MINIMALIST CAMPING ROOTS

Tired of rifling through files and shredding, I turn my attention back to the basement.  Thank goodness I have already cleaned out most of the stuff down there.  I had to have the junk men come and haul a bunch of it away after hauling it all myself up to my patio, so all that is left are odds and ends and sports equipment.

I do have some camping gear there.  The last time I went camping was probably before I had kids,  definitely no later than when my two oldest were little.  I am a minimalist camper.  I tend to cook on the fire, and I use disposable everything: foil pans that can go into the fire pit after use, paper plates that burn, paper cups, etc.  I like to be as compact a camper as possible. 

Camping with children is the antithesis of minimalism.  You have to pack extra food and snacks and toys and games and extra clothes and bikes and hand-held video games and ...  It got to the point where staying in a motel near campsites where friends were camping became a much better deal than actually camping.  Plus, damnit, every time I go camping, EVERY single time, it rains.  So, being stuck inside a damp tent with damp children kind of took the fun out it all.

The basement, however, is reigniting my love of being outside.  I know, a bit of irony -- being inside makes me love being outside, yet I'm not outside, I'm inside.  First I stumble across a dusty box that says "camping stuff."  I open it up and find a small, portable charcoal grill and three mess kits.  One mess kit is more of a messed-up kit, so I toss it into the garbage, but the other two mess kits are perfectly acceptable, plus one still has the cutlery with it.

I start to wonder if I still have my dome tent (I do), but I seem to recall that one of the poles had an issue with it.  I wonder if duct tape would fix that.  Also, I've lent the tent out a few times in the past two decades, and I've never bothered with it since.  Maybe someone returned it wet and it's all mildewed.

Might as well tear it open and see.

What I find is a clean, dry tent.  It smells a little dusty from lack of use, but that's not unusual for tents.  I check to make sure the poles are all there (all three of them), then I decide I need to set the thing up.

A practical person would take the tent outside and set it up on a lawn or in the driveway. I am not a practical person. Instead, I move some furniture in my already-too-small den (which also has stuff heading back to work with me), and I decide to set up the dome tent right there.  It may not be the best decision, but I do manage to get the tent laid out on the floor, correct sides down and up.

But, wait.  It has been at least twenty years since I set up this tent.  I start doubting myself.  What do I do after getting the poles fed through?  Is it really that simple?  So, I Google how to set up a dome tent, and, by gawd, it really is that simple.  Within minutes, my tent is up in the tiny space, and the tent is much bigger than I remember it being.  Surprisingly, no parts are broken or missing.

I should probably invest in a better bedroll before I go anywhere, and the sleeping bags definitely need to hit the industrial washing machine, but right now, I think I'm good to go.  Of course, my sister teases me when I send her the pictures, wondering if I'm expecting Armageddon with the tent in the house.  Nope, just camping.  Suddenly, I am expecting camping, and I am reasonably ready to get back to my minimalist roots.