Like all good Canadians, I've done my share of bonding with the wilderness. I went to summer camp. I've pitched tents, portaged canoes and jumped into lakes of ice melt. I can even build a fire in the rain and make s'mores.
I wish I could say these experiences made me a better person – sturdier, more self-reliant, more in touch with nature. But mostly, they made me long for a hot shower and an indoor toilet.
In my experience, the romance of the great outdoors is highly overrated. For every moment of pure bliss, there are a thousand moments of modest to acute discomfort – stinging insects, gale-force winds, freezing rain, broiling sun, festering blisters and brutal forced marches with heavy weights on your back, to say nothing of having to perform intimate bodily functions in the woods and hoping you avoid the poison ivy.
Read more: Learning to camp, at long last
In my youth, I was attracted to manly men – people who actually enjoy this kind of stuff. These liaisons did not tend to turn out well. On one memorable canoe trip through Algonquin Park, my boyfriend strung our pack of food between two trees, just the way you're supposed to. The raccoons got it anyway. We were awakened in the middle of the night by the sounds of raccoons feasting on our bagels. The boyfriend grabbed a canoe paddle and launched it at them. The paddle broke on the rocks. We didn't have a spare. The next day we woke up to a howling gale. I huddled in the bow, starved and freezing, as he paddled us across the roiling waters to the safety of the parking lot, many hours away. It was a heroic effort, but our relationship never really recovered.
That wasn't enough to finish me off, however. I still couldn't resist the call of the wild. So I signed up for a rafting trip down the mighty South Nahanni, one of the most scenic rivers in Canada. It wasn't cheap. But Pierre Trudeau had done it so I figured that it would be great. And it was – for a day. Then we got socked in. The next morning we woke up in the snow (it was August). For the rest of the trip the weather was cold and damp, and the fog scarcely lifted. So much for the allegedly spectacular scenery. You couldn't see a thing. It was a relief to reach the end of the line at Nahanni Butte – even though the mosquitoes were as big as hummingbirds and thick as bees.
Oh, I've been in Paradise, all right. I've been in scenes straight out of tourist brochures and movies. One time I was in Costa Rica, where some friends and I rode horses down a mountain to an idyllic jungle swimming hole. We stripped off our clothes and jumped in. Big mistake. The place was infested with no-see-ums – invisible bugs that devoured us from head to foot and covered us with itchy welts that could drive a person mad.
And so I learned that as much as I want to love nature, nature does not always want to love me back.
Today, I satisfy my itch for nature at a small house in the country, which we built in the middle of a rampant buckthorn field. We've learned that even Paradise needs Roundup and insecticide to make it fit for human habitation. We have screens on the windows and a fly guy who sprays twice a year. (Our more organically conscientious friends used to hang strips of flypaper from the ceiling, until even they got grossed out.) We regard new migrants to the country with benign amusement, because we have shed our citified illusions about how great the wilderness is. Of course it's great – so long as you can filter out the bad parts.
The truth is that getting back to nature sometimes means you've got to make war on it, for your own survival. The porcupines can chomp through your brake hose. The mice can nibble through the insulation on your electrical wires and burn the house down. The rabbits can overrun your vegetable garden. The coyotes can attack your cows and eat your cat. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but you'd better spray yourself with bug repellent or else you'll get eaten to death.
These days my relationship with nature is tamer than it used to be, but more satisfying too. Instead of rafting mighty rivers, I am content to stay at home and dip my toes in our tiny pond. The only gear I schlep is martinis down to the gazebo. My husband and I have no desire to go on a canoe trip, a fact that has no doubt averted much marital unhappiness. I am almost always warm and dry. I admire those of you out battling the elements, but I've been there and done that. And I say feh.