camping – Gemma D. Alexander

ByGD

Wet Dog

One summer, I was invited to go camping in the San Juans. My dog was so old that I worried about leaving him at home alone. So I brought him with me. It rained so hard for those two days the waterproofing on my tent gave out. I had to leash the dog to make him leave the tent to pee, and when he came back in, he coated the entire inside of the tent with mud and the scent of wet dog, a scent that also pervaded my car for at least a week afterward. His toe nails punctured my sleeping pad. It was the last time I ever took that dog camping. He died a few months later. I’m so glad I took him with me to the island.

ByGD

camping, Eistnaflug, headlamps, Iceland, music festivals

Only The Music is Dark

Fifteen years ago, I spent three months in India. Before I left, my husband gave me two gifts – a really nice pocket knife, and a Petzl headlamp. Both proved invaluable. Although the knife was later stolen, I still have the headlamp, and I still use it. It has accompanied me to multiple continents. I’ve used it on night hikes, to find the bathroom at state campgrounds, and harvesting vegetables from my back yard late in the season. It’s one of the best gifts my husband ever bought me. He ended up buying one for himself, too.

But when we were packing for our recent trip to Eistnaflug, the heavy metal festival in a remote fjord in Eastern Iceland, I pulled both headlamps from the pile on our bed of things to be packed.

“You don’t think we’ll need them?” he asked in the voice of careful doubt men reserve for moments when they suspect a woman has lost her mind.

“We’re not going to need them,” I answered.

When I left the room, he put them back in.

“They don’t take much space,” he said, tucking his headlamp into his backpack as I pulled mine back out and put it in a drawer.

Doe Bay Moments

Doe Bay Fest is only six years old, but with its stellar record for booking the best of the Northwest, it is already legendary. Festival-goers recognize each other on the street and nod – “Doe Bay?” “Doe Bay” – like members of a secret society sharing a password. This was my first year at Doe Bay, and because of the type of writing I do for a living, I wanted to tell you how to score tickets to Doe Bay Fest, which always seems to sell out before tickets go on sale. I planned to describe the camping areas and give advice about meal planning and festival food.

But now that I’ve been there, I’m not going to write any of that. Read More

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