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Debbie Carter lives
in Nevada County, California, with two of her four children,
a dog, three cats and a snake. She is the business director
of Forest Charter School and is happy to say that she received
an excellent cold weather sleeping bag for Christmas!
 Some
people may think camping in any season is doable, but I believe
a seasonal camper is a happy camper—as long as that season
is July. Here’s why.
Recently, fate/my daughter’s high school class brought me
face to face with cold-weather camping. The plan: to drive
40 students from Nevada City, California, to Ashland, Oregon,
and then camp, see two plays each day and return. As the trip
got closer, the organizing teachers became more and more desperate
for drivers and chaperons, so I finally volunteered to drive.
How bad could it be? A friend said he could set me up with
a tent and sleeping bag, the kids are great, and who doesn’t
like to see a good play or two? The weather was predicted
to be beautiful.
The first night there, the temperature dropped dramatically
and it started to rain. We were setting out for our first
play, “Much Ado About Nothing,” when the teacher
told me that it was being performed at the Elizabethan stage—which
happened to be outside. “Sorry?” I asked, only to
be handed a lovely black trash bag to put over my clothing.
We sat through the two-hour performance (with intermission)
in the sleet. The play was great, I think...though it’s hard
to remember anything but the wet seats and the feeling that
I was sitting outside in mild Arctic temperatures. As we returned
to camp, I realized it was actually freezing. We all crawled
into our frigid tents to survive the night. I froze. All night
long. As I lay there shivering, I thought of ways to put all
of these kids up in a hotel for the following night. I mean,
as a parent I was only thinking of the kids, right? Poor popsicle
kids...
The next morning, as I untangled myself from my sleeping
bag, I realized I was clearly outfitted for “fair weather”
camping. But the kids? There was no drama. No one even asked
to go to a hotel—they were unfazed.
That day we saw two more plays. The weather cleared and the
snow looked beautiful on the mountains surrounding us. (Did
I mention that it had snowed? Of course it had.) At night
as I got into my tent, I vowed that if these teens could camp
in the cold without complaint, so could I. I just had to get
organized, right? So I layered. Two pairs of socks, gloves,
a hat, a shirt and my sweatshirt. My pillow came inside the
sleeping bag with me (so it wouldn’t crackle when it
became covered with ice). Still, I froze. Again. The puddles
that had gathered from the previous night’s rain in the
corners of my tent had frozen solid. As I dove deeper into
my “summer” sleeping bag, the end fell off the cot
and soaked up any of the water that melted away from the frozen
puddles. Good for tent clean-up the following morning—not
so great for my then wet socks.
The trip home was a blur of sniffling. I wanted to share
tales of icicles forming on my eyelashes with the other chaperons,
but it turned out I was the only one who hadn’t brought
the proper kind of bag. The moral to my story? Never go camping
when it’s not July. Or, the runner-up: Remember your
Girl Scout motto and “be prepared with a heavy-duty sleeping
bag and emergency hotel reservations.”
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