenging heights. I would refer you to watch just a single episode of RuPaul’s Drag Show if you have any doubts that camp is still alive and well. I would also be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge certain Diva’s male and female, past and present who have also mastered the art of camp: Cher, Lady Gaga, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Paul Lynde and Liberace to name just a few.

For many of us gay men the art of camp starts early and often involves dress up. Much to the consternation of my parents I am sure I would on occasion grab a couple bath towels one for my shoulders, cape-like, another around my waist skirt-like and one over my head. I would then pretend to be a nun, Sister Mary-the-something-or-other, and my several siblings and cousins would be my pupils.

Really, where the hell did that behavior come from in a little farm boy in rural Indiana in the 1950’s except from somewhere deep in my budding queer soul? Trust me I was not mimicking any role models or recruiters I was aware of. My juvenile gender-fuck drag appears to have been pretty spontaneous, I had no ‘gay uncles’ to mimic in any fashion that I was aware of. Early TV with the possible exception of Uncle Milty provided only the straightest of heterosexual role models and they were often quite sanitized and asexual. Remember Ricky and Lucy had separate beds!

One of the most powerful components of ‘camp’ involves its often-loving play with gender roles. I really think we are getting in touch with our being ‘other’ and since we usually only have the male and female as culturally defined to draw from and neither really fits we tend to mix them up in an attempt to create something that speaks more directly to us, often with startling success. The often-cruel taunts of ‘tomboy’ or ‘sissy’ really don’t begin to address the reality or do the behaviors justice.

Gender-fuck drag is a classic form of camp, something that has been around a long time and continues to survive today despite the tremendous push towards ‘respectability’ in the LGBT community. This I think sometimes get confused and mixed up even within our community with the powerfully emerging Trans community and their emerging forms of identity. They are very profoundly separate issues. It behooves everyone to appreciate and to be sensitive to the difference in the worlds of transsexual and transvestite and drag queen and gender fuckers and what each very differently involves and implies. There is also a significant amount of cross-pollination between these entities and those realities a bit much to try and get into here. It can be quite the sticky wicket and I would simply refer you to Ellen’s comments at the Academy Awards show she made to Liza Minnelli as an example of the thin ice here one can find yourself venturing onto.

Again I think I can say that much of ‘campy” behavior involves a messing with gender roles as often defined as the appropriate ones by our society. It is one of the most powerful change creating weapons we have in our arsenal in implementing the ‘gay agenda’.

© March 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Camping by Lewis

Ah, fresh air, the sounds of nature’s myriad creatures, the vast array of nighttime stars, the perfumed air, stillness, the sleep of angels–all are reasons that the urban heart is beckoned to forsake convenience, connection, and comfort for the ruggedness of pitching a tent against the wind and rain, digging a trench around it to channel any rain water harmlessly away, inflating those cumbersome sleeping mattresses, getting out the propane tank and stove, finding firewood for toasting marshmallows, and making a practice-run to the bathrooms and showers in hopes of avoiding discombobulation in the dark of night.

To a boy of 12, it seems not to matter whether the tent is pitched on the north rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison or the back yard. Tenting means adventuring into an environment that, even though it may be as familiar as one’s own porch or yard, invites the imagination to blossom, the inhibitions to fall away, and perceptions of possible danger to usurp the bounds of reason.

A couple of cases in point–

It was the occasion of a visit from my dad’s youngest brother and his family. They lived in far southeastern Kansas, a largely rural area not far from the border with Missouri. My aunt and uncle brought their young son and daughter with them, as expected. The son, Dana, was about 8 or 9. I was around 11 or 12. I was preparing to spend the night sleeping in our tent in the backyard. Dana wanted to join me. My dog, Skippy, a toy fox terrier mix, would be with us, too.

We had two Army surplus cots and blankets and all seemed settled in for the night. Dawn came and I stood up fully rested and ready to face the day. My feet felt something on the floor of the tent that was cold and wet. Even against the pale green of the tent floor, I could tell it was piss. I’m sure that some exclamation came out of my mouth, which roused a sleeping Dana. I asked him if he knew anything about the noxious liquid. He blamed Skippy. Well, I knew Skippy sufficiently to know that he would never do something so uncouth. I accused Dana and he confessed that he had had to pee in the middle of the night and was afraid to step outside of the tent. The esteem in which my eyes had held him was significantly diminished from that night on.

To my utter amazement, Dana later became a member of the military police. That fact, coupled with my learning in early adulthood of a young man–the son-in-law of my landlord–who was a member of the police reserve in Dearborn, MI, and, while on duty on a Friday night and riding shotgun in a cruiser on its way to break up a bar fight, also found it necessary to evacuate his bladder at an inopportune moment, has led me to believe that some men–probably a small minority–seek to reassure themselves that they are, indeed, men by signing up for jobs almost certain to test that hypothesis.

My other story also involves a planned overnight backyard camping adventure, only this time with Eddy and Donnie, the brothers very close in age to me who lived next door, on the other side of a drainage ditch (what we used to call a “slough”). I was about 13 and Eddy was a year older than I and Donny a year younger. This time, we were going to sleep on the cots but without the tent.

When the appointed hour for the brothers to come over came and nobody showed up, well, if it had happened today, I would have simply called one of them on his cell phone. As it was, I waited what I thought was a sufficient time and then decided to teach them a lesson. I crossed the slough, which had no water in it, and crept up to the window of the boys’ bedroom, which was separated from the slough
by a bit of lawn and a hedge. The boys were in their bunk bed, apparently asleep. Using my fingernails, I scratched the screen covering the open window, much as I’m sure I had seen in some horror movie.

I couldn’t have been more delighted at the result. Donny, in the lower bunk, sprang out of the bed as if dismounting from a trampoline and ran screaming into the living room, which was lighted. Realizing my danger of being exposed, I rushed behind the hedge and crouched down, so as to be able to see if anybody emerged from the house.

I had barely gotten into position when the father emerged from the house with a flashlight and headed directly toward where I was hiding. Too afraid to move a muscle, I soon found the beam of light pointing at my head like the finger of doom and Mr. Nunn calmly explaining to me that, if I ever did something like that again, he would be happy to inform my parents. I sheepishly stood up and apologized for my misbehavior and ran the short distance home. I spent the rest of the night sleeping alone in the yard after a brief period of introspection after which I’m certain I decided that I had just had an adventure which neither Donny nor I would ever forget.

There are many more camping stories that I could tell, those with my parents in various parks in Colorado and elsewhere, but none give me the pleasure in relating as those I have shared today.

© 17 March 2014

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Camping: With Apologies to Certain HOMOPHOBIC Boys Organizations by Ray S

The stair treads creaked and groaned when I took another step up to the attic storeroom of my grandma’s old Victorian house.

When I was a kid my folks, my brother, and I lived with Gram for about three or four years. Dad had been transferred from his post at Rocky Mountain National Park, back to the Park Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was supposed to be a temporary posting, so Gram’s house in an Annapolis suburb was where we all lived. My brother and I joined the Boy Scouts of America having already completed the prerequisite Cub and Webelos servitude back in Estes Park, Colorado.

Now, some twenty-two years later I return to Londontowne, MD to help with the disposal of the house’s furnishings in preparation for the sale of the house. Gram had decided to check up on our grandpa and see what shenanigans he might have gotten into since he had died some seventeen years earlier.

I reach the room that had always been set aside for storing old steamer trunks and miscellaneous luggage, out-of-style clothes and furniture, baby diapers (just in case one of the grand children produced another leaf on the family tree), old school books, high school and college yearbooks. There even is Gramp’s Army Air Corps uniform.

Digging around in a far corner I find my old camping stuff—the mess kit, canteen, and a number of merit badges that were never sewn onto our uniforms. Gram used to say: “Never know when these things will be needed again” or “Waste not, want not.

There it is—my official BSA pup tent! My search was over. My mission to the attic jungle room was to find the little tent to give to my neophyte Boy Scout nephew just in time for the upcoming Jamboree this summer.

Boy, does this bring back memories. I learned a lot more than knot tying and lanyard weaving in the clandestine shelter of that two-boy tent. Scouting covered a lot more territory than hikes, campfires, and all the pages in the manual. Adolescent boys came to Scouts but left Scouts—for better or for worse—as budding young men. Any vague acknowledgement in the manual, relative to sex education was unheard of and besides what hadn’t you already picked up in the boys’ room at middle school?

There was stuff you knew, you were warned about or outright threatened over and forbidden to do. Of course, that said, the warnings made it all the more tempting, even if some of us were just following the leader. The high point occurred when four or five of our troop hung out in the dark of a vacant garage was what is poetically named a “circle jerk.” Curiosity always spurred you on to pursue the forbidden fruits or in future years of the joys of hetero-, homo-, or bi- or just plain fooling-around sex.

Scouting camping is such fun, character building, healthful, teaches you how to get along with your fellows. Hopefully discouraging bullying and taking the Lord’s name in vain. Scouts Honor! And so many more virtues, and believe it or not, some of these do rub off (or in) to keep the spirit of “Love thy neighbor” alive in you all your life.

Of course there is a hidden disclaimer, just like the TV ads for miracle drugs, for all of the above; Parents, do you know where your little Boy Scout is or was?

Any volunteers for a sleep-over in a two-person pup tent on a camping outing?

© 17 March 2014

About the Author  


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Some Rambling Explorations by Ray S

It was during the summer of his eighth year. Father had set up camp for the family at the Indiana Sand Dunes State Park. Close enough so he could commute into the city and be with the family all weekend. When you’re that young you take a lot for granted and looking back now it is amazing to realize how well planned and engineered the little camp community was. Besides his family, mother, father, and older brother, there were three other families that met at the campgrounds each summer. All with various canvas domiciles. One was even a real circus tent with the interior sub divided by sheets hung on clothesline to allow for some degree of privacy and decorum. But nothing in his mind could compare with Father’s layout.

There were three of the latest no-center-pole square tents. If memory doesn’t fail, they were interestingly or curiously named Dickey Bird tents. Father set the two tents up facing each other with the front flaps joining to make a dining-sitting area–the sides draped with a zippered doorway and made of something called ”bobbinet.” All of this was set upon a 6-inch high wooden deck to keep the sand out and dry in case of rain. The T-bird tent was for him and his brother.

The little kids would go swimming, or learned to swim assisted by adults in beautiful Lake Michigan–oblivious of the nearby steel mills of Gary.

There were exploring expeditions in the shoreline sand hills collecting little pails full of wild blueberries, which Mother made into wonderful pies for the crew’s communal dinners. And, yes, she baked them in a fireside tin oven. The lady was quite adept at camping culinary cuisine.

Usually on the 2nd of July a pit was dug a little way from the tents. About 5-feet square and 4-feet deep. Then the men would build a big fire and keep it going until morning when there would be a goodly pile of hot coals. Fresh ham roasts, loins and pork ribs were seasoned and wrapped tightly in layers of butcher paper followed by three layers of wet burlap sacks, all tied and bound. The bundles were lowered into the pit of coals and then covered over with the excavated soil.

The next day, the 4th of July was celebrated with everyone enjoying the pit roasted barbecue and all the trimmings.

Brother and his buddies all went down to the lakeside in hopes of finding some teenage romance. The little kids sat around the campfire watching the adults doing what adults do when it is party time and celebrating the demise of prohibition.


Summer at camp, swim and play, and know there would never be an end to those happy days.

But he does recall how everybody became so quiet and spoke in hushed voices one day. He finally asked Mother and Father why this change in the people’s mood. One of the families actually had a car radio and had heard the announcement of the plane crash and subsequent deaths of the pilot–one Wiley Post and his passenger friend, Will Rogers. This was the major national tragedy of the time, the Great Depression notwithstanding.

Exploring the childhood days of the early half of the 20th century has led from blueberries, sand and camp to realities of the Graf Zeppelin at Lakehurst, the soup kitchens and bread lines in all the cities, the underworlds personalities of John Dillinger, Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, the rise of totalitarian governments in Europe and the Orient, and the ultimate reality, World War II.

So much for exploring. On to our next topic, “No Good Will Come of It.”

© 1 May 2013

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