Is it too cold to go camping yet? It’s too cold, right? I know some of you outdoorsy people who own North Face fleece jackets (and actually use them in the woods) will say “Hell no!” because you like to camp all year long. You probably camp in the winter. You probably camp naked in January, and you know how to stay warm by burying yourself in snow and pine branches, sharing the body heat of several raccoons you humanely captured and then befriended just like our noble neighbors to the north – the Eskimos – who have done for over five hundred thousand years.

    I know nothing about the outdoors. Or animals. Or history.

    I really want to go camping. I haven’t gone a camping trip since I was, like, 12, and you really can’t call that camping. I went to a campground with my aunt and cousins and there was an outdoor swimming pool and some pinball machines. Basically, we paid money to sleep in a tent 40 feet from a snack shop/canoe rental outfit. But hey, I didn’t shower and there was a small campfire involved. You can’t argue with that.

    Swimming pools and snack shops are not what I want. Everyone’s always talking about the Chippewa Valley’s natural beauty, and I want get out there in it, man. I want trees and rivers and animals and seclusion and non-hot-dog-based meals cooked over a fire I ignited myself from banging rocks together over dry sticks or by using matches pulled from an outdoorsy-looking box.

    And what about fishing? People fish while they camp, right? Of course they do – unless all those Hardy Boys adventure books lied to me, in which case, Fraklin W. Dixon can go screw himself. You shouldn’t mess with little boys’ heads like that, you sick jerk. But if I can believe in Mr. Dixon’s well-crafted paragraphs, I’d like to go fishing whilst on my theoretical camping trip. Fly fishing. I want to whip a giant, fuzzy lure back and forth over my head for no apparent reason and then catch a trout big enough to feed my whole family without risk of parasitic infection.