You never can tell, I reasoned, when a sleeping bag might come in handy for some sort of sudden impromptu camping expedition.
It has never, in two years, been unrolled. Neither was its predecessor, which was still rolled up, and bearing the bouquet of a male cat's ultimate disdain, when I threw it away.
Then something strange happened.
A couple of folding chairs appeared ... and then a tent ... and then some really neat blue-enameled cookware and dishes.
I'm gearing up to become a c ... c ... camper again.
Sorry, I had a little trouble getting that out.
I loved camping as a kid when friends and I would head into the Everglades looking for a spot dry enough to build a lean-to and a fire and wash canned beans down with a forbidden (and, thereby all the sweeter) beer.
Sleeping in the outdoors, even with mosquitoes covering every exposed inch of skin, and scrounging for dry firewood to build a blaze big enough to keep away the imagined horrors that accompanied the sound of a grunting gator (which was probably a croaking bullfrog) was fun ... I think.
But five years in the Marine Corps and a tour in Vietnam took all of the fun out of it for me.
I'm not going to bore you with war stories, but sleeping outdoors a lot, in situations where the scary things didn't grunt but made much louder and scarier noises, brought me to the point of declaring I would be happy if I were never outside again.
I promised myself that I would never again sleep more than 50 feet away from foam rubber, air conditioning, a flush toilet and an ice machine.
And, with very few exceptions, I have kept that promise.
A photographer and I camped on the grounds of a fire-gutted semimansion one night looking for a ghost said to haunt the hill it was on, and I actually pitched a tent and slept in it during a canoe trip down the Withlacoochee River in the 1980s. Since then the closest I came to roughing it was sleeping in my van at a folk concert.
But I want to travel in my retirement - a lot - and hotels and motels, even inexpensive ones, are too costly.
I can save money by pitching a tent, heating a can of chili and sleeping on the ground.
Okay, sleeping on an air mattress on one of those little folding steel beds sitting on a tent floor underneath which will be the ground.
And I have my eye on nice campgrounds with showers and bathrooms and electric lights and fences and things like that. I don't want the great outdoors so much as I want to come as close as possible to the great indoors without paying the price.
I will say that camping has changed in the nearly 40 years since I considered it fun.
There are fire-starter sticks and glow-in-the-dark thingies and GPS locators (for those who need more than a KOA directory to find out where they are).
There are portable propane stoves and lanterns, battery operated air pumps for blowing up air mattresses, and a whole Wal-Mart section full of gadgets and goodies that in the end will probably cost me twice what I am saving in hotel expenses.
Whether the camping is going to be any fun or not, the shopping has been. I have, piece by piece, acquired everything I need except for the bed and stove and, I am proud to say, haven't bought anything camouflaged. I lose stuff often enough without having it designed to blend into the environment - and wherever I am I may well be lost, so I want to be wearing something colorful and easy to see.
I'm even going through a training phase. I'll be arriving at the Will McLean folk festival in March a few days early so I can sort out the intricacies of tent erection, stove connection and breeze convection ... wow ... maybe it will distract me so that I will stop sounding like Jesse Jackson.
Then there will be a few short trips before I head for Colorado.
I'll let you know how things work out, although if you see a classified ad for barely used camping equipment, you might get an idea.
