Not only did I buy a kayak, I even bought a tiny travel trailer to go with it. Were these purchases the result of a mid-life crisis? Possibly. I just turned 49 years old, and if I plan on living to be 100, one could say I’m getting very close to mid-life. 

The travel trailer I bought a few weeks ago is only 16 feet long. It’s tiny. It looks like a toy version of the real thing, like a model the trailer salesman would have sitting on the corner of his desk. “Here’s the storage door,” he’d say, tapping on it with the tip of his finger. “This one doesn’t open, but the real one does. You’re going to finance with us, correct?”  

Even though it looks like a toy, the company that manufactured it managed to stuff all of the truly important trailer things in it (like a toilet and air conditioning for example). If a trailer did not have those two luxuries when I was shopping for one, I walked away. I love camping, but my years of sleeping in a sleeping bag and a tent are long gone.

I have a vivid memory of camping with my dad and a friend so many years ago. It was during my awkward middle school years. I can still see it in my mind. I was on a hillside, staring down through the trees at our campsite. Not far behind our tent was a shimmering, clear mountain lake. It was a gorgeous scene, what my dad would call God’s country. And it really was God’s country, but the only reason I remember this so clearly is not because of the beauty of the nature that surrounded me. Rather, it’s because nature was, at that very moment, calling. The tight, uncomfortable grinding in my belly meant only one thing. I knew my bowels were creating more than a memory. They didn’t care that I was miles and miles from anything resembling a restroom.

Which is why in this memory I am squatting precariously next to a tree with my pants pooled around my ankles. I am holding on to a branch with one hand and leaning as far back as possible to avoid any collateral damage to those pants of mine. My dad had taught me that the easiest way to accomplish this often unavoidable task was to sit on a log with your rear hanging over the edge. Even though I nodded my head when he described the maneuver, I knew that my fear of spiders would make his suggestion an impossibility. There was no way I would sit my pale skinned backside on what was certain to be a spider infested log in the wilderness. 

So there I was, squatting as low as my skinny legs would allow and staring down the hill at our campsite and the beautiful scenery. My dad was tidying things up at the camp and my friend was tossing a fishing line into that pristine lake. And all I could think was this – Please don’t look up here. Please. Eye contact at a moment like this would be more than I can bear. I’d walked as far away from camp as my courage would allow. Far enough that nobody at camp would hear what I was doing, but not so far that they couldn’t hear me screaming. 

My thighs were as white as the belly of a fish in the sun and they were killing me. I was gripping the tree branch so hard that my hand hurt. And I was sweating now. The way my heart was racing, you would have thought I’d hiked all the way to that tree in this squatted position with my pants already around my ankles. By the time nature was almost done calling, my aching thighs were trembling so intensely that my shoes were kicking up dust. When I finally stood and pulled my pathetic, dusty pants back up, I vowed to just hold it next time. No amount of relief was worth what I had just been through.

This memory is exactly why my brand new, tiny trailer has a toilet. It has plenty of other things, but the toilet is my favorite of them all. When it came to the trailer, I was looking for nothing but the best. The same cannot be said for the kayak. 

I bought a remarkably cheap kayak because I’d already spent all my money on the trailer with a toilet. The kayak is called a “Challenger” because that is exactly what it does to you. It challenges you. It fits inside of a suitcase sized bag and has to be inflated before every use. It’s got room for one passenger, and I’m ashamed to admit that the kayak’s published weight limit is nearly reached with only me sitting in it. I’m working on that, though. 

Last week, I took the kayak on its maiden voyage in my sister’s pool. I wanted to simulate a real life voyage, so I even wore my life jacket. My goal was to see if I was even capable of getting in the kayak. The first time I lowered myself into the kayak, carefully it seemed to me, the kayak  immediately flipped over and spit me out. Even getting in the thing from the stability of land was a challenge.

Then, for a solid hour, I practiced getting myself back in the kayak in the event that it capsized, which is something I now know the Challenger wants to do on a regualr basis. I’d paddle my way to the deep end and then lean just a little bit to the side. The Challenger would immediately flip over and dump me into the water. The amount of coordination and strength it takes for a man of my size to get safely back in an inflatable kayak is astonishing. I was so sore the next day. But I learned the lessons I needed to learn. I’ve got a mental checklist for survival now for when the inevitable occurs sometime in the near future. Step number one is to not let go of the paddle. The rest of the steps are too painful to go into right now. 

I’ve got a trailer and a kayak now, and I’m pretty sure I know how to use them both. It’s exciting because now I can venture out to the kind of places I love, and I get to take my new camera with me. Photography is a new thing for me and something I’m enjoying far more than I thought I would. Mountains and rivers and lakes all await. I need to spend some more time in the kind of places my dad loved to be. Oh, how I loved to be in those places with him. God’s country is calling and now, because of a toilet, I have no fear when nature does the same. God’s country is calling, and I am listening.