camping

Eric Tars 2-16-2023
A cartoon illustration of a rowhome building with legs, representing rental enterprises. It has a hand attached from the side that grabs people. Other people are walking away with luggage in hand.

Maria Petrishina / iStock

IF MARY AND JOSEPH were living in Missouri today and had to make their own shelter after the innkeepers turned them away, Jesus would be greeted by police officers instead of shepherds. Why? In January, Missouri initiated a new statewide law criminalizing homelessness. The law (and similar laws in several states) is based on template legislation from the Cicero Institute, a right-wing group that peddles legal schemes that limit effective solutions and strip support from people who can’t afford a place to live. If Moses and his tribe were wandering in Tennessee, a law that went into effect in July — supported by Cicero — allows for felony charges for pitching a tent on state-owned property.

Across the country, politicians are passing laws that penalize our neighbors who can’t afford a place to live and who must sleep, shelter, and conduct other life-sustaining activities in public. We have seen the results of those laws at the local level when city councils come up with ineffective — and plain bad  — ideas to deal with homelessness. Now there is a well-funded, coordinated push to raise those bad ideas to the state level.

NOTHING MAKES SENSE in the desert. Rocks that should be rock-colored sprout purple and pink under an impossibly blue sky. Barren cacti produce new blossoms. A wintry shade blisters in the sun. Canyon stone, having survived a billion years of harsh wind and water, crumbles in a human hand.

In a time when technology increasingly serves to nullify our bodies, the desert’s physicality obliterates the mind.

I’ve come to the Grand Canyon to remember that I still have a body, pitching camp in one of the last places on Earth where wireless data won’t reach. Simone Weil writes that prayer is an act of paying attention, and in the absence of overactive phone-brain, I’ll be sleeping outside for a week, listening to rivers and silence, kayaking along canyons, hiking through severe elevation, relying on basic survival instincts.

Katherine Roberts 11-04-2015

Image via  / Shutterstock.com

In church last spring, our children learned the song, “Jesu, Jesu Fill Us with Your Love.” It includes the line, “neighbors are nearby and far away,” which gave our five-year-old son pause.

“Are neighbors far away?” he asked at breakfast recently.

“No,” I said.

“They’re nearby.”

Ed Spivey Jr. 9-24-2015
Anastasia Golubovich / Shutterstock

Anastasia Golubovich / Shutterstock

AS THE STIFLING heat of summer recedes and the winter months approach, I look forward to the promise of snowy walks, steaming hot cocoa, and the sounds of sleigh bells jingling down our street. (Actually, it’s probably a garbage truck spilling bottles out the back, so never mind.) I love winter, because only in winter can I do my favorite thing: not go camping.

Yes, I know, lots of people camp in the winter. Some of my office colleagues are never happier than when their breath crystallizes in front of them as they hike through a wilderness in February, the frozen ground crunching beneath their feet. Me, I prefer the Great Indoors, thick terry-cloth robes, and the crunching of small Lego pieces beneath my slippers, a reminder that little girls should pick up their toys when they’re done. Winter hiking is what I do between the kitchen and the living room, and then back again because I forgot something.

To me, winter is nature’s way of telling us “mmphremshth,” which I can’t hear clearly, because I’m indoors and the windows are closed. But I think it’s telling us to stay inside.

I’m not opposed to camping—I camped twice last summer—but I also don’t hesitate to call it what it is: an exhausting exercise in 18th-century drudgery, but without the helpful oxen. Camping in a tent, with a family, is an unending process of menial labor that begins with deciding what to pack for the trip: everything except the couch. And then consists of an unalterable pattern which, in its entirety, is as follows:

• Pack the car completely full, blocking most windows and floor space. Put bikes on back of car.

• Remove bikes to get something inside back of car. Put bikes on back of car again.

Christian Piatt 6-26-2012
Wild Goose 2011, via Christian Piatt

Wild Goose 2011, via Christian Piatt

How do you know when someone has a Prius?

Don’t worry; they’ll tell you.

We got a Prius about four years ago, and immediately we bought into the hype about milking every gallon of gas for another tenth of a mile. We read the hyper-miler blogs about how to employ the gas and brake pedals most efficiently. We competed against each other for the best MPG. It was nerdy but fun, and we felt like we were doing something at least a little bit socially redeeming.

I haven’t seen the research, but I’m convinced that a significant chunk of the Prius’ reputation as a gas miser stems from the way its users are trained to drive it.