Quasi-Annual Women's Campout

Last week, we had our 10^th anniversary quasi-annual Women’s Campout. Only three of us were able to make it this year (there have been as many as 8 or 9), but we had a fabulous time. Over the past ten years, we’ve camped in Yankton, Ponca, NE, and at a cabin high up in the Black Hills. There’s nothing quite like a passel of midlife women out playing with fire & communing with nature.

I packed the essentials: tent, sleeping bag, pillows, floaties, SPF 7000 sunscreen, coffee, wine, chocolate, Kindle, cell phone, chargers, Advil and bug spray. We were roughing it a bit less than usual this year, with the addition of our friend’s camper. Laugh all you want about cushy camping, but keep this in mind: a clean, handy, middle-of-the-night bathroom.

Day 1 - We made camp:  camper (yes, we had a welcome mat, awning and flamingo lights), two tents, and a screen house dining room. We arranged & rearranged the furniture (picnic tables, folding loungers, bag chairs, clothesline, end tables, cooking table) till we had everything just so. Our camp neighbor wandered over to chat, as he would several times more over the next three days – “Do you want this leftover ice?” “Is that cowboy coffee you’re making?” “I sure enjoyed that singing last night.” I think he was trying to figure out why three women were camping alone; each visit, he’d eyeball our camp, as if looking for tell-tale man signs...

Then (Future Funny Story #1), we sat down for a rest and realized we’d locked the camper keys inside the camper. We’d been celebrating our completed compound with a bottle of wine, so we spent a few moments laughing hysterically before we called a locksmith. While we were waiting, I remembered a bazillion old keys I’d been collecting (for the mobile I WILL make someday when I learn to weld) in my van, Mini Pearl. I grabbed the keys, tried every one, and lo & behold, an old pickup topper key opened the camper! We called the locksmith back, piled into Mini, and took off for a look at the dam.

The Army Corps of Engineers has been releasing record amounts of water along the dam system on the Missouri River, supposedly to minimize flooding caused by two unusually wet springs and Montana snow melt. I’m not sure how well the plan is working, though, as many homes, farms, businesses, a power plant or two, and some entire towns are surrounded by, in, or under water. King Water seems dead-set on taking back the Missouri River Basin.

After staring in awe at the river whitecaps and dam waterfalls, and getting soaked to the skin by the spray, we headed back to camp…just as the rain started. We played Boggle under the awning, and then in the camper, till bedtime. (Note: You’ll notice midlife women scanning the sky for the first hint of darkness, when it’s perfectly okay to go straight to bed. They will sometimes go to bed before dark, too, but only if no one else will find out.)

I hustled to my tent in the rain (coming down at a fair clip by then), where I’d already stowed my gear. As I crawled inside (FFS #2), the entire tent buckled & collapsed, sandwiching me inside. It was quite dark by then, so I groped around for my stuff and made a dash for the camper, where I slept comfortably on a bench bunk only millimeters wider than my child-birthin’, midlife-spreadin’ hips.

Day 2 – We made our morning fire and had camp-stove coffee in our jammies…for a very long time. Eventually, we made our way to the beach. The water was too rough and full of upriver tree shrapnel to swim, so we sunbathed until my lobster-pink skin was sufficiently dotted with new freckles and just short of blistering.

In the afternoon, four friends joined us at camp. We all went over to look at the dam, then one friend went birding whilst the rest of us prepared a campout BBQ. For dessert, we made s’mores (one friend made gourmet s’mores – s’mourmets, if you will – with giant marshmallows, Nutella, and Ghirardelli chocolate). After dinner, we had a campfire hootenanny complete with 3 guitars, a tambourine, and a choir of women's voices, that continued well past dark. We had a grand time, our company headed back to town, my friend with the Amazon height and long arms fixed my tent, and we hit the hay.

Day 3 – Leisurely coffee in our jammies, then we packed up and broke camp in stages punctuated by more coffee & lounge chair reading. By early afternoon, we were headed back to civilization.

I spent most of this week thoroughly exhausted. I’m now on the hunt for a teardrop camper or a pop-up motorcycle camper that I could pull with Ray’s VW bug and keep stocked for camping. Because it’s not the camping that’s hard – it’s the three days of packing and three days of unpacking, laundry & recovery that’ll do you in.

Men-No-Pause

When four menopausal women go camping in a remote, rustic cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota, certain fundamental precepts of polite society are bound to be trampled. There’s just no way around it.

Too many cooks spoil the broth. This no longer applies when four women, all used to complete control of the kitchen, come together. However cramped the quarters, all four women will attempt to occupy even the tiniest kitchen space simultaneously. There is an occasional brandishing of knives and other sharp instruments one must watch out for. Collisions are inevitable and are best turned into impromptu dances.

Always keep the comfort of others in mind. Poo, I say. A woman plagued by daily hot flashes and/or night sweats will open windows, leave doors ajar (ignoring the threat of renegade bats or coyotes), crowd in front of an open refrigerator, stick her feet in a nearby stream or (if no stream is available) cold toilet water, hog fans, throw blankets across the room or steal them from compadres, or strip down to indecency with total disregard for anyone else, as her haywire internal thermostat demands.

Be patient, compassionate, considerate. This sounds great in theory, but when HELL hits (hormone-enhanced lethargy or lunacy), manners go bye-bye. Expect a woman under this hellish influence to rant one minute and weep the next, drone on with a litany of complaints, eat something high-fat and salty, then fall into a deep, stuporous nap. Wake and repeat. Wake and repeat.

Be mindful of proper modesty and decorum. Nope, won’t happen. In fact, menopausal women will sometimes test the effectiveness of kegels and the weakness of bladders by intentionally making each other laugh until semi-hysterical, with seemingly innocuous pantomimes in their underwear and/or incredibly lame puns. NM’s (non-menopausers) would not understand what’s so funny. This raucous and often baseless laughter can be counted as one’s daily aerobic exercise.

Leave the driver alone. Impossible. The laws of physics suggest that four women in an enclosed moving space will each attempt to direct the timing and direction of movement until navigational volume reaches the limits of human comfort, when the four must stop in Rochford and split a beer. Drive and repeat. Drive and repeat.

All life in balance. This is the prime directive in menopausal camping and, in spite of HELL, is eventually observed. The lunacy and lethargy are counterbalanced by blissful moments of solitary reflection, peaceful conversational examination of spiritual ideals, generous sharing of relationship and/or parenting observations, quiet perusing of self-help books or trashy novels, collective identification of native flora & fauna, and an open expression of gratitude for one another’s continuing friendship & company.