“Bitch-Slapped by Mother Nature”

told my girlfriend Liza that I was going camping for a week with some friends at a remote nature preserve in the mountains of Tennessee, where there would be no modern conveniences. She peered at me over the rims of her geek-chic glasses. “Now, why the hell would you want to do that?” she said.

Liza is from New York City, and I take great pleasure in slathering her with folksiness whenever I can. I do this because when she talks to me about “last season,” I know that she’s probably not referring to the Farmer’s Almanac. By shoving my Midwestern-native status in her face from time to time, letting a little Fargo creep into my voice after a glass of chardonnay, I figure I’m doing her a favor. It makes her feel like more of an outsider, which is secretly what all transplanted Manhattanites love to feel like.

“Liza!” I said. “It’s a vacation! It’s an adventure! Hiking! S’mores around the campfire! Doesn’t it sound like fun?”

“No,” she replied. “But you tell me all about it when you get back.”

So OK, Liza. Here it is in black and white. It was one of the most trying, difficult weeks I ever had. I was bitch-slapped by Mother Nature. I thought that because I’d watched six seasons of Survivor, I had learned how to survive. All it really meant was that I could operate a television set.

The thing was, I may not be a hardened urbanite, but I’m not what most people would call “outdoorsy,” either. My nifty new hiking boots had never ventured beyond the rough-and-tumble terrain of the Lake Calhoun footpath. I borrowed a tent and lantern from my pal Jim, who gave a low whistle when I admitted I’d never gone camping before. “Well,” he said, loading the gear into my station wagon, “you should be fine. The tent is orange, so rescuers can find you.” But if the bears found me first in my DayGlo dome, they might just think, “Yummy candy shell.”

“At least you’re not going in the winter,” Jim said, slamming the hatch door. “I won’t go winter camping anymore. I only went once. Here’s the thing about winter camping. You pretty much just add the words ‘OR ELSE I’LL DIE!’ to the end of every sentence. As in, ‘Oh! I’d better get that fire started.’ Or, ‘I’ve got to get my tent set up.’ ”

Jim saw my eyes widen and hurried on. “You should be fine, though. If the weather holds out.”

The first day, it drizzled for ten hours straight. When my companions and I got sick of hiding in our tents, we huddled by the fire in our ponchos, with gray skies spitting all over us, and tried to make merry by opening a bottle of wine. I found that if I am drinking outside, and it is raining, and there is no live band playing, I don’t feel festive. I feel like Boxcar Willie.

I was starting to smell like him, too. The park ranger had told us to refrain from using perfumed soaps because it said to the bears, “I am here.” I quickly developed a ripe musk that a male Sasquatch might mistake for a female in heat. I imagined trying to let him down easy. “I’m sorry, Bigfoot, it’s totally not you. You’re great; it’s just that I’m married.”

Once the rain stopped, we had to go into town for dry matches. Only two days into my back-to-nature adventure, and I was itching to buy something. Anything. Because buying things makes me feel like a civilized person, a part of a larger whole, a world where printing presses exist, and frappuccinos. But the pickins were slim. The gift section of the convenience store offered jars of jelly with little pillows of gingham cloth covering the lids, pickled okra, and brown suede knee-high moccasins (the sort favored by Fleetwood Mac fans worldwide). There was also a broad selection of knobby, wooden walking sticks, for that stylin’ “woodland pimp” look. The cashier was wearing an angler’s vest with more pockets and flaps on it than an Advent calendar. He sure didn’t smell like he had any chocolate on him, though.

I didn’t go away empty-handed; at least I picked up some toilet paper. But when there is no toilet I guess you just call it “rump paper.” If you had told me a year earlier that I would be digging a hole in the ground to crap in, I would have wondered what apocalyptic sect you belonged to.

So, Liza, because I know these words will ring sweetly in your ears, and because I believe in admitting it when it’s true:

You were right.