My Tent Overfloweth
Selfie at Shenandoah,
As I write these words, I am sitting tucked up tight in my brand-new Coleman tent in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia while rain pours down from above.
It is the coziest, craziest feeling.
Nothing more than a few thin layers of nylon separate me from the rain and wind outside, and yet I feel so protected and safe. (Good thing this tent is waterproof!) I’ve made myself a little nest in here: a blanket laid out on the floor, a yoga mat layered under my sleeping bag and pillow, a mini camping lantern to light me up, random personal effects scattered around. Honestly, it feels like a little house.
Cozy AF*. *Abra Forman
I LOVE CAMPING!!!!!
Even though there are hundreds of people within less than a mile of me, all I can hear is the wind. I could be alone in the middle of nowhere. Everyone else has retired into their tents/campers/cars/whatever for the night. Maybe if it wasn’t raining I’d be hearing people murmuring around their campfires, but it’s almost quiet hours anyway (10pm-6am).
This park is incredible, and the campground is an actual dream.
You know how I said yesterday I didn’t know if I would love or hate camping out alone? Well, I know now.
___________________________
Time warp to: 24 hours after the above was written. I’m now in the opposite of a tent in Shenandoah, Virginia, i.e., a hotel room in Asheville, North Carolina.
I want to start at the beginning of my trip, but already yesterday seems like it was a week ago. In the two days I’ve been on the road, I’ve already seen and done so many new things that the first few mundane hours are being crowded out of my memory.
In the grand tradition of Abra’s road trips, it started off with an endless, rainy drive that exceeded its expected travel time by several hours. Getting out from around Manhattan is always a nightmare, and yesterday was no exception. I ran into traffic all the way down, especially in Maryland around Baltimore. I HATE CITIES! And the rain made me super anxious that the weather in Shenandoah would be shitty when I arrived, making setting up the tent difficult and unpleasant.
The 7-hour drive (which I had thought was 6) ended up taking 8. I only made two brief stops, but Waze performed that magical feat by which it turns a ten-minute fueling stop into a 35-minute lag on my arrival time, presumably by twisting the fabric of space-time itself.
But by the time I reached Virginia and started approaching the park, the weather had cleared up completely. Skies were blue with fluffy white clouds. And the scenery was becoming beautiful too: rolling green landscapes, farms and fields, hills and mountains in the distance. I got really excited as I approached the famous Skyline drive, which runs down the center of Shenandoah National Park (hereafter to be referred to as SNP) along the very spine of the Appalachian mountain range.
At the park entrance, I proudly used my America the Beautiful pass for the very first time. It was my Nana’s last Hanukkah gift to me: an annual pass granting admission to all of the country’s national parks. I’m intending to get a lot of use out of it on this trip. Yesterday it saved me $30! And I felt pretty cool whipping it out.
I began the Skyline Drive. It’s very winding and very narrow, with a speed limit of only 35 mph max, so it’s slow going, but honestly it’s hard to even hit that outer limit when you’re staring out the window at the scenery, your jaw dropped. It’s aptly named: it literally feels like you are driving into the sky. It was so ridiculously stunning. I pulled over at the first overlook to get out and marvel in amazed silence.
Just... wow.
.....
It was UNBELIEVABLE! Just green mountains and hills for miles, views on views on views, valleys and peaks fading off into the distance. I took some pictures, knowing that they would barely do it justice. It almost felt pointless. I kept bumping into another fellow at overlooks as I drove up, and I noticed that he never had a phone or a camera out. He’d just stand and look, with his own eyes. This is a skill I have not yet mastered.
It was just sooooo beautiful. Yeah, I know I'm overwhelming you with the poignancy of my literary skill right now. Try to keep it together.
I kept pulling over each time I saw an overlook, but after the first three or four I had to stop if I was ever going to reach the campsite before dark. And there were A LOT of overlooks. It hurt every time I drove past one. I mean, I don’t understand why everyone isn’t out there right now looking at it!
AND I SAW A BEAR!!!!!!!
I had wondered before I came if I would see one this summer. AND I SAW ONE LITERALLY MY VERY FIRST DAY.
It happened like this. I was driving behind a truck, not far from the campground, when I noticed it slowing down at a certain point in the road. When I got to that point a few seconds later, I saw what that driver had seen: two does, browsing on the roadside, without a care in the world. I squealed, of course; it was my first wildlife sighting of the trip. The truck moved on and I followed, and maybe 200 yards later it slowed down again before moving forward. Obediently I slowed down in the same spot AND SAW A BLACK BEAR CUB JUST HANGING OUT EATING FOLIAGE on the rocks beside the road. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I screamed and stopped to take pictures and videos (from the car). The bear did not notice my presence, couldn’t care less. BUT I SAW A BEAR!!!!
BEAR!!! Bear bear bear bear bear!!
What were the chances?! Turns out the chances of seeing deer were very high. A few of them were wandering blithely around the campsite, eating grass here and there, totally uninterested and unsuspicious of anyone creeping in close to get a picture. Which I did, obviously.
Just a couple of deer.
BUT what were the chances of seeing deer AND THEN A BEAR within 200 yards, literally on the side of the road, when there are hundreds of acres of woods for them to explore?!?!
Probably still pretty high. This is bear country. But stop trying to burst my bubble.
Eventually I reached the Big Meadows campground, one of the park’s five, I believe, where I’d reserved a campsite a week earlier. The National Parks system, by the way, is incredible, right down to its websites. For every single campsite in its system - EVERY. SINGLE. CAMPSITE. We are talking hundreds of campgrounds and thousands upon thousands of individual campsites. For EVERY single campsite available to reserve online - each one not more than a little patch of grass - there is a detailed listing with information about generator hookups, location, driveway length, even if there’s shade or not, and a bunch of other things too. SO MUCH INFORMATION. And usually there’s a picture as well. It’s BEYOND thorough!
Example on the Recreation.gov website.
The way it works is, each campground has a number of loops which are lettered, and along each loop are marked campsites of different types. Most of the ones at Big Meadows were standard nonelectric sites with a driveway, a picnic table, a firepit, and some grass for your tents. There’s also tent only, which can’t accommodate bigger vehicles like RVs or trailers, and walk-to, which just means you park in a lot and walk a few yards to your site rather than parking right next to it.
Since I didn’t know squat about squat, I chose a tent-only site that looked good to me, hoping I wasn’t missing out on some crucial camper’s wisdom regarding the best campsites. I knew only that I had everything to learn, but I relied on some common sense knowledge, like shade is good and don’t go too far from the bathrooms.
I loved everything about the campground from the second I arrived. I registered at the front desk with a friendly and helpful ranger who gave me a map with my site highlighted, reminded me about the importance of securing all food and scented items in a bear-proof container (this was strongly emphasized everywhere you went in the campground), and left me more infatuated than ever with the National Parks system. I drove slowly around the A loop, eagerly surveying other campsites, until I found my little piece of paradise.
Campsite A77 - all mine!
That sneaky smile, the one I sometimes suddenly realize is cracking my face in half, was out and about. I was SO HAPPY as I coasted into my campsite. It was just so perfect. The whole thing was perfect. I had a little patch of grass, I had a picnic table. It was so basic and so whole. It was everything I needed while being so minimal. I LOVED IT! Around me, other campers were calmly cooking on their fires, or drinking beer, or playing with their kids.
Compared to everyone else, my site, with just one little tent, was a little sad-looking. Most of the other campers had set up an entire little world in their campsites: they’d erected tents around their picnic tables, stretched tarps for shade over their sites, put up hammocks, and settled in. As I looked around I was overcome with bliss, joy for every family who came together to have this awesome experience in nature, excitement for the kids who had no idea how freaking lucky they were, respect for the campers who knew what they were doing, had brought all the right gear. And a little bit of sadness that I was alone.
Somehow this never bothered me before, but while camping it was different. Not because I wanted help with anything, or because I was scared; I didn’t and wasn’t. But just because it would have been nice to have someone to talk to. Camping is kind of communal; you don’t sit around a campfire by yourself. I didn’t build a fire, of course, because I hadn’t brought any food but also because I wouldn’t have had anyone to sit around it with.
Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, I had arrived at my campsite, I was bursting with pure happiness. Again, I wondered why everyone doesn’t do this all the time. They should! All families should do this! What wonderful experiences for kids to have!
While my family never went camping in the traditional sense (my mother would never step foot in a tent), we actually did have our own special camping experiences when my sister and I were growing up. Our grandparents owned a pretty nice camper which was located permanently at a campground upstate. In the summers, they went up on weekends to enjoy the country, and every year our family would go up once or twice with them.
The trailer was essentially a very small apartment: it had a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and living room with a pull-out sofa, as well as a porch. It was on a small lot surrounded by woods, and my papa would string pretty lights through the trees every summer and hang a hammock, which Rebecca and I would always race to as soon as we got out of the car. I have vivid memories of sitting around the campfire at night, roasting marshmallows, covered in bug spray and still being eaten alive. Inside the trailer, we’d play cards and watch Beaches on the tiny TV/VCR. (Why Beaches? Don't ask.) I still remember the musty smell of the trailer, barking my shins on the pull-out sofa on the way back from the bathroom in the dark as I tried to navigate through a room packed with people, furniture and things, the crunch of our tires as we pulled into the gravel lot.
I’m really grateful we got to have that experience. I want my kids to have it too, only less cushy.
No one really knows where my penchant for nature, hiking and camping came from, but clearly I wasn’t the first Forman to feel a pull towards the wild (albeit in a comfortable trailer in the wild). I am, as far as I know, the only person in my family - on either side - who gets excited about sleeping in a tent.
And excited I was! I began setting up my tent soon after I arrived. I had practiced at home, so it went up quickly. I shoved the stakes in with my hands, arranged the rain fly, and spread out my sleeping bag inside. My tent! My little castle!
Castle Forman.
Then I went to have a poke around. I was curious about the other campers. Obviously, nearly everyone had come much more prepared than me; I hadn’t even brought a tablecloth. Others had brought cookware and dishes, wash basins, all kinds of useful things. It was amazing how creatively they had each used their spaces and various camping equipment to create little homes.
And the campground itself was lovely. It was set right in the woods, but the open grounds were kept neatly mowed and maintained. The bathrooms were fine, and stocked with toilet paper and soap. There was also a laundry facility and showers, which honestly didn’t look that bad, and a few other buildings. The atmosphere was super chilled. It was quiet, harmonious, even with kids running around. It just had good vibes, man.
But one thing it did not have was cell service. After wandering around checking for bars, I started asking staff members if there were pay phones or any other phones I could use. I wanted to call my parents and reassure them that I had arrived. (Turns out they weren’t even worried.) There was no phone on the premises, apparently, but, one helpful lady told me, there was one single spot where you could get service: the Amphitheater, a little programming space in the woods. She directed me to it with another map, and sure enough, as soon as I got there my phone weirdly lit up with connectivity. I dutifully made my calls, and then headed back to my tent.
There was only one thing about my experience that made me feel a little idiotic: I didn’t know how to tie guy lines. My rain fly came with them, but I’d just left them dangling. Yet I couldn’t help noticing as I walked around that EVERYONE else’s tents and shelters were pinned down firmly with strings, and as storms were forecast for the evening, I decided I should probably use mine too. But when I got back and started fussing with them, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn’t figure out the little plastic tab thing on the string was supposed to interact with the stake.
I felt too embarrassed to ask anyone for help, and without the help of the internet, I couldn’t look up how to do it. So I just half-assed it by kind of wrapping the line around the stake and tying it in a few knots. I knew it was definitely wrong.
It wasn’t a big deal. But later, when the tent was being pounded by rain and wind, I started getting pretty worried about how securely it was attached to the ground.
By the time I finished with that, it was getting dark. I sat alone at my picnic table and had a nourishing meal of cheese and crackers as the smells of cooked meats wafted past from a hundred campfires. Then I put all the food away in my car and got into my tent, not a moment too soon, for the second I finished zipping, rain started falling.
Now you can refer back to the beginning of this post, which I wrote last night in the tent as rain fell above me. It was actually magical.
Of course, at that moment I didn’t know exactly how the night would turn out, since I hadn’t actually gone to sleep yet. I have a little more information now.
Eventually, when the rain stopped, I strapped on my headlamp and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth for bed, then cozied up into my sleeping bag. But . . . I couldn’t really get comfortable. The ground was okay, but the sleeping bag’s zipper kept getting in my way, no matter how I turned. And the pillowcase felt damp even though I knew it wasn’t. I read on my Kindle for about an hour, and then tried to go to sleep. But it didn’t work.
I was afraid the tent was going to collapse on me. Every time I started drifting off, a massive gust of wind would start building and then blowing and I would get nervous all over again. I couldn’t imagine how the tent could withstand that much pressure. And I hadn’t hammered in the stakes because I didn’t have a hammer, so they weren’t secured that well. (I made a mental note to buy a rubber mallet for this purpose.) Once or twice, the poles actually buckled and the side of the tent swooped down on me, only to immediately pop back up again. And while realistically I knew the tent could not fly away with me and all of my crap inside it, enough of my brain was distracted enough by the possibility of collapse to keep me from sleeping.
Also, the blanket and yoga mat weren’t a sufficient layer between me and the ground. I hadn’t bought a proper, thick sleeping pad for camping. Instead I had brought along a very, very old, very, very worn-out yoga mat. So this was my second equipment failure. I made a note to buy a real sleeping pad.
And there was some annoying light coming into the tent. I assumed it was from another campsite, and I felt annoyed about it, until I got up around 1 am to pee and realized it was actually the moon. My bad.
At that time, I also checked the stakes and guy lines. They were all firmly planted and holding. This was reassuring. And when I got back inside, I chucked the stupid extra-firm pillow I had brought and rolled up my fleece instead.
Finally, sleep!
Waking up to the sun shining through the walls of my tent was sweet. I could only hear birds for a while, until the kids and families started stirring. It was a peaceful beginning to the day.
Good morning, world.
Getting ready to leave took a long time. Breaking down the tent was much more annoying than putting it up, because everything was wet. I laid out the rain fly to dry, wiped off the stakes and poles, and tried to clean the smears of mud off of the bottom of my tent, but it didn’t work that well. This made me resolve to get something to act as a footprint for the tent, a layer of plastic between the tent bottom and the ground. The footprint was something else I had decided not to buy. Put it on the list. If I had had one, my tent would have stayed clean.
So all in all, I had been surprisingly prepared. I’d known there would be things I would need, things I had no idea how to anticipate needing. Now I know, and I have a shopping list, so I’ll hit Target before my next camping night.
Camping is amazing. Camping in a National Park is even more amazing than that. I’m so excited for all the campgrounds to come, for all the different kinds of places I’ll experience. I know they won’t all be as awesome as SNP, but I’m certainly grateful my first foray into solo camping was a positive one.
Three cheers for camping! I cannot wait to inflict this on my future kids!
Driving out was just as beautiful as driving in. I stopped a few times, and was rewarded. I recited the bracha for seeing exceptionally tall mountains at one overlook. At another, the posted sign recommended taking a short path down to a rocky outcrop for the views, so obviously I instantly scampered off. I had been a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to hike at all at SNP. It felt a little like a waste. I loved staying in the park, but I didn’t experience Shenandoah in the same way as I would have on the trail. But I didn’t have time. Luckily, though, I got this one tiny taste. I stood on the rock and gave a primal yell to Hashem. How incredible is His creation! How blessed am I to get to see it!
Holy, holy, holy!
Honestly, I don’t know how to contain all the goodness in my life right now. כוסי רויה!