No. 08 | Girl gone glamping
A trip of firsts, reawakening old memories and creating new ones.
The beers were still cold, just out of the cooler, when we popped them open and clinked cans to celebrate our arrival. The bags had just been flung into the tent, on the plastic-sheeted ground beside the double bed, which was my minimum requirement for subjecting myself to this experience. I had just changed out of my city boots into my only pair of outdoor sandals: thick-soled, velcro-strapped, sturdy rubber, the type all the cool mountaineering girls wore back in college.
The first rush of euphoria at the sheer beauty natural of our spot—oh wow, I didn’t think it would be this pretty!—had yet to subside. Our eyes were still freshly dazzled by the mirror reflection of blue skies in a small, placid lake ringed with reeds like thin green spears. Our ears were still enchanted by birdsong all around us, a surround sound concert echoing from trees bursting with the bright new lushness of spring.
It was then that he asked me: “You must tell me what this is like for you.”
This? What, camping? Oh, sorry, I mean glamping.
I didn’t have to set up the tent myself, and a nature campsite in Drenthe wasn’t exactly the great wild outdoors, but this definitely counted as a first. I’d never gone camping before.
I had always expressed resistance, even scorn at the idea of camping (or camper vans). Why on earth would I want to put myself through such torture?
Trevor Noah sums up my feelings about camping: what white people want to do on vacation, black (and I might add brown) people are generally trying to escape.
Having grown up in the Philippines, for me the concept of camping is intertwined with the memory of hardship. Let me tell you: people who have busted their asses to escape hardship don’t really want to go back there for a good time.
No, we want the comfort we’ve worked for, so we can take a break from our daily lives of struggling for every single little thing. So give us our breakfast in bed, our freestanding bathtubs and fluffy duvets, our turn-down, wake-up, butler service. (I know you can have all this and the great outdoors; I’ve seen it on Instagram.)
I never imagined this trip would happen, for more reasons than one (and I’ll tell you the other in a minute). But here we were.
As we set about organizing supplies, fetching water, and preparing dinner over a coal fire, he seemed pleased at how I was holding up.
“What, did you expect me to be a princess?” I retorted. “I know how to do these things, okay? I just haven’t had to do or feel or even think about any of this in a very long time.”
And it was true. I knew, just as naturally as breathing, how to cook over a coal fire, blowing gently on the coals and knowing when the meat needed to be turned;
how to wash myself from a plastic bucket, clean dishes with rationed water; and obtain water from a communal source;
how to walk in the rain, or with bare feet on dirt paths;
and especially, how to while away the hours without electricity.
“Camping feels like familiar things,” I told him, “unfolding in an unfamiliar setting.”
It reminded me of growing up in the 90s, when Metro Manila suffered debilitating daily 8-12 hour rotating power outages, which we called brownouts (named after the effect of dimming incandescent lights). My late childhood was marked by long, torturous, sleepless summers with no refrigeration or airconditioning, no TV or radio, and little relief from heat or boredom.
We had nothing but our voices, guitars, and passed-around, worn-out copies of Songhits and Jingle, cheap newsprint magazines with songs and guitar chords; a pack of cards for pusoy dos, a kind of bastard poker; ghost stories and study sessions by the light of old gas lamps; candlelit dinners without the romance.
So I know how to live with just the basics. Except it wasn’t a holiday, it was just life.
This way of being was familiar to me, even if the environment was not. Even if my skin was misted with rain instead of sweat; even if I was surrounded by flowers and birds I didn’t recognize; even if the trees kept their names secret from me.
In those days by the lake, I felt a familiar self reawakening, even as a new one was finding her feet.
This self with the wild unwashed hair, the earth between her toes, the open-mouthed wonder at the changing sky—I knew her well. Perhaps even missed her.
The trees taught me their lessons, though their names are still a mystery to me. The campfire carved faces into pieces of wood, giving us characters for bedtime stories.
And when we fell asleep, it was to the drumbeat of rain on the roof of the teepee, loud and close to my ear like the tropical storms of my childhood. The rain slid down the wet slopes of the tent like streams carved into a canvas mountain, forming muddy puddles on the ground where we found our shoes, belts and socks the next morning.
But hey, the firewood was dry, because I had remembered to stash it under the plastic camping table.
I told you, I know how to do these things.
I never imagined this trip would happen, but I’m happy it did. I never expected I’d ever want to go camping at all, or enjoy it so much.
And I certainly never expected to it to be, at this stage in my life, something I would do with someone I call my boyfriend.
But perhaps that is another story, for another time.
I want to thank you for your kind, sincere responses to my last Letter, which contained a rather risky piece I wrote about sexuality in the pandemic. After reading your replies, I feel encouraged to write more honestly, vulnerably and vividly. I feel… free.
I was today years old when I found out why we had those brownouts in the 90s.
Oh, and here’s the campsite in Drenthe we went to. Highly recommended for a gentle introduction to the glamping life.
Have you recently had an experience that reawakened an old version of yourself? What was it, and who were you?
As always, I love to read your thoughts, so hit that reply button. Also, what would you like to know, or read more of from me? I’m dying to know.
And if you like what you read, please feel free to share it with someone.
See you in two weeks!
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I think this is a great perspective. A vast majority of people who go camping do so for the novelty of "roughing it", but have never had to experience "roughing it" because they had to. I'm glad you found a way to find some enjoyment in it though, in spite of some negative associations with the whole concept. Reframing experiences in a new context is kind of an interesting thing to write about.