Braving the Great Smoky Mountains
My goal for our weekend is modest: to provide Jed with a camping experience less grubby and miscarried than those my old man arranged for me. Breakfast with him was peanut butter sucked off a spoon, dinner cold spaghetti between two slices of Roman Meal. His tent was a frail, magical device whose special power was to summon storms so that it could collapse beneath them. I remember few nights that did not end with a sudden flight to the station wagon, where mosquitoes expected us, whetting their swords.
Seeking to avoid my father’s organizational shortfalls, I have packed the Town and Country to the rafters with gear. Courtesy of corporate donors, we have: a Coleman tent that sleeps six, four different models of infant tents and sleeping pens from KidCo, a wearable sleeping bag from Selk’bag, another wearable sleeping bag from Poler, two camp chairs, and a compact wood-burning camp stove from BioLite that can cook food and charge an iPhone if not download kindling from the World Wide Web.
From “No Amount of Traffic or Instagrammers or Drunks Can Take the Magic Out of (Semi-) Wilderness” by Wells Tower for Outside, 2016; Photo by Gary Clark
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