By Rich Cohen

I can tell you the exact moment I swore off camping: 2 p.m. on Aug. 9, 1982. It was the final day of an eight-week wilderness trip my parents sent me on, either for toughening up or to get me out of the house long enough for their European vacation.

After 55 evenings and mornings of putting up and tearing down that rank canvas tent, of being always too cold or too hot, lectured by guides, rained on, hanging food in trees (bears), sleeping on acorns and roots, waking to a Rocky Mountain snowstorm in June and sweating through an unbelievably hot night by the Great Salt Lake in August, the epiphany came at a Holiday Inn at the Denver airport. I was 14 years old.

I think it was the toilet paper in the bathroom that did it, or the little bars of wrapped soap, or the ice bucket and the distant ka-thunk of the ice machine, or the cable TV with "Poltergeist" and "Blade Runner" on pay-per-view. Or maybe it was the clean sheets and soft bed and air conditioner that blew back my hair.

It was this hotel and not "The Great Gatsby" that showed me the allure of the American dream, the desire that drove our ancestors from sod house to log cabin. It was later that night, while watching "Dallas" on CBS, that I made the vow: Barring some sort of post-apocalyptic situation, I will never go camping again.

Of course, I did not know about being a parent back then, about kids and their fantasies. So this July I found myself facing our 9-year-old son Elia. Having finished a summer in sailing school, he wanted, for just one night, to go camping with his classmates and their parents on an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Maine.

I tried to reason with him, explaining my vow and the epiphany behind it. I talked about discomfort and heat, the hassle of erecting a tent, all those pegs and poles, only to strike it a few hours later.

My wife made sense when she said, "It's about him, not you." But I thought I made equal sense when I said, "If I am there, isn't it about me, too?" In the end, it was the look on Elia's face -- eyes a blink away from spilling -- that flipped me.

I cursed as I packed, though, thinking of all the vows I've made that have crumbled under pressure over the years. At such times, I feel as if I'm not in control of my own life, that I advance on rails, a steering wheel put in my hand only to give the illusion of autonomy.

We explored the island as the sun went down, played Manhunt (a kind of mashup of hide-and-seek and tag) in the dark, cooked dinner on a driftwood fire. There were hot dogs and s'mores. The brilliant sky, with its overwhelming population of stars, led, naturally, to talk of UFOs and aliens. "Even if they're up there," I told Elia, "why not sit tight and let them find us?"

Then, when we were zipped into our tent and Elia had dropped like a stone into unconsciousness, I was flooded with memories. It scared me at first. It was like an after-school special's depiction of an acid trip.

Image after image from my 1982 wilderness ramble flashed through my mind. There were some memories that had seemed bad but now seemed good. There were some that I didn't even remember until I was back inside a tent.

Singing Stones songs as we hiked a trail in the Grand Tetons. The wind and how it became visible as it went through the aspen trees in Colorado. Shampooing our hair beneath a waterfall at Glacier National Park in Montana. Sneaking off to a dog track in Rapid City, South Dakota. The smell of candles in every tchotchke shop. The taste of that first illicit Budweiser, spirited to me by a cool counselor. The icy water in the Snake River in Yellowstone, where we felt we were seeing the country as it had been five minutes before the arrival of the first European.

On that island in July, I realized that these experiences, mementos of a summer I'd vowed to forget, were actually some of the great experiences of my life. By ditching my vow and camping with Elia, I learned that the past is not fixed. It can be recast and redeemed in the course of a single night in Maine.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 05, 2025 13:00 ET (17:00 GMT)

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