Happy campers

If you haven’t pitched a tent for the summer camping season, don’t worry. There’s still time. Time, that is, to get a mortgage for your tent. Tents have gone up-scale.

I noticed this a few months ago when the camping-season catalogs started arriving in the mail. It’s not even remarkable for a tent to cost $300 or $400 these days. I’m not saying you have to spend that, mind you, so I’m not trying to rain on the dreams of aspiring Scouts. Still, it’s hard not to notice some of the price tags this time around.

The Wall Street Journal noticed, too. Its Aug. 2-Aug. 3 weekend edition featured several expensive tents, “Condos for the Campsite,” as it said, a couple of which were in the $1,200 to $1,500 range. The article paid due heed to the ease of setting up the tents, and that is an important thing to consider.

Those kind of prices are a bit juicy for me, but my wife and I spent about $200 on a tent a few years ago. At the time, I thought it was the world’s most extravagant expenditure. But it held the promise of great comfort, allowing us to stand up inside, which is a lot easier than wriggling around like an earthworm when you want to get dressed or get ready for sleep.

Unfortunately, I did not pay due heed to the ease of setting up the tent. I still remember the first time we took it out. Getting it set up was a cross between solving the Rubik’s Cube and erecting the Empire State Building. And that was in full daylight. In dim light, nobody would stand a chance with that thing.

As for the second time we took it out, well, there was no second time. Once was enough.

Egads, how did things get so complicated?

I clearly remember when my pals and I were school-aged. We’d just plop a sleeping bag on the ground and that was good enough. But the passing years have a way of nudging you towards more creature comforts even if you’re resisting the process.

And that process, well, it does roll on. Two couples of my acquaintance just bought unobtrusive little “pop-up” travel trailers that are essentially tents on wheels; they sort of fold open. One couple tows it behind a compact car and reports no problems with that.

As cute and comfortable as these things are, though, the two examples I saw cost about $10,000.

Of course, if you want to start piling up digits and commas and dollar signs, there are full-blown “recreational vehicles” that can cost over $100,000.

But I’ve gotten pretty far afield from the tent topic. Let me return to it with this observation: When I was a kid, camping was regarded as very much a middle-brow endeavor; it was nothing to be ashamed of, but it was probably not something that the country club set was interested in.

But when the Wall Street Journal starts writing about fancy tents that cost over a thousand bucks, we’re not talking about a middle-brow industry. And when the normal, everyman catalogs I get have tents that are typically a few hundred bucks, we’re still not talking about a middle-brow industry.

We’re talking up-scale. That’s what we’re talking about.

In fact, the last few people I encountered while camping had advanced degrees in professional fields. Reciprocally, however, having run into me, those same people will arrive at the opposite conclusion, citing me as evidence that the most plebeian of elements have now taken afield.

Where, there I go again, lowering property values and screwing up the demographics. But on a demographic note, I’ll mention that just about all the camping enthusiasts I know are couples and/or families.

The ideal situation, which I have yet to realize, is to be of comfortable means in some beautiful stretch of the remote countryside. In this situation camping would be superfluous, since peace, quiet, and nature would already be at hand.

For now, though, the only thing at hand is another losing lottery ticket, which, once again, dashes my hopes of securing a peaceful life in the woods.

So maybe I will buy one of those $1,500 tents. That’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to having a country estate.