I’ve never really been a fan of camping.
From the start, camping seemed to me to be a huge imposition and waste of time; let’s pack everything up, put it in the car, drive for a while, find a patch of forest (private, state- sanctioned, or otherwise), lug everything out of that car, set up camp (in varying degrees of available light, if you’re unlucky or bad at planning), be mildly uncomfortable due to forgetting a key item – which, for me, has included socks, underwear, a spoon, or even a sleeping bag – and then spend approximately 24 to 36 hrs before you have to do the whole thing in reverse and then clean everything so it can be put away properly when you get home, all in service of staring at flora and fauna you’d seen your entire life in pictures and at your local park. Eff that.
I wasn’t lucky enough to have any agency regarding whether I went camping; my parents, bless them, believed that the Boy Scouts of America would provide excellent leadership and life training to both of their sons, “city kids” that grew up in the larger city an hour’s drive from the family hometown. I’m sure you’re aware of some form of Scouting just from popular culture – merit badges, Pinewood Derby cars, and most importantly, camping. Throughout my teenage years I spent more than a solid month, all told, out in a tent with my scouting brothers; a rag-tag group of socially awkward nerds who would have rather been playing with their Nintendos or, in my case, literally anywhere other than the forest I found myself in most of the time. So, when I achieved the rank of Eagle Scout and the age of 18, I decided that I would never willingly put myself out into the wild ever again without the benefit of a roof, walls and porcelain accommodations.
Roughly seventeen years later, my wife, girlfriend and I decided we’d like to get into the Burning Man community; specifically, to attend a regional “burn” in the Georgia area that some of our friends had gone to and highly enjoyed the previous year. I reasoned with myself that while I didn’t usually enjoy camping, a festival atmosphere with many other people around seemed to be a better reason to go through the rigamarole of being a camper than just to stare at some rocks and trees. In addition, the stakes are higher at “burns” – while most campers could, in theory, leave a campsite in their vehicle to retrieve some forgotten item at a local Wal- Mart, these events almost always have a “no re-entry” policy, and as such require a new ticket to re-enter (of which there are none – tickets for these events sell out within minutes of going on sale, which happens three months prior to the event), so whatever you forgot, you just forgot. Nothing is provided – everyone’s expected to bring all of the food, water, shelter and supplies they might need, and to pack out every iota of trash or refuse created while at the event; the hardest-core participants even commit to take their “grey” water home with them. I assured myself that with proper planning, (bolstered by the recent prescription treatment of my rampant ADHD), my camping experience would be better than those I had earlier in life.
I spent a lot of time and resources preparing for the trip. I bought all new equipment – a tent, new sleeping bags, and even a small generator. I meticulously made lists and checked them thrice – once when I acquired the gear, once when it was staged to pack, and once when it was packed. I rented an SUV, put the out of office notifications up on my email, and took off towards the tiny town where the event was being held. The night before, I met up with friends and spent the evening in a hotel room; if I was going to do this, I wanted to at least start the ordeal with a hot shower and clean clothing. We caravanned to the site, checked in, and claimed our stake of land. Things were looking up…until the rain started.
Setting up camp in the rain is a rough task, even for elite campers. Assembling my new twelve-person tent for the first time would have been tough even under the best of circumstances, but I now had the added issue of trying to get things up (and a rain fly installed) before the entirety of the tent was flooded. Sprits were, as they say, low. I began to regret coming back to camping, and I’d been on site for less than 20 minutes. The reward of constant stimulation through massive art exhibits and limitless human interaction no longer seemed worth having to fight the increasingly deteriorating weather conditions, all in service of just having a dry place to sleep.
But then, a ray of sunshine – the group of friends I was camping with got together, formed a plan, and began to help each other raise their tents as well as the communal shelter we’d use as a kitchen/living room. We worked well as a group – we’d initially gotten to know each other a few years prior through a large poly social group I’d stumbled into (more on that later). As a result of our collective efforts, things became so much easier that we were able to get everything set up and (relatively) dry quicker than anyone could have working on their own. We finished by setting up our camping chairs, and then began to while away the afternoon with discussions, stories, and general merry-making.
The weather continued to worsen. The rain, which had been forecast to be only of a passing concern, was beginning to come down in sheets. We were staying dry and warm under our large popup tent when we heard from some fellow campers that the entry gates to the event were being inundated with water and, as you might imagine, tons of mud and muck as well. Word came around 4PM that the organizers were closing the gates – which wasn’t great to hear; my wife and girlfriend hadn’t been able to get off work until that Thursday afternoon, and had anticipated arriving to the event that evening. Worse yet, instead of distributing our food and water evenly between our two vehicles, I had made the unfathomably bad decision to put the entirety of each in my wife and girlfriend’s car. I had, unwisely, just assumed that they’d arrive without a hitch. Despite all of my attempts, I had, again, committed a major planning error. I felt foolish and, of course, hungry.
My pride kept me from mentioning my oversight to my friends; and for reasons unknown to me now (but almost certainly based in my ego), I continued to sit and be hungry (and, eventually, thirsty.) My companions began to break into their stashes food and water they’d brought; some to enjoy an afternoon snack, with all of them starting dinner as the evening set in.
My stomach began to growl; those two egg-bacon-and-cheese biscuits I’d eaten for breakfast around twelve hours earlier were beginning to wear thin. I knew that at some point I was going to have to fess up to my mistake and see if the group would take pity on me. As I attempted to steel my nerve to broach the topic, those attempts were, thankfully, punctured by the inquiry of one of my closest friends, Jes.
“Hey, aren’t you hungry? I haven’t seen you eat anything since we got here.”
I hung my head slightly and sheepishly recounted how the closing of the entry gates had thrown a huge monkey-wrench into my faulty plans, and how I’d failed to bring any food supplies with me despite having enough underwear to last me a month. After we had a laugh together – both with and at my expense – they handed me a bowl of food and told me to eat. I refilled my water pack and literally began to breath out; I hold my breath sometimes when I feel anxious, often without even realizing it. I realized that I had felt so alone and lost sitting there, focusing on my failures, even though my friends had never been further than 10 feet away from me at any time since we’d arrived. I still continued to ruminate on my mistakes – but now that I had some food in me, I didn’t feel so bad about them. My community had shown that it was something I could lean on; something I could trust them to provide for me in situations where I had tried my hardest to provide for myself, but had still fallen short.
The gates reopened the next day around 2PM, and I ran to meet my wife and girlfriend. They had, unfortunately, only gotten the one of two messages I’d sent due to spotty cell service. They’d gotten the text saying that things weren’t going as planned and to stay home until the next morning – but not the update of a 2PM open instead of 9AM. They, too, had been helped by the community – a wider one that we didn’t know, but had still taken them in, resulting in them having their own adventures amongst the other stranded attendees on the outside. This lesson of community was imprinted on all of us that day; without community, we are adrift – alone in the dark, where even the best plans a person can reasonably make can still come up critically short. I had tried to be an island (which, as we know, no man is), and had ended up with a life lesson on how teamwork makes the dream work.
Communities emotionally (and, in some cases, physically) sustain us as humans; we developed group living arrangements (interestingly, pods, not couples) around fifty-two million years ago. It’s not hard to see why – communities are able to help address the needs of the community’s members in a way that individuals could never do for themselves. Whether it’s having divisions of labor to make sure that everyone has something to eat while a fire is being built and children are being tended to, or communal labor to help raise a structure or create a location for everyone to poop, many hands do, in fact, make light work. There’s more benefit to communities than just what services they provide – communities provide us with crowds of cheering faces when we accomplish personal goals, as well as words of comfort when we suffer horrible losses. They provide us with ideas when we’re stumped on how to get our baby to go to sleep, and assurance that it’s not just us who are having issues with potty training our toddler.
Communities center us in our worlds and give emotional, physical, and even spiritual support when we can’t provide those things for ourselves. Each of us has a desire to know and understand others like us. This desire is as innate and as important, I would argue, as eating, sex, or any other mammalian drive we’re born with. This book focuses on how to find (or, if necessary, build) a community of other ethically non- monogamous folx so you too can satisfy that internal desire. It will go into detail about why community is important, how to find that community, and what some good features (and warning signs) are for any community you’re considering joining. I’ll also cover the concept of what communities empower us to do, as well as how to leave a community when you know it’s time to go…as well as some other tidbits and related items along the way.
This isn’t a how-to book on polyamory; while I may write a book someday about my fourteen year-and-counting journey through polyamory, there have already been many excellent books written about individual/small group dynamics in poly. Nobody needs to (or, likely, wants to) hear any more rehashed perspectives on that topic from yet another cis-het white guy. If you’re looking for a book about how to poly, may I suggest More than Two by Eve Rickert and Franklin Veaux; or, better yet, Polysecure by Jessica Fern? They’re likely sitting in front of you if you’ve picked this up in a bookstore, and definitely available if you’re using that large clearinghouse in the cloud (with free two-day shipping!)
I genuinely hope you enjoy reading this book; this book is for everyone who’s been struggling to find their community of freaks and weirdos; that community of people you can laugh your hardest with and cry the loudest with. Your people. The people you’d like to spend time with around a campfire, even if you don’t bring them back to your tent. The people who make our lives vastly more colorful and complete than we ever thought could happen. Let’s go build some campfires and find them, shall we?
