Zen and Campground Bathrooms
Dear Savvy travel
My friend Aaron is an excellent storyteller. One of my favorite Aaron
tales is a story about a travel recovery trip -- the topic of one of
your recent Questions of the Week. This story has stayed with me for
a long time, and with his permission, I'm sending it to you . . .
I got lost three times getting to the campground and once on the way
home. I forgot the soy butter for the roasted corn and the fixings
for breakfast. I misjudged the amount of food we would need (not
enough bread, soy cheese or cantaloupes). I didn't see any of the
meteor shower because of the overcast sky. There were too many slugs
and daddy-long-leggers in our tents, food, clothes and hair. There
wasn't enough firewood or pots to cook in. The river wasn't fast
enough, the rapids were disappointing, and the creek by the campsite
was overrun by noisy kids.
The tent took forever to set up. My sleeping bag kept slipping off my
new thermal air mattress. The severe glass cut I received right
before the trip was throbbing. I didn't bring the right clothing. The
bathrooms were repulsive and overcrowded. I dreaded having to use
them.
In general, I didn't feel like I belonged here. This wasn't my idea
of camping. Nothing felt right. Radios were blasting. CDs cranked up.
People were camped cheek to jowl, and everyone was so American:
rude, loud, brash, focused on drinking and fishing.
After a swim in the river one late afternoon in the midst of this
bizarre spin on a commune with nature, I suggested to my friend that
we shower at the main campground. Little did I realize that this
decision would be the turning point of the camping trip . . . and
might well be the most transforming adventure of my life.
As we walked toward the sunset and into a disgusting shower room and
toilet facility, there were two teenagers yelling in the showers at
the top of their lungs about the cold water controls. Children were
running around as two women cleaned and swept a mile a minute. The
drama was about to unfold.
I picked the middle stall along the rear wall because it was the cleanest.
It wasn't long before things started getting dicey. The noisy kids
were hitting stall doors as they ran screaming by, and two mops from
hell came at me from opposite sides. Furious mopping strokes swirled
across tile, spraying flotsam from the woods and camping areas across
the floor. They were coming precariously close, heading straight for
me and my privacy in an ever-narrowing universe.
And still they came. Undaunted. Almost indignant. Closer they mopped.
First around the stall posts. Then on either side of my toilet. But
when they mopped
right over my feet, something snapped. Gave way. Slipped. Altered.
Instead of getting angry or sarcastic, instead of engineering revenge
fantasies, instead of yelling or feeling helpless, instead of getting
depressed by how everything wasn't going according to my
expectations, I began to laugh. Slowly, at first. A giggle that grew
into a raucous hooting. Then, a real Buddha belly laugh.
When I had planned a "quiet escape to the woods," this is not what I
had in mind. It was all so ludicrous, so absurd and so funny, that I
had to laugh. In that moment, I just stopped fighting. People in
12-step programs would say I had just let go and turned it over.
Others would say I had surrendered to my higher self. The men in my
group therapy saw me reclaiming my power. And still others would see
it as giving up control and freeing myself from the past.
But whatever I did and whatever happened, I never felt so clear, so
excited, so relaxed and so sane as I did at that moment in the filthy
campground bathroom. I headed back to the campsite, and for the very
first time, I felt that everything was okay.
-Aaron (with an assist from Ellen)
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