Last summer I hiked
one hundred miles on the Ice Age Trail from the edge of Lincoln
County, WI to the Veterans Memorial Campground in the Langlade County
Forest and back. The forest was emerald green. I filtered water from
clear streams. I literally heard wolves howling at night. I hiked
fifty miles in four days, and I had one conversation with another
human during those four days. I was walking a road segment and an
older gentleman pulled up in his truck and politely asked what I was
up to. I explained that I was hiking the Ice Age Trail. He'd never
heard of it, even though he lived on it, but he asked if I needed
anything, and when I said I was fine he drove off and into his
driveway a few hundred yards up the road. Unfortunately, his lawn
décor was a fake grave labelled “trespasser” and a sign about
exercising his second amendment rights. That was on Wednesday. On
Thursday, around 5:00pm, I hiked my tired knees into the Veterans'
Memorial Campground, where every campsite has RV electrical and
water hook-ups, and there costs $20 a night. I was excited to see
people. I was also excited about toilets. I had run across two of
them on the trail. One was at an ATV shelter, the other one was at a
picnic ground. They were both as clean and well-stocked as pit
toilets can be, but there's something about using the bathroom and
washing your hands afterward that you can't duplicate in the
wilderness.
I used the first
toilet I came across, down by the lake. It was unplumbed and out of
hand sanitizer, and it was kind of a let down. I was looking forward
to using the restroom building with electric lights located in the
main campground. Wandering around, I was definitely the only tent in
the campground. Everyone else had an RV, and they were all big. No
pop-ups. I found a campsite next to a dad and ten-year-old daughter
because, as the Her Side of the Mountain blog says, “Choose a
campsite next to a family. They'll be too busy watching their kids
to attack you.” I set up my tent, and hung my food in a tree. It
feels primitive, I tell you, to be hauling a dry-bag of food into the
most promising tree you can find while your neighbors are packing
their suppers into coolers and storing them in their camper kitchens.
It was dark by the next time I had to go to the bathroom. I brought
all my toiletries, such as they were, and spent a long time brushing
and flossing and staring at my five-days-unwashed hair in the mirror.
I'd expected to see people in the bathroom around going-to-bed time,
and a few people came and went into the stalls while I was dithering
about, but no one did toothbrushing or said more than “Hi.” The
next morning, I woke up and used the bathroom again. The novelty was
mostly worn off, but I still had to use it. I was up early and I had
a lovely stroll around looking at peoples' lawn signs. If you buy an
RV and you want to go camping in Wisconsin, you need a painted
wooden sign that says “The Johannsens” or “Mike and Judy's
Place.” Bonus points if it's in the shape of a paddle or it has a
duck on it. Also, bring at least four lawn chairs, an outdoor rug,
and some tiki torches.
The bathroom was
fun. I brushed my teeth. One of the toilets was clogged. After
breakfast, I hiked around the area and looked at the arboretum, read
some Name of the Wind,
admired the lurid veterans' mural and called my parents in the ranger
station. I used the bathroom several times but never saw anyone in
there, but I did find a few clogged toilets.
I
was lonely. Five days is a lot not to talk to anybody, and I had
three days back to my car. In my long car camping experience,
starting when I was a toddler, the bathroom building was always the
place to see people and chat. Conversations while brushing your
teeth, wondering why that person brought a hair dryer on a camping
trip, hearing about the chipmunk that got into someone's cooler,
complaining about the loud teenagers in the campsite by the lake.
These are all camping conversations that happen in the bathroom, and
they're the way that campground information gets passed around. But
people were missing from this bathroom, and when they did come in
they gave a furtive “Hi” and headed for the stalls. Why weren't
they brushing and chatting and blow drying and wandering around in
old bathrobes? I didn't expect to find my new best friend in the
campground bathroom, but it had been days since I'd had a
conversation and I wanted a chat with somebody.
And
then I figured it out. They were all pooping. All the women in the
campground were peeing, toothbrushing, hair styling and bathrobe
wandering-around-in in their RVs. But for pooping, they were heading
up to the far toilets to keep from stinking up their little homes
away from home and saving the sensitive RV plumbing from potential
embarrassing and icky cloggings. And that was why I hadn't made any
friends in the public restroom. (That was also why the toilets kept
stopping up.) All the functions of the old public bathroom but one
had been devolved into a more convenient private space, and all the
social possibilities had gone with it. So no one chatted, no
information was exchanged, and the campground was a little bit sadder
for it. Unless all the other vacationers were meeting up somewhere
else to talk about the smelly girl in the tent who hung her food in a
tree.
If
the RV campground was America, and the bathroom was a neighborhood
gathering space, then The Great Good Place
by Ray Oldenburg, would be a camping story like Up: A
Mother and Daughter's Peakbagging Adventure (more
on that later), but, unfortunately, the problems I had making friends
in a campground bathroom are are exactly analogous to the problems of
finding community in America, problems created by suburban
development and urban renewal. Mr. Oldenburg argues, correctly, than
places where Americans used to gather: pubs, taverns, post offices,
parks, pedestrian streets, and soda fountains, have been destroyed,
omitted, or changed beyond recognition. One example of many is the
neighborhood bar. In the earlier part of the last century, says Mr.
Oldenburg, you used to see comics with the funny drunk stumbling into
lampposts on the way home from the neighborhood bar. Starting in the
1980's, the comics were replaced by impassioned pleas not to drink
and drive. But drinking and driving is, in a sense, mandated,
because the bar is no longer in the neighborhood. Suburban planning
set the bar in a commercial zone several sidewalk-less miles away
from your house. Meanwhile, because the bar is located in an area
serving multiple bedroom communities, the people inside that bar are
not neighbors but strangers, giving the place a bleak, anonymous feel
that discourages any mutual recognition of common interests. So many
distressing examples of urban planning and suburban development, like
teenagers in the original Levittown quickly developing a culture of
drinking at basement parties or in what available woods there were
because teenager-centered hang-outs like soda fountains and
convenience stores were moved to the edge of the housing zones,
putting them miles away from anyone without a car. American
children can no longer run errands, if for example, it's supper time
and mom suddenly finds that she's out of milk. The store is several
miles away, there are no sidewalks, no other pedestrians, lots of
dangerous cars, and the news has filled mom's mind with kidnappers.
A kid can only be productive outside the home (and move independently
around the neighborhood's commercial districts) once she has her
driver's license.
The Great Good
Place drags whe Mr. Oldenburg
describes the English pub, the French cafe, the American main street,
the Austrian coffee house, and other traditional gathering places,
but they do reinforce his point. This book is partly responsible for
the proliferation of coffee shops in the '90s and has a mention in
You've Got Mail.
Check out the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
for a more concise summary of the requirements and rewards of a third
place. In having a third place, we would give up some privacy and
the convenience of not being chatted with by neighbors while walking
around outside (for those of us who have sidewalks), but the a wider
range of friends and acquaintances, and a more functional exchange of
ideas in this our democracy would be the reward.
The
Great Good Place is almost too
depressing to read, when you think about the experiences of community
that are currently dead and gone for most Americans. Yes, you can
drink, watch movies, eat, talk, and sit in your own home, but you're
missing out on lots of people who might be fun to talk to, as well as
a smorgasbord of local news (the kind that's not covered on TV).
Neighborhood bars, grocery stores, and campground bathrooms: all less
rich for having their unquantifiable social functions diminished.
In
other news, I listened to De Virginibus
(Concerning Virgins)
by St. Ambrose, the fourth century bishop of Milan, on Librivox, and
I don't think the Catholic church likes women very much. Yes, that's
an understatement, but, my heavens! St. Ambrose wrote his series of
letters to female virgins, who, before convents, were supposed to
stay with their families and live a retired life of prayer and,
maybe, study. St. Ambrose very much did not write letters to male
virgins like, presumably, himself, who were supposed to be out
running around converting pagans and directing the nascent church.
Female virgins: stay inside, don't have friends over, no unnecessary
talking, no complaining, no asking questions, and don't kill yourself
to stay pure unless you have to, in which case you probably should.
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