On Dirt, Beans and Wild West Whimsy

“Camping is nature’s way of promoting the motel business.”  ~ Dave Barry.

There’s a family camping trip looming on the horizon and I’ve spent the last few weekends gearing up.  I’ve made lists, rummaged through the big plastic bin in the backyard and a couple of garage cabinets; pulled plastic tubs from an attic storage area and crawled around some closets in the house.

Cora has been gearing up as well, but more in a mental/emotional manner of speaking.  Maybe the more appropriate term would be girding.  You see camping is not one of her favorite ways to pass a weekend.  I like to romanticize camping as a sort of tie to America’s ancestral, frontier, Wild West past; the pioneers, mountain men, cowboys and adventurers.  I look forward to pitching the tent, relaxing under a big pine and splitting wood for a fire that will ward off the evening chill.  I like a crisp morning by the river before the sun comes up with only the sounds of the riffling current, the plop of a lure and a fish breaking the surface to keep me company.  I enjoy the morning potpourri of evergreens, camp smoke, coffee and bacon.  Smelling those aromas brings to mind those scenes in the movies when a lone horseman drifts into a camp to be offered a helping of cowboy hospitality.  “You can tie off yer horse yonder mister.  Grab ye a cup a coffee.  We got some grub if yer partial to beans (Because what self-respecting cowboy camp would be without a pot of beans?).”  “Much obliged stranger.  I've got some store bought whiskey in my saddlebag and I’d be right proud to share it with ye.” 

One man's fantasy is his wife's nightmare

Cora’s vision of camping doesn't see any frontier idyll.  She believes horses carry diseases; she doesn't like store bought whiskey and she’s not all partial to a pot of beans (particularly an hour or so after I've eaten them).  Far from romanticizing camping, she pragmatically reduces it down to the elements she detests.  There’s the dirt, the bugs, toting water, the dirt, the pit toilets, having to walk down the road to said pit toilets when nature calls at 1 AM, the sleeping bag she had to crawl out of at 1 AM, the specter of rattlesnakes, the dirt, the heat, no TV, the dirt, the chores, campfire smoke and cleaning fish.  Oh, and did I mention the dirt?  She’s going on this trip because in some minuscule measure the togetherness of the family trumps the dirt.  But if she does happen across a rattler, family togetherness can go to hell; this camping trip will end immediately and any future mention of the word camping will be forbidden within 30 feet of our home.

As so I've sorted through gear, made sure the stove and lantern both work, inventoried parts and dragged out the tent that hasn't been pitched in some 15 years.  I actually set it up on the front lawn, probably to the wife’s mortification, to make sure no parts were missing and to see what it smells like.  Turns out it smells like a tent that’s been in storage for 15 years.  Or maybe it was the petrified Band-Aid that I found inside.  I left the tent set up for the day to air out making Cora’s mortification a day long affair.  Cora’s quietly witnessed these preparations with all the enthusiasm of someone sitting in the dentist’s waiting room. 

She displayed the tolerance and poise of a saint during last Saturday’s Dutch oven affair.  Some 17 years or so ago I bought a Dutch oven.  It was my pride and joy even if it was gross overkill.  For a family of four I bought a 13” Maca cast iron Dutch oven.  According to the The Happy Camper website, this oven is good for “Main dishes up to 38 servings, side dishes up to 64 servings, whole chickens, bunt cake, crown roasts or small turkeys.” There is one reason and one reason only that Cora likes it and that’s because she can legitimately claim she can’t use it because it weighs too damned much for her to handle – 40 pounds.  And that’s before adding the small turkey.  I suppose that when I ordered that cast iron behemoth I pictured myself in front of a campfire offering some drifter on horseback some grub in exchange for a pull off that whiskey bottle in his saddlebag.  Or maybe I’d just had too much whiskey before I ordered it because I could offer grub to an entire wagon train out of that pot.  In any case the oven sat for 15 years and was dirty, rusted and crusty. 

And so last Saturday, with the mercury pushing 90 I put the Dutch oven in the kitchen sink and bashed away with steel wool at the rust and crud while I preheated the oven.  First I worked over the lid and after most of the gunk was gone I rubbed it with canola oil, set it in a broiler pan and seasoned it for over an hour in the 400 degree oven.  As the lid cooked I went at the pot itself while I preheated the other oven to 400.  I scrubbed and cursed in the rising heat until I was forced to strip off my sweat soaked t-shirt.  When I was done with the pot I put it in our other broiler pan, bathed it in oil and put it in the lower oven to bake and season.  After one pass through the oven, the pot and lid hadn’t met my demanding standards so each received another round of bashing, cussing and baking.

By day’s end I was sore armed but proud of the brand new beautiful, ebony, seasoned sheen on my Dutch oven.  Cora had watched the whole spectacle quietly and patiently while I superheated the kitchen, filled the house with clouds of cooking oil smoke and a smell that lingered long into the night; put scratches in the sink, nearly clogged the drain with steel wool fibers and ruined two broiler pans that are now candidates for the recycle bin.  All of this and we’ve not even left home for the campground.  I’ll bet she can hardly wait for the main event.