MCA HUT! Archive

by Gayle Knutson

I’ve lived with the guilt long enough! After spending weeks in tents in Northwest Territories, the Boundary Waters, out west, and out east, I…’gulp’…bought a camper. And not just any camper…a 22-footer complete with bathroom, stove, microwave, fridge and cable TV hook-up!!

It took me a year before I could admit to camping/canoeing guru, Bob O’Hara, that I had caved in. In ’89 I canoed the Quoich River in (what was then) Northwest Territories with Bob and four others. The year before I paddled 800 miles in the far north arriving in Churchill, Manitoba a lean, mean paddling machine. But that was back in the days when us gals could pee standing up!!

Now I have a camper.…and guilt.

My toilet paper matches my wallpaper. The shower has hot water.…and not from being heated in a pot over an open flame. While true camping aficionados reconstitute their hotdogs, I am microwaving mine. And that ice cold beer you dream about at the end of hard day’s paddle? Yup…got a 12-pak chilled in the fridge.

Ya’ talk about your guilt!!

Then there’s nighttime. While you peacefully lie in your tent with a tree root in your back listening to crickets, think of poor, guilty me...tossing and turning on 6-inches of foam mattress, surrounded by curtains with matching valances, under incandescent light...all while listening to the gentle hum of my freezer making ice cubes. And on those really hot days, when you’re bonding (literally) with Mother Earth, I will be sheepishly sitting on the wrap-around couch, adjusting the AC and watching an assortment of movies on the VCR.

So, please, realize my pain the next time you see my camper hooked up to an electrical site at a state park. As you merrily hike past on a cold and rainy day, toughing it out in the mud and the grime, I’ll probably be baking some stupid gourmet cake while listening to my family happily click through 148 channels with the TV remote.

It ain’t easy! And.....ooooh, the guilt! (end)
Gayle Knutson is a 1988 graduate of the MCA’s whitewater class. She is a filmmaker and currently lives near Marine on St. Croix.