Tuesday, August 23, 2016

We were glampers, ahead of our time

Aug. 14, 2016
LAS CRUCES – I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but I realize now that my parents were ahead-of-their-time glampers.
I’ve never been shy about sharing my aversion to camping. Though I was a pretty cheerful child otherwise, I grumbled from earliest memory through late adolescence about having to go camping with the family nearly every weekend that weather permitted (and many with weather that would have driven any sane soul to sturdier shelter). I was sadly outnumbered and outvoted in my family of five, or six, if you counted our Brittany spaniel, who loved camping as much as my parents and brother and sister.
It could have been a lot worse.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight and research for today’s glamping feature, I realize that my relatives, especially mom, tried their best to glamp, adding glamorous touches to wilderness life and camping experiences, long before it was a “thing.”
Mom had the breeding for it. Her dad was a retired physician who seemed happiest at the stern of a canoe or the end of a fly-fishing rod. Grandma, on the other hand, was a sophisticated urbanite who never let her subscription to VOGUE lapse.
They were a devoted couple who loved each other deeply. When Grandpa decided to retire early and, with his physician brother, create a rustic resort with log cabins in northern Michigan, Grandma reluctantly agreed. But she and Grandpa lived in what was more a lodge of the manor than a cabin, with a deep-carpeted great room big enough for Mom’s baby grand piano and cabinets for Grandma’s good crystal, china and silver, easily accessible for dinner parties and everyday use.
Dad and Mom started with a tent on state park campgrounds, but quickly began to add creature comforts. My aircraft engineer father managed to rig up barrels with fresh water for drinking and showers. Later, when they acquired 15 acres of their own prime campgrounds on the middle branch of Michigan’s Pere Marquette River, he constructed a pump, a water system and eventually an electric generator. There were always apologies from Dad about disturbing the peace of nature, when he fired up that generator, but we all appreciated electricity and hot water.
“Doris, you’re taking the whole house with us,” Dad would complain on camping weekends, as Mom rushed back for just one more down pillow, or few pretty dishes and a vase for wildflowers, to stash in  the back of the station wagon.
They acquired a little trailer and later, a large mobile home with three bedrooms and (hooray!) indoor bathroom facilities. My mom, who was an art and American history teacher, chose an Early American theme for the décor, with warm earth tones, samplers and interesting artifacts. Though she was normally very casual about housekeeping, she was adamant about keeping everything neat and in its place in her wilderness abode, which eventually became much nicer than our city home.
By that time, I was away at college, so I missed most of the glamping-before-its-time phase of our family wilderness adventures.
But when I think of what I loved most about our family time in the great outdoors, my memory is unclouded by nostalgia.
Those long walks in the pine and birch forest, those kayak voyages and and floats in an icy river were all made more wonderful by a nearby hot bath or shower afterwards.
A breakfast of just-caught rainbow trout was okay, cooked in a cast-iron flying pan over a campfire in a muddy campground. It was downright delicious served in at an Ethan Allen dining table in Mom’s pretty kitchen with modern appliances and artfully arranged Early American accoutrements.  

S. Derrickson Moore may be reached at 575-541-5450, dmoore@lcsun-news.com or @derricksonmoore on Twitter.

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