The Joys and Terrors of Camping

I love camping. I love living in a tent, being surrounded by trees and wild critters. I love the quiet abandonment of a provincial park during the work week. Lounging with my dog, reading books, going on hikes, incinerating my food over an open fire and watching a sky full of stars is my idea of an amazing time.

I also struggle with camping because I am scared of the dark. Well, not of the dark, exactly, but of all the things my imagination thinks are in the dark. Fireflies scare the crap out of me since I realized they were malevolent sprites with razor sharp teeth coming to steal unsuspecting campers away to the underworld. I imagine that the loon song I hear comes from zombie loons with glowing red eyes trying to lure things down to the lake to be torn apart in a zombie loon feeding frenzy. I can almost discern dark leering shapes outside the dim ring of my campfire. Sometimes I see things moving amongst the trees and fear they may turn a blank white face my way. When I am in my tent awaiting merciful sleep I hear footfalls go through my campsite. Sometimes the dog hears them too, sometimes she doesn't.

Normally Tofu and I camp alone. The last few times my friend, W., has joined me and he is amused by my camping fears, yet he is smart enough not to prank me. Despite being scared of things in the dark, I actually like the dark and do not use a flashlight to walk around at night. Although W. jokes about tying Blair Witch style dolls in the trees and tells me about dreams where dark evil shapes with glowing eyes are surrounding the tent, he knows I would be ridiculously easy to terrify and he resists the temptation thereby demonstrating remarkable good sense. "Are you kidding? If I scared you, you'd kill me and then you'd drop dead from fear." I believe his to be a true assessment of what would happen. The result would be an unintentional murder suicide and the poor dog would be left on her own.