If you have not read Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, pack it in your backpack this summer.  Peruse it in the Michigan Woods, or on a white water rafting vacation, or Yellowstone Park – wherever.  But don’t read it while you are drinking aperitifs in a cafe, because your laughter will send the drink fizzing out of your nostrils. And don’t read it at your posh relatives’ elegant McMansion, because they will press all the posh new literary novels and biographies on you, and not understand your silly book.

Three Men in a Boat is an English classic, published in 1889, so it doesn’t come up in conversation much anymore . In this comic travel novel, Jerome K. Jerome, the author and narrator, decides to go boating with his two hypochondriac friends, for the sake of their health, and brings the dog. And, if I may say so, their adventures are often what used to be called “madcap.”

The guys ponder the question of camping vs. hotels.

Should we ‘camp out’ or sleep at inns?” 

George and I were for camping out.  It would be so wild and free, so patriarchal like.

The first night is dreadful. They hadn’t counted on heavy rain.

[The tent] is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down on you, and clings round your head and makes you mad. The rain is pouring steadily all the time.  It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather; in wet, the task becomes herculean.  Instead of helping you, it seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool.  Just as you get your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end and spoils it all.

“Here! What are you up to?” you call out.

“What are you up to?” he retorts. “Leggo, can’t you?”

“Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong, you stupid ass!” you shout.

And on and on. Finally they get the tent up. 

Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper.  The bread is two-thirds rainwater, the beefsteak pie is exceedingly rich in it, and the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with it to make soup.

They do get the hang of boating and camping, eventually.

Left: Taken in a photo machine of spouse and me on the boardwalk, during a break from camping, (late 80s).

We go camping, and sometimes enjoy it. Some people are natural campers, some are not. Each day of primitive camping (pit toilets, no showers, perhaps a trickle of water from a single faucet, but fortunately at least we’re by a lake) refreshes and delights my husband; each day of primitive camping makes me listless, cranky, and eager to return to civilization.

He is an experienced camper, and so he spoils me. He makes oatmeal and coffee on the primus stove and lights the lantern at night.  During a dreadful storm, I had to lie inside the tent with my limbs splayed to the four corners to keep it from blowing away while he secured it from the outside with some peg combination or other he designed on the spot.

Next time I go camping I’m taking Jerome K. Jerome and any comic novels or silly travel books you recommend. I do think I might need a dog, too.

Because believe it or not, I have the urge to go camping.