HAPPY CAMPER

Wanting to better understand an Inland Northwest obsession, I did something I haven’t done in ages. Last weekend, I went camping. Readers of The Slice column might recall that a few months ago I sought invitations to join a few folks on their backwoods excursions this summer. Several families came through with offers. But in the end I decided to impose myself on Marvin and Janet Lake, a warm, welcoming retired couple who live in Kellogg.

I met the Lakes Saturday morning at the Devil’s Elbow Campground on the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. This national forest site was the setting for an annual gathering of their extended family.

It was sunny and hot.

If I had been in a lighthearted mood, I might have gone around saying, “Don’t you remember me? I’m Cuthbert Twilley, Barb’s on-parole nephew from Bonners Ferry.”

But the whole idea of camping makes me nervous.

You see, I really like to have access to a decent shower and a toilet that doesn’t require a sustained holding of one’s breath. Call me crazy.

Bugs and bears, I can live with – at least in theory. But I’m a man with an advanced degree in the bathroom arts. If the day requires that I take three showers, I want to be able to take three showers.

Well, of course, there were no showers at Devil’s Elbow, a clearing surrounded by tall evergreens. There was an outhouse, though. Don’t ask.

In all fairness, I’ve seen and smelled far worse.

But I hadn’t been there long before I learned my first lesson about camping: A big part of the appeal would seem to be the opportunity to visit with friends and family without electronic distractions.

It was my good fortune to discover that the Lake clan consists of several dozen remarkably appealing people (and one or two nutcakes). I even liked their dogs. And watching them laugh and hug made a compelling case that there’s a humanizing magic in the words “Searching for network … No service.”

Just imagine. A whole day with no singsong ringtones and no one saying, “I’d better get that.”

I spent much of the afternoon talking to various Lakes, watching chipmunks and guzzling bottled water.

Horseshoes clanged and butterflies caught thermals above the camp stoves arrayed near a buffet setup.

Realizing I was drenched with sweat, I started thinking about the river. I had brought my swimming trunks, after all.

“It freezes your toes,” one kid warned me after I inquired about the water temperature.

It wasn’t my toes I was worried about. So the trunks stayed in the trunk.

But I thought it would help to at least be near the water, so I followed a group of children down to the river’s edge. They proceeded to hunt for crawdads and tadpoles. (They actually caught some, which they eventually released.)

I tried to remember some freshman geology while searching for the most beautiful water-smoothed riverbed rock. It was a trillion-way tie.

When I got back to the campground, I assigned myself the task to periodically asking, “Have they taken the five-generations picture yet?” Each time, that would prompt a burst of futile organizing.

“Well, where is he?”

“I think he’s taking a nap.”

When the photo session finally came together, I felt privileged to witness the scene. I don’t know if it taught me anything about camping. But the beaming faces offered a different sort of lesson.

I considered interviewing some of my fellow campers about their sans-facilities hygiene strategies. But in the end, I decided to just relax. If I stank, I stank.

Saturday night, after an excellent dinner, people in lawn chairs formed a big circle around the campfire. One young woman strummed a guitar while child labor was employed to turn the cranks on two tubs of homemade huckleberry ice cream.

As the light faded, the sparks from the popping tamarack logs zigzagged up into the night.

Marshmallows and s’mores made the rounds. In the background, you could hear the cold river buff the pretty little stones.

The fire smelled like perfect childhood. The burble of conversation sounded like vacation.

The Lakes provided me with an old-fashioned though immaculate tent, which Marvin and one of his sons put up. They also offered sleeping bags and everything else I would need.

But I had brought along a backyard recliner. So I hauled that into the smallish tent.

Being up off the ground and near the tent ceiling made for a somewhat coffin-like sleeping arrangement. But nobody said camping was going to be a picnic.

Besides, I had a few other things on my mind.

Did you know that when you are in a tent, every twig-snap and pinecone plop seems INCREDIBLY LOUD? And when you can’t see out, all you can do is guess: Raccoonasaurus? Escaped convict? The cast of “Deliverance”?

It’s probably an exaggeration to say it got down to 10 degrees that night.

But there were compensations. At home, the exterior of my house has been turned into a sparrow rookery this summer. So hearing birds of a different feather was a treat.

And, when I ducked outside, a night sky splashed with 100 times the number of stars visible in the city triggered memories of my dad’s front-yard seminars on celestial navigation.

Sunday morning arrived with the sound of what I’m guessing was a pterodactyl in a tree above me and someone chopping wood at 5:42.

I got up and washed my face in the river.

Soon there would be coffee, bacon and hash browns.

I took down the tent and said goodbye to Marv and Janet.

Driving back to Spokane, I considered what I had learned about camping.

I already knew scenery, fresh air and cooked-out food are swell, and all that.

But I guess I hadn’t realized that getting away from it all gives you a special chance to reconnect with the important people in your life. It’s not just the absence of technological distractions. It’s the simple fact that you’re all there in one place, together, at the same time. And you talk.

These families that go camping, they know something.

I looked at the dashboard clock and calculated how much longer it would be until I would turn on the shower water.