Roughing It

"We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home."
- from Woodcraft, by Nessmuk (Charles W. Sears)

Sproul State Forest Spring Backpack Trip, Day 1 of 2.

The weather forecast we saw on Monday was calling for several days in a row of wall-to-wall sunshine, blue skies, and cooler temperatures. My husband took off on a camping trip to the Quehanna Wild Area on Wednesday with an old backpacking buddy. Unfortunately for them, there was a change in the weather, and they awoke to pouring rain at 6 am on Thursday morning. This is why you always take your tent fly along, no matter what the forecast says.

My husband returned on Thursday evening with soaking wet gear, and barely had time to dry it out overnight before he and I left for the woods again - Sproul State Forest this time - for our own backpacking trip. So Friday morning found us packing our gear into my car.  After a few quick errands and a stop at Jim's in Bellefonte around lunchtime to throw a pair of Italian hoagies into the cooler, we were on our way.

We got to Sproul State Forest in early afternoon, and drove down a dirt road that was graveled until the point where we left it. Beyond that spot, it turned into mostly mud ruts, 12 to 18 inches deep. If you didn't have a huge four-wheel-drive truck (we didn't), you could go no further. And so we parked my car by an old metal gate, strapped everything onto our packs, hossed them onto our backs, entered the traditional stooped position of the backpacker, and ambled down an inviting green path (see extra photo) into the woods.

The forecast had said there was a chance of drizzle in spots in the afternoon, and we arrived just after a tiny shower had moved through. The grass was damp and some ominous dark clouds were still overhead, but they quickly gave way to sunshine.

It was just a short walk to a pine forest campsite we know, that between us we refer to as Pine Glen. It is quiet there, and shady; in fact, one of the quietest places we know. A great place to get away from it all. We have taken the time to clear the site out and there is ample space for two tents, his and hers.

And so we set up our tents and put all of our gear in, just in case it might rain again. This photo shows my tent and backpack; my husband's tent and pack are just to the left of that tree that my pack is leaning on. And then we set up our chairs and set about the serious business of relaxing.

A friend asked me recently why my husband and I take two tents. I am not sure I have ever commented on the reasons why here, though I've told many stories on these pages of prior backpacking trips, even ones conducted in winter weather. (You can see a similar scene, with snow, that features my old tent here.) When we started camping out together, we used to share a tent. But to be honest, sharing a tent with anyone pretty much sucks, no matter how much you love him or her.

When you share a tent, there is never enough space to spread out your stuff. And tents are never made for the number of people they pretend to be; tent companies are notorious prevaricators on this subject. Pretty much the rule of thumb is - divide by half. And so a 4-man tent may hold 2 rather small people, but only if they are of the friendly and cooperative sort, and emit none of the normal bodily odors or noises.

At night, when sharing a tent, you are held prisoner to the rocking and rolling of another body that in a regular bed might not matter so much, but in a tent can be pretty darn annoying and interrupt your sleep. And if anybody has to get up at night to go to the bathroom (which happens pretty much any and every night - and let's hope you remembered a flashlight and can find your way back to the campsite in the dark), you may as well give up; zip-zip-zip goes the tent door, sounding surprisingly loud against the silence of the night. And once one of you is up, you're both up. Often for a while.

So about 15 years ago, I bought my own 2-man tent, and my camping experience was immediately much improved. And just a few years ago, I got a brand new 3-man tent - the Alps Mountaineering Zenith - with nothing but stargazer panels all around and overhead (there is a fly which you may put on top to make it waterproof when it rains, but I never use it unless I have to). So I sleep beneath the open sky, and I set my tent up as some sort of girly fort - with blankets, and my camera, and Vogue, and stuffed animals, and WHATEVER I WANT, hooray for me!

But I never, ever camp out alone. And my husband's tent is never further than 10 or 20 feet from mine. So we can chat back and forth, and we can even visit if we like. And we do. We usually set up a sort of common area between the tents, sometimes lining it with ground sheets so that we could even walk back and forth in our stocking feet. So that's the story of why we take two tents.

By the way, I highly recommend this approach to others. Marital happiness rests on a good balance of togetherness and independence. As Khalil Gibran said, "Let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you." (And I'll bet our buddy Khalil was also someone who would advocate for each partner having his or her own tent, all the better to let the winds of heaven dance.) I am a girl who enjoys having true love at her beck and call; but who also likes having her own tent!

The biggest news of the day was the pollen, which has been mind-numbing lately. I have lived in Pennsylvania all of my life. I have never lived anywhere else. And we get plenty of pollen every spring, but this spring, the pollen seems extra amazing. I don't know if it's because of the harsh winter we had that the trees are going crazy this spring, but whatever the reason, they are. The pine trees - and all the other kinds of trees that were there - were shedding serious amounts of the green stuff.

The pollen was totally obnoxious. It flew through the air in waves. It landed on the ground, where it lifted and flew into the air every time you stepped on it. It put pollen grit in our hair, on our gear, everywhere. I could blink my eyes and feel the grit in them. If you were allergic much (fortunately, years of allergy shots have managed to decrease my childhood tree pollen allergies), you would be seriously miserable; and this would be a good time to stay OUT of the woods!

There were plenty of mosquitoes and gnats to keep us company. The gnats are solar-powered, so you only see them in daytime, when temps are above 50 degrees F. The mosquitoes are even hardier, and are not restricted to daytime; and we had them with us even as the temps dropped to around 40 degrees F.

My husband found two tiny ticks on his pants - the bad kind, the deer ticks that can carry Lyme disease - but I pulled them off carefully and smashed them to death with a pair of rocks at the edge of the campsite. Lyme disease is a horrible thing, and you do not EVER want it. So please take reasonable precautions, if you live in tick country. Both my father and one of my sisters have had Lyme disease, and so we speak from experience.

My husband, knowing what an amphibian lover I am, told me about a huge vernal pool he had found nearby on his last visit, full of frog eggs, and he promised to take me there. So around the end of the afternoon, we went and checked it out. The vernal pool was drying up, alas, but there were huge, healthy newts to be found. And there were large, gelatinous clusters of eggs both in the water and along the edges. Frogs? Or newts?

"Shouldn't they be in the water?" my husband asked, pointing to the eggs just outside the pond's edges. "Should we put them back in . . . ? Like starfish?" And I shook my head no, but eventually, I relented, and I walked along the edges, lifting each gelatinous mass in my hand, gently lobbing it into the water. Would it help? Did it matter? Should I have let them be? Who knew? I washed my muddy hands along the water's edge.

And then we returned to our campsite as the temperatures began to drop. For you see, there had been a frost warning overnight for central Pennsylvania. This is why we put our potted plants in the garage before leaving the house. And indeed, while it was 48 degrees F when we got in our tents for the night, the overnight low temperature was around 28 degrees F - well below freezing!

Fortunately, we had the gear for it. And so we spent the evening adding on layers, until we were wearing most of what we had brought. We even got a glimpse of the tiny moon before settling into our tents and heading off into dreamland . . . my husband not far away, and me in my girly tent-fort, happy as a clam beneath my stargazer panels; a wild woman of these beautiful green woods, with a view of nothing but trees and sky.

The song to accompany this image is Buddy Guy, with Out in the Woods.

Check in tomorrow for the rest of the story!