Joshua Tree: Francis Goes Camping

Funny thing, memory - I was so caught up in writing last week's post that I didn't realize I had something else to write about, until I was halfway through my post. I finished the goth one, and promised myself that I'd talk about the other idea, my recent trip to Joshua Tree, this week. So here we are:

My spot, with my car parked conveniently nearby

This trip has been a long time coming. A friend of mine organizes it every year, and he's been inviting me every year, but I've always had conflicts - usually I'm out of town for work, or there's just something else going on that I can't miss, or something like that.

And, to be honest, I'm not really a camping person. Which isn't to say that it didn't appeal - it was different, and a little scary (because I'm not a camping person), and I actually thought that it sounded like a neat idea. But I never managed to have time to go.

This year was different, for the reasons I've been enumerating on this blog since last December. Not being employed by my old company meant I didn't have any events to go to, and so no conflicts. But more importantly, I thought it would be good to make time for it. So when the invitation came, sometime in July or August, I accepted and promptly started to panic about the preparations.

As I say, not really a camping person. The last time I slept in a tent was probably when I was in high school if not middle school. Or to put it another way, I hadn't gone camping since the Twentieth Century. This was the result of a highly successful campaign of terrorizing my parents whenever they took me camping as a child - I'd start with getting carsick on the interminable drives to Yosemite or wherever we'd go, and then bitch about the bugs or food or toilets or lack of TV or whatever until it was time to go home, at which point I'd get carsick again (just to underline how ill-suited I was to this whole business).

So what changed between then and now?

Part of it is that I've come to appreciate a bunch of the outdoorsy stuff my parents were into back then (my dad especially, as he used to go climbing all the time). And I think the reason for that is that I moved to Britain, where people go camping, but I never really came to appreciate the wild outdoors like we have here.

The dreaded cholla cactus, which I just wanted to touch. Would have been a terrible idea.

The first inkling that camping might be a thing people did for fun, without being dragged by their parents, came all the way back in 2002 or 2003, when a friend said he was spending the weekend camping with his girlfriend (now wife). At the same time I was reading Paul Theroux's and Bill Bryson's books, which all featured some amount of camping, or talk thereof. For some reason it sounded a little more appealing, but space and cost remained limiting factors, and so I didn't try to do it.

Of course, this camping gear of my dad's came in handy for my own trip. I've always known we had outdoor gear in the garage, because it was the crap I had to move out of the way to get to our skis or to my boxes of comics that live down there. But once I'd signed up to actually go camping myself, I had to do an inventory, and realized that I was actually fairly well-equipped.

We had a tent, which I think I vaguely remember having slept in. I didn't bring it this time, because it was huge, ostensibly for five people, and consisted of a rolled-up bag containing the tent and a box of stakes, poles and other stuff to make the damn thing stand up. I ended up borrowing a smaller tent from my boss.

There was also a sleeping bag, which I definitely remember from my childhood, and a pair of air mattresses that are probably more recent. I also found a number of odds and ends, like lanterns and camp chairs and so forth, which proved useful. All I ended up buying was a headlamp and some other bits and bobs, mainly for food preservation. In that final week before leaving I must have spent about $200 on food, beer and last-minute equipment. Bill Bryson's Walk in the Woods, where he camps along the Appalachian Trail, and is left quietly aghast at the cost and complexity of camping gear, loomed large in my memory during these trips to REI.

In any case, it turned out well. I think I was amply well-provisioned for shelter, and food (there was some stuff provided, which also helped). I was also in good company, and able to go off and do my own thing whenever my introvert tendencies came up.

I managed a few hikes and scenic drives, and some night-time bouldering, aided by my trusty headlamp and some Costco-brand bourbon that was surprisingly good. And I got the immense pleasure of a few road trips, allowing me to draw down my large backlog of podcasts as I crossed pretty much half of California to get there and back. One of these was the Amateur Traveler, in an episode where he talked to a former Joshua Tree National Park ranger, published fortuitously the week before I left.

An actual Joshua Tree

As far as what there is to see, well, loads of open space, for one thing. I didn't venture on any of the longer hikes, because I didn't fancy walking in that much sunlight for so long and because with cell reception nonexistent in the park, I thought it best to be near well-trafficked areas in case something happened. But there were still some impressive spots to walk around in, or drive through, and mainly I found myself marveling at it all as I drove or hiked from one spot to another.

And of course, there was also the night sky to admire. It's easy to forget, with all our light pollution, just how spectacular the night sky can get. At our house in the country in Italy, we used to get better skies at night during the summer, but development in our area has washed out a lot of it. Not here in Joshua Tree, though: I think this was the first time I properly saw the Milky Way in ages.

Every night, whenever I'd be trudging to the bathroom from the communal fire pit or from my tent, I'd take a moment to switch off my headlamp and look up, drinking it all in. And the final night we got a thunderstorm, luckily quite far off, but still spectacular, especially when seen from up on top of an escarpment of rock.

Not my tent

It was fairly nice to get back to civilization, especially because I broke that trip up with a stop at my mom's house in Orange County, where I took advantage of the shower and comfy guest bed to rest up for a night before driving home. But I found myself sad to be leaving Southern California for the second time this year, and absurdly proud of myself for having managed camping for three nights without my dad to do everything for me.

I'm even considering doing it again! Not just in Joshua Tree, but perhaps in other parts of California, preferably with more trees and more access to shower facilities (although I'm aware that campsites with more water also have more mosquitoes and bears, so I'm thinking this one through). And with the idea of doing it again comes the idea of getting better gear - more comfortable sleeping pads, for one thing, cooking gear, and so on.

It might be a pipe dream, or not, but at the very least it feels nice to have done something completely out of my comfort zone. And having seen how the rubber hits the road, it's no longer inconceivable that I should do it again.