Within The Woods

See?

Whenever I find myself traveling deep into the remote wilderness, I can’t help but be reminded of the opening of The Shining, complete with crazy helicopter shots and foreboding music. I guess it’s because I assume that as one goes further from tall buildings and coked-out hobos, there is greater the potential for abject terror. Think about it; there aren’t an awful lot of horror movies about people getting chainsawed to death in downtown highrise penthouses. Serial killers and evil spirits, by their nature, seem to like camping about as much as everybody else.

Of course, I’m not actually camping at this point; I’m yurting (a verb that I have reluctantly adopted for convenience’s sake). I’m cohabiting a yurt with The Girlfriend, The Girlfriend’s Father, and The Girlfriend’s Father’s Girlfriend (take notes; this will be on the test) in Cape Lookout State Park, and what I’ve learned so far is that while living in a yurt is not necessarily camping, it comes awfully close.

A yurt is a tent with a stronger skeleton – a circular wooden frame over which thick canvas is draped. This creates a space that is luxuriously large by tent standards and cripplingly small by ordinary building standards. When we first pulled up outside the yurt I remember idly hoping that it would turn out to be bigger than it looked, like some sort of Harry Potter-esque creation, but once we got inside my fears were confirmed: It was a bunk bed, a futon, a table with two chairs, and… Well, did I mention the bunk bed?

Most of all, this has been a vacation from privacy. Not just in the sense that the yurt is a single room with nothing to hide behind when you want to change your clothes or masturbate, either – sitting in the yurt with all the doors and windows closed, you can still hear everything going on outside, just as everyone outside can hear everything inside. This is still tough for me to get the hang of, as I was brought up to believe that any structure larger than a tent is a cone of silence of sorts. However, last night, as I lay awake listening to the tent-dwelling couple in the adjoining campsite have sex, I became acutely aware that I was not in the Portland Metro Area anymore.

Cape Lookout State Park is pretty wonderful, as it’s right close to the beach and the bathroom facilities are fairly close to top notch. The problem is that the closest town is Tillamook, which perfectly fits the bill for the xenophobic small town the teenagers in the horror movie pass through on their way to the wilderness where they get killed. To give you an example of the essence of Tillamook, the “Tillamook Restaurant Guide!!” provided by the chamber of commerce listed Papa Murphy’s and McDonald’s as local restaurants visitors should try.

If you like fine cheese, you may well be aware of Tillamook’s existence thanks to Tillamook Cheese, which is undoubtedly the finest cheese on science’s green Earth. The thing is, that old adage “I like my sausage but I don’t want to see how it’s made” applies here as well. Tillamook is a town of about 4400 people and 25,000 cows, which live in the surrounding pastures. I’d venture that these cows spend about 40% of their lives being milked for the purpose of supplying the local Tillamook Cheese Factory and 90% of their lives moving their bowels, because anywhere you go in or around Tillamook smells like the inside of a barn. If you don’t know what the inside of a barn smells like, you should go to Tillamook and find out – keep in mind, however, that you can always walk out of a crumbling, fetid barn, whereas escape from Tillamook is far more difficult.

This is my third stay in the greater Tillamook County area, and thus it has also been my third visit to the Tillamook Cheese Factory, the local tourist attraction. This was something of an awkward visit for me as The Girlfriend is vegan and the entire factory tour is just a big all-American salute to gluttony, complete with free cheese samples and an ice cream bar. She didn’t seem too bothered, though – probably because the sight of armies of morbidly obese geriatrics frantically waddling through the parking lot in hopes of scoring some free cheese curds is as good an argument against excessive dairy consumption as any PETA campaign.

The yurting expedition is really just a training mission of sorts for my upcoming camping adventure with friends in the Columbia Gorge, which begins tomorrow. Many of the elements are the same – the lack of easily accessible toilets, privacy, or Internet* - but there’s still a certain safety net in the form of a rigidly constructed roof and an actual bed. Also, camping will see the addition of a speedboat and innertube, for which no amount of training can prepare me.

*To that end, this week’s Sunday update will be provided by Mike Whitman, Smoker of Cigarettes.

With that, I’m off to roast some tofu over the fire. If I’m not back by next Wednesday, rest assured that the serial killers got me.

Truman Capps imagines he will soon forget what it’s like to shower.