It takes a lot of work to relax

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

It takes a lot of work to relax.

When I was in my 20s, packing for a camping trip or a weekend away was a pretty simple affair. I’d pick a few shirts and pants off my bedroom floor, sniff, shrug and toss them into a duffel bag. Then grab a couple clean pairs of underwear and socks, maybe a book or two, and a pack of smokies to cook for dinner. Then it was out the door and into nature. If I left something behind, I’d do without it.

The older we get, however, the more things we have. You just can’t go camping unless you have that special USB battery charging device, or a string of twinkly lights to hang around the tent, or perhaps a three-course gourmet meal wrapped in tinfoil to be prepared over the fire.

While I relish my time outdoors, there are some weekends when I want to go camping, but am too lazy to endure the frantic hours-long packing extravaganza it takes to extricate myself and my partner from the world so we can sit by a fire all night and sleep on the ground like animals. (And we don’t even have kids! I don’t know how you do it, parents.)

Last weekend was one of those weekends. Thankfully, Cadie did most of the work and filled a cooler with healthy, delicious meals and snacks. Another cooler contained our beers, radlers, sparkling waters, and a bottle of Casamigos tequila and mixers.

The plan was to sail our boat across the lake and camp offshore — one of our favorite summertime activities. Except, as is often the case with boats, there was an issue and the sailboat wasn’t ready to use for another week. 

Without missing a beat, we skipped to Plan B, which was to load up the canoe and head over to paddle the Thorofare to Upper Priest Lake to experience that lake before the summer tourists made it unbearable. 

“After all that preparation, we have to go camping,” Cadie said, thinking back on her Herculean effort to prepare the cooler and pack the car.

Ninety minutes of driving later, we pulled up to Lionhead to unload the canoe and begin our weekend adventure; except, the moment we exited the car, a cloud of mosquitoes descended on us, attaching to our legs and necks to suck our blood and leave us scratching for days afterward. Having just gotten over my last bout of dozens of bites after paddling Pack River the weekend before, I was having none of it. Neither was Cadie.

“Abort! Abort!” she yelled, dashing back to the car with her hands over her head after only 10 seconds in the fresh air. I had only loosened the rear strap of the canoe by that time, so I quickly re-ratcheted the straps and also fled to safety.

There we sat, feeling like fools. We drove an hour-and-a-half only to cancel the mission mere seconds after stepping outside. What’s worse, I remembered that when we stopped for a bathroom break at Coolin earlier, a couple saw our canoe and told me that the mosquitoes were bad on the Thorofare. We could’ve saved ourselves an hour of driving if we’d heeded their warning.

With Plans A and B both duds, we started the sad, defeated drive back to Sandpoint. We didn’t want to swat mosquitoes all night, so we put our heads together and thought about options. 

Cadie’s parents moved to Dover a few years ago and purchased a boat. They had yet to return to town for the season, and were always cool with us using the boat, so we figured it would only take an hour or two of prep to tow the vessel from storage and cobble together a Plan C out of the wreckage of our weekend. Much to our surprise, the boat had already been summerized and was waiting at the slip in Dover.

Plan C succeeded.

An hour later, we were moored offshore, drinking tequila and ginger ales and watching the afternoon turn into evening as the boat gently rocked on the gentle waves. Cadie plunked a song on her ukulele and I read a book with the sun in my face. All the work, struggle, driving and planning was finally in the past. 

We had reached the present.

Even better, going ashore we were delighted to find there were no mosquitoes waiting to pounce. We strung up our hammocks and slept under the stars, letting the chaos of the world wash from our bodies, finally free to experience life al fresco.

It takes a lot of work to relax. Sometimes you have to make contingency plans for your backup plans. But nothing beats waking up beside Lake Pend Oreille and watching the sunrise slowly turn into sunset.

It’s livin’.