All things are possible when you’re camping and use a Dutch oven, from green chile stew to cornbread and cake. PHOTO BY GINGER TRAVIS
Ginger Travis
Camping is great, fun, healthy, cheap. There’s nothing like living outside. Whether you pitch a tent on your deck or drive a camper van across the country or rent a yurt or load up a canoe and paddle into the wilderness, camping is a wonderful and relatively safe escape from boring pandemic life. And with the third summer of COVID coming up, a safe escape is exactly what we need.
Here are a few thoughts on camping in 2022 gleaned from my experience over the past two years.
First, demand is extremely high for campsites at many state and national parks. North Carolina saw visitation at its parks go up 15 percent last year, setting a new record. Eight NC parks had one million or more visitors. Many of those visitors were campers.
I suggest you plan right now. Book campsites right now, and cancel later (for a very small fee) if your plans change. We don’t always have to have 100 percent certainty about future plans. We just need to act now in order to have an opportunity later. At NC parks you must have reservations, a COVID precaution that has eliminated walk-up site selection.
If state or national parks don’t work out, we might consider national forests or—out West—BLM (Bureau of Land Management) lands. There’s less camping pressure on those lands, with good reason: often, no running water; sometimes nothing at all except permission for use. Yet national forests in particular often offer campers more space, privacy and shade. Internet research is helpful for finding a nearby BLM or national forest camping spot when the popular parks are fully booked, in Utah, for example.
Second, If you need to inject new fun in your camping because you’re tired of going to the same old places near home, try learning a new outdoor skill. For me, it was baking on a campfire. I started with cornbread in a cast iron skillet placed down on the coals and topped with an old tin cake pan filled with more coals. It worked.
Last summer I progressed to helping an 11-year-old boy bake a birthday cake in a cast iron Dutch oven. It worked! Again. So fun.
What are other new things that might have appeal? Hammock camping? Map and compass navigation? Learning the constellations? Packing a kayak for a weekend on an island? Fire making with just a ferro rod striker on steel? Putting together a very light first aid kit to go on all day hikes? Learning wilderness first aid? There are so many possibilities for enriching our camping experiences.
Three: Introduce a kid to camping. Make it fun and not overly strenuous so that the boy or girl loves it. We have a great-nephew who started with us three summers ago and will be back this year for his fourth tent-camping trip. He’ll be 12 this year and is growing up before our eyes—a suburban boy who first met nature outside his tent and just loved it. The happiness of a young kid learning to make a campfire or decorating his/her own hiking stick or making discoveries (“This tent has pockets!!!”) is priceless.
Final practical matters. COVID is still out there. It’s easy to avoid close contact with others outside. But old-fashioned small, cramped, poorly ventilated wash houses filled with unmasked folks are places we try to avoid in campgrounds. We try to shower at times when no one else does. And we wear a mask inside except when showering.
Also it’s important to keep a clean camp to avoid problems with animals. Bears are expanding their range across North Carolina. We now ask a park employee if bears are present in that particular campground. (Yes, last time we were at Hanging Rock State Park.) Whether the answer is yes or no, we’ve learned over the years to always behave as if we’re in bear country: all food, cosmetics, gum, drinks, and cooking gear go back in the car after use. Nothing is ever left out on picnic tables when we leave the campsite and nothing with odors goes in the tent. (Obviously, backpacking and canoeing require other ways to secure food.)
Raccoons are also a problem in many camping areas. I’ve been raided in the Everglades and in the north Georgia mountains. Live and learn.
To motivate myself to pack up and go camping, I try to remember what the remarkable adventurer Audrey Sutherland used to say, “Go simple. Go solo. Go now.” And if I can just manage one out of three, that’s okay. I’m going. Hope you are, too.