Public Comment

“You’re Never Too Old to Camp.” Ha! In response to Marta Yamamoto’s article in the March 13 edition, I have to say that I was already too old in my 20s to go camping. No one I grew up with in Atlanta in the 1930s and 1940s had gone camping or intended to go camping ever. In the early 1950s, when I was a college student, I had a brief experience as a counselor at a summer camp for children, and one night I camped on the ground with a group of children. 

By the time I was drafted in 1953, I had almost forgotten my first camping experience when, during my period of involuntary servitude, I had to sleep in a pup tent for a week during basic training in below-freezing weather without a sleeping bag (only blankets). I did not enjoy it. Then, in the early 1960s, as a newly married man, I was invited by my wife to go camping at Yosemite. We pulled into Tuolumne Meadows after dark and were told the campground was filled, but we could piggy-back on another campsite which was already occupied. When we awakened the next morning, we were the only ones within view sleeping directly on the ground in sleeping bags without a tent or camper. That was OK. I’m not modest. That was, I have to admit, a nice experience—a sea of stars in a black sky stand out in memory. 

Later on, after we had children, we took our three boys on a camping trip. We loaded up the car and took off. When we were getting established at the campsite and it was approaching dinnertime, we discovered that I had neglected to bring the box containing the tableware. I was all ready to carve chopsticks out of twigs, but our kids were not quite old enough to handle them, so we drove back home. 

There used to be a saying in the Decorative Art Department at Cal, before it became the Design Department, that the principal role of architecture was to keep the rain off the decorative arts. But another role of architecture, for us non-campers, is to keep you away from the outside. On the other hand, the experienced campers will have an easier time of it after the Big One, when much of the architecture will no longer keep the rain off the decorative arts or us. 

Ms. Yamamoto, in her article, talks of mosquitoes, yellow jackets, and moths with great tolerance. I was under the impression that human beings were at the top of the food chain until I realized that human beings are food for mosquitoes. And moths are not a good memory for me, since I encountered moths with seven-inch wingspans in Japan. 

But there was another camping trip to Mt. St. Helena my wife and I went on organized by Michael Ellis, of Footloose Forays, which was almost pleasant. We slept on the ground in a tent, too far from the bathroom, but the espresso from Michael’s camping-stove-top espresso pot made everything okay. And a hike one day was beautiful until, as we returned to the campsite, we encountered rain, snow, sleet, and hail all in one-half hour. 

And then there was the camping trip with our sons and dog Raku. We slept in a borrowed pup tent with the dog, who was required by the campground rules to be confined to a tent or vehicle when not on leash. In the middle of the night, Raku wanted to investigate something outside the tent, so she clawed her way through the flimsy mosquito netting. We had to buy a new tent for my brother-in-law, from whom we had borrowed the tent. 

So the memories of my very few camping experiences are a mixed blessing after all—some good memories, some bad. Now in my seventies, I don’t want to sleep anywhere it’s cold and not near a bathroom. The insects will have to get their food from somebody else. But when and if the Big One comes, I’ll reconsider. 

Alan R. Meisel is a Berkeley resident.