A Thoreau-ly Relaxing Weekend

The trouble with having a secluded and difficult-to-find camping spot is that every time I myself try to find it, I have difficulty. I tramp around the dunes, looking for my little stand of pine and poplar rooted in sandy soil, sweat pouring off my forehead, soaking my shirt, and even soaking the padded straps and hip-belt of my 60-pound frame pack with all the gear I require for a weekend—or a week—but, eventually, I find it. And I am never so happy as when I have set up my camp there.

Everything I need I have carried in strapped to my back. I could set up “home” anywhere, and I usually choose this spot, about a mile further south along the Lake Michigan shoreline than most people camp, in a sparse copse of jack pine, the silvery, uprooted tree stump exactly where I left it from the last time I was there, about three feet from where I will build my fire. The ashes of my last fire are never visible. I drown and then bury them, hoping to leave the spot as pristine as when I found it. The only evidence that anyone uses the spot at all is difficult to find: a few scattered bits of deadwood, no thicker than my forearm, that I neatly sawed into nine-inch lengths and camouflaged in tufts of dune grass because I never got around to burning them. And, of you look carefully at the thinner end of the stump, you will see another sawed log, about twice as thick as the others, about six inches long, propping it up, making an almost level, single-person bench.

Soon, I have my tent pitched next to one of the few poplar trees in this wide and sandy grove, my pack hanging on one of the pine trees, my food suspended from a high branch to keep it away from hungry and mischievous animals, and, after a trip over the short barrier dune and into the lake, two collapsible buckets filled with water that I will later filter for drinking. The breeze, when it comes, makes a soft rattle in the poplar leaves, and carries the sweet, soft susurration of Lake Michigan surf to my ears.

Sometimes, during the day, if I climb the short barrier dune between my campsite and the lake, I can see others, in pairs or small groups, rarely more than ten people total, often fewer than five, swimming in the lake or playing on the beach. But toward sunset and after, when gray twilight and then star-pierced darkness drapes across the sky, I feel I am the only person for a hundred miles. It’s not true. There are others within a half-mile, usually; certainly within a mile. But it’s that feeling that counts: utterly alone, reliant only on myself, accountable only to myself, needing only myself and the Boy Scout motto for company: Be Prepared; and I am.

During the days, I hike all over the dunes, all through the forest further inland. I’ll hike to Big Sable Point Lighthouse and into Ludington State Park. I’ll converse with complete strangers about the weather, the trails, the park, the view from the top of one of the few lighthouses on Lake Michigan to reach 100 feet (although our shoes, as the helpful informational plaques say, are only 92 feet up). In other words, the weekend as a whole is hardly the exercise in complete solitude I always imagine it will be when I set off from Chicago, city of 3 million people.

But in my campsite, I’m alone, and that’s good enough for me.

Dune grass, waves, and sky

Still point of the turning earth

Thoreau solitude