Column: Tales From Exit 22

There is nothing like a hike through poison ivy.

I was in the poison ivy league. It was nice to know the poison ivy was there, in case I ran out of toilet paper.

I had been bitten by the camping bug and a number of other bugs.

I started my journey in Virgelle, Mont. There was very little there there. It had a population of two and a severe shortage of convenience stores.

I was on a canoeing, hiking, and camping trip. I was following the journey of Lewis and Clark — Jerry Lewis and Dick Clark.

One morning, my tent tipped over. Antelope don’t always watch where they’re going. A beaver attacked my canoe. I curled into a ball as if a bear had mugged me. It made paddling difficult. All hiking trails went uphill eventually. I missed my toaster. Dave Barry wrote that camping is nature’s way of promoting the motel industry.

I encountered excessive gravity as I pitched my tent (not off a cliff) at the Slaughter River Landing along the Missouri River. The mosquitoes were so thick, they made a shadow. I didn’t use mosquito netting. If I needed mosquitoes, I caught them by hand.

I chose my campsite as carefully as John Wayne had, as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, when he said, while lying on the ground after falling from his horse, “We’ll camp here.”

I used my Swiss Navy knife with a chainsaw blade and canoe paddle to gather wood. Lint from my navel made a dandy fire starter, but next time, I’ll remove the lint from my navel before applying the match. I threw dried cow chips into the fire. Cow chips are not just for dipping. I love the smell of burning cow chips. Otherwise, the only thing I smelled would have been me. It’s OK to stink like a sack of armpits when camping. Insect spray replaces showers. I could tell directions by the moss growing on my body. I camp until my clothes could have walked home.

I turned my tent out to graze while I hunkered down by the campfire. I’ve learned that no matter how cold it is, I should never sit on a campfire. While munching on lichen, I discovered that shoelaces, when cooked over an open fire, pass as high fiber beef jerky.

I crawled into the tent with an “Uff!” That’s what an exhausted Minnesotan says when he’s too tired to say “Uffda.” I was a spent gent in a lent tent. I used an inflatable sleeping bag pad to keep me from feeling as if I had slept on a stump. I fluffed up the ground before crawling into my sleeping bag (it’s important to extinguish a sleeping bag before going to sleep) and as a leaking air mattress hissed like a snake, I waited for Morpheus.

Have you ever tried to sleep with the feeling that someone is watching you?

I grabbed my flashlight and shined it toward the roof of my tent. A tent that had nearly collapsed when night fell. There were bat-shaped silhouettes there. They were that shape because they were bats. They were the size of Bella Lugosi with the wingspan of a pelican. The top of my tent had become a landing strip for bats. I know they were just trying to get by, but I poked the tent with the flashlight, startling the bats into flight. They took my intrusion into their lives poorly and retaliated. They spent the night making as much noise as they could while pooping on my tent. I pushed an imaginary chest of drawers against the tent flap.

I grew up in a Batt house. I live in a Batt Cave. I like bats. They don’t give me butterflies in my stomach. Grace on the wing, bats are mammals capable of powered flight. Flying squirrels are merely gliders. Bats attack insects, not people. Bats eat what bugs them. They don’t tangle themselves in our hair. Why would they do that? Bats are effective predators of night-flying insects, including many that damage agricultural crops and forests. Crop damage and pesticide use would increase without bats.

I had placed my tent in the middle of a bat convention. Bats flew in and bats flew out. They made approximately 147 forays per hour, snagging beetles like a centerfielder snags fly balls. Each made a pound of sound, chatting about what it had caught. The chattering kept me awake.

The night was half-sleeplessness and half-bats, but I endured.

There’s no crying in camping.

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.