I used to camp with my fiance a lot. Every summer, we would take off into the woods for two weeks. It started with Algonquin, but we soon grew tired of the crowds - fighting for camp sites and waiting in line to portage in Algonquin doesn't spell relaxation to me. So, we went farther and deeper - Tamagami, Nipigon, Quetico, then finally Wabakimi Wilderness Park. From Toronto, it's about a 22-hour drive - three hours north of Thunder Bay. There are no roads into the park - it's accessible by train, plane or canoe. We bought a sweet ride of a canoe and flew in. I cooked and dehydrated all of our food (including Clamato juice - Mmm...bush Caesars). We bought a GPS and had discussions about living up there for part of the year.
And then, one night while trading camping stories with friends, I realized that I had become a camping snob. No car camping or cottages for me; if it wasn't remote and dangerous, it didn't count.
That was five years ago. Since then, circumstances conspired to keep me from camping, and for five long years, I didn't set foot in a tent. But, during that time, something wonderful happened. I watched my best friend (once a strictly anti-camping kind of chick) grow to love the wilderness, as long as it was on her terms. Last weekend, she and her husband invited our family to join them on a campsite they'd occupied for a few days already.
After an almost painless two-hour drive, we were met at the dock by our water taxi, one of the fastest boats I've ever been in. The 15-minute trip to the campsite was every bit as exciting as a New York cab ride and my young son grinned, giggled and shouted “Woo! Hoo!” the whole way. Upon arrival, I was shown to a seat with a view, handed a cold beer fresh from the cooler and told not to move a muscle. My son was shown to a flat rock at the water's edge, handed a fishing rod and told not to move a muscle. My fiance was told to set up our tent and unpack.
Heaven.
Some of life's most wonderful moments involve a cold beer, an 'a-ha!' and the figurative light-bulb. Remote interior camping does not involve cold beer, coolers or comfortable chairs (although it has its share of a-ha moments, usually right after something has gone wrong). I'm not saying that I will never go back to the dangerous and remote, but it doesn't always have to be that hard.
