Arguments You'll Always Have When Camping With Others

After camping with lots of different people of different subcultures, and in groups of various sizes. I've gone camping with hippies, rednecks, fishermen, prospectors, business professionals, families with children, scouts, kayakers, environmentalists, and more. To me it seems there is always an inevitable argument that will come up.

1: How to start a camp fire.
Everyone seems to have their own method of starting a camp fire, and will boast as to why theirs is better than the rest of their friends. Use paper? Wood shavings? Flammable mosquito repellent? Prove to your friends how bad ass you are by trying to start a fire with wet wood? Yeah I've seen it all.

2. What you can/can't throw on the camp fire.
This one is guaranteed to stir up the fire (literally and figuratively). Some people are very strict on what gets put on the fire. I've been shamed and cussed out by my fellow campers after throwing my plastic spork into the flames. Seriously, any little bit of inorganic material that goes on the fire is cardinal sin to some. While on other side of the coin I've seen my fellow campers fuel the fire with: plastic bags, yogurt containers, styrofoam packaging, home insulation, aluminum cans, tin cans, gasoline, fireworks, and more. Burn baby burn!

3. What kind of sticks you can roast your hotdogs or marshmallows on:
If you don't have any coat hangers to straighten out to make into roasting sticks, you're stuck with using what nature provides. I use my pocket knife to cut a live twig off a bush or tree, then whittle the ends for a clean impaling surface. Of course I've been crucified by fellow campers for having dared take the limb off of a living plant. They pick up the dead sticks off the ground for roasting; which inevitably they burn the end of the stick right off and their food lands in the fire.

 

Who has the biggest weiner around the camp fire

 

Who's weiner tastes the spiciest after a week.

 

I've never been camping, and truthfully, it sounds like something I wouldn't enjoy.

 

When I was 19, I had only been logging for about a year at that point. A grizzly old alcoholic (it was a dry camp, so he drank mouth wash every night) got angry with me because I wouldn't share my chewing tobacco with him. He walked away, and about 15 minutes later came back and kicked me in the back with his caulk boots on - I still have the scars on my lower back. Long story short, I beat the absolute shit out of a senior citizen.



I love camping.

 

I need to go camping, I haven't been in forever.

 

i've lived in the woods but i've never camped with anyone except years ago when my dad got his first little datsun pickup. none of that stuff ever came up.
burn everything you don't want to have to pack back out, ONLY AFTER having cooked.
i don't care how you start the damd thing, or even if you do, just make a place where it won't get away from you, preferable a small shallow pit, away from everything you don't want to burn, and put a bunch of rocks around it to rest things on. some sort of something like steel wire refregerator shelf is handy to set things to cook on.
aluminum foil to wrap things in to cook down in it. always had some kind of little aluminum billy pot or mess kit.
weeners were ok. never could stand marshmellows though.
thing is, we always, and myself later, brought one of those little tiny pack stoves or a sterno frame. boiled mostly ordinary store bought foods of the kind that don't spoil.
trying to get comfortable in close proximity to anyone has never been easy for me.
even when i was married.

 

i don't ever remember having an argument when camping. but then, my camping has traditionally involved large amounts of alcohol, and i don't remember a lot of details.

 

Someone wanting cigarettes or beer...if you want it then bring your own, dammit!

 

Item 1 is usually about a power trip. For some reason, people often get off about being the fire-starter.

2 and 3 are mostly environmental issues. I'm more sympathetic to that, but people also need to respect the fact that they don't have unlimited rights to police other people's behavior

 

yeah, i don't get that one. i've seen it, but never had that argument, because i figure if someone else wants to do the work, i'll gladly sit back and relax.

 

how far is far enough for a piss


yeah buddy take a walk... i dont want to be smelling your piss

 

I don't go camping. I walked into the forest up in northern Michigan once, and my experience turned me off from any future activities that involved being out in the wild. It was terrible. The first thing I noticed when I was in that forest is that it was big. Really big! The next thing I noticed is that it is easy to lose your way. The next thing I noticed is that once you lose your way, there are no exit signs. None! And the next thing I noticed is that, owing to the absence of exit signs, you can walk for hours and hours and hours . . . etc. in any direction and still be in the middle of nowhere, which forces you to camp out for the night against your will. Maybe camping is the wrong term to use here because I had no camping gear; no sleeping bag, no tent, no food, and no water. And thanks to my decision to give up smoking four years earlier, no lighter or matches. No fire! I gave up smoking to save my life. The fucking irony . . .

The next thing I noticed is that I needed toilet paper--being really scared does that to me, and I was pretty scared. But since I didn't have toilet paper, I was forced to use a handful of leaves. It was at that point that I learned the hard way that "if the leaves be three, leave it be." I should have counted the leaves. Even before that happened, I stopped seeing the beauty of the forest, and instead saw it as a big fucking thing that had swallowed me alive. I won't talk about the mosquitoes, but they were bad; not as bad as my "if the leaves be three" wiping experience, but still pretty bad! And just before dark, I heard some animal coming my way. So I had to climb a tree. It was a wolf I think, or a large coyote. It was sniffing around and found where I had my wiping incident. I watched in disgust as it ate my shit. I almost felt bad for it because it ate the leaves I wiped with, too. What would that do to it? Anyway, watching it eat my shit caused me to vomit. The wolf, or whatever it was, heard my vomit hit the ground, and ran to it and fucking started chowing down on that, too. Beauty of nature my ass. I was all out of vomit and so I clung to the branch I was on and had a short spell of the dry-heaves, which seemed to frighten the dog creature.

Next time I go into the forest, it's going to be on a motorcycle . . . with a full tank of gas . . . and a tire pump . . . and a tire-patch kit . . . two of 'em . . . and a compass . . . and a cellphone . . . and a handgun.

No, wait a minute. That was just a dream I had. Sorry . . .

 

I never had to argue. If you want to start the fire then start it. If I throw my garbage on it and you don't like it you can step. No argument needed. Get the fuck out or shut the fuck up. Maybe it's different because I always been on a camp site. Whoever pays makes the rules. If you are out in the wild with no official site though I can see an argument but I wouldn't camp with someone I don't mesh well with in those situations.

 

When I go camping we usually designate tasks...either set up tents, start a fire, gather firewood, prep food, be useful.

If you can't be useful, that's cool, you're either new to camping or slightly wimpy. If you can be useful, better volunteer for a task you know you can do. If you're gonna take 3 hours to start a fire maybe it would be better if you go and sit with the newbs and wimps

 

Yes indeed that's another one.
It's even worse when one of your dipshit friends decides to piss out the campfire. All that piss vapor clouding up the whole campsite. So gross.