Rootless and Portable: A Thought Experiment: Fulltimer Tenting

 

My Oliver Lee State Park campsite, outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. September 2012.

I've flirted with the idea of becoming a full-timer for more than 10 years, always in a modest arrangement. A smallish camper or, more recently, ChezP.

In the past five years, I've gone on innumerable video tours of folks living out of their cars. I've imagined how I might make it work for me at some future point. Over time, I concluded that full-timing out of my car was not a good fit for me. Too cramped.

But in the past year, I toyed with the possibility of full-timing in a tent (with ChezP as my back-up when inclement weather dictates). 

A tent is roomier. Living in a tent also frees up one's vehicle for transportation.  

What's out there to inform full-time tentfolk on the practicalities?

The resources I seek address my specific vision of tenting full time for up to a year: 

• Relocation every three to four weeks for new scenery, geographic interests, special events, or proximity to an expensive tourist destination
• Although wifi welcome, I don't envision tenting full time as a digital nomad who requires daily, robust internet access, as this would seriously restrict my freedom of movement
  
• Mild climate is a requisite
• I don't want to tent for three or more weeks in places where fear of bears (or mountain lions!) are going to keep me awake, like here (oh my!)
  

Below are some sources that give me actionable intel on:

• Practical realities of living full-time in a tent (power, water, location, weather, food, etc.)
• Gear (tents, kitchens, power, furniture)
  
• How to stay warm or cool; how to stay dry
• How to mitigate invasions from water, insects and other small critters, and wind

 Living in a Tent Full Time? - TMWE S4E22

 

On Wikihow: How to Live in a Tent (With Pictures). There are useful relevant how-to articles on the page, as well, along with references. Simple, clear, very practical. 

From One Crazy House: 15 Tent Hacks to Make Your Tent the Comfiest Place on Earth. (Note: Manage your expectations, of course, but there are some good hacks here that were new to me.)

From Mossy Oak: Camping in the Rain: 7 Tips for Keeping Your Tent Dry

 

Source: ScoutmasterCG

 

 

Portable: My Tent

 

My tent at Arrow Rock State Park, Missouri. May 2018.

There's nothing particularly wowza about my tent, but I'm writing about it because Sinh, my Vietnamese student who I met up with in Las Vegas in early 2020, is in the market for tents, and we talked a bit about mine and how I like it. He asked me how long I've had it, and I had to think about that. Years. Years. But how many years?

My daughter and I took a road trip to Alaska in the second half of the 90s, and I did not have the tent then. We borrowed a tent from one of my cousins. 

I did not have the tent when I decided to pass the turn of the millennium in Organ Pipe National Monument in December 1999/January 2000. That tent was a geriatric pup tent, basically. The Y2K trip was my second solo road trip.

I did have the tent on my solo trip out west in September 2007, where I camped near Sedona and at the Grand Canyon. I wrote about this trip here and here. 

My tent at Grand Canyon. September 2007.

 

So we'll go with September 2007 - I've had my tent for at least 13 years. It's a Eureka Tetragon 8.

I said there's nothing wowza about my tent, but that doesn't mean I don't love it. Here's why:

• It's easy and relatively fast for me to put up by myself.
• Roomy!!!! It's a Law of the Universe that when a manufacturer says a tent is a two-person, three-person, or whatever-person tent, you actually need to subtract at least one human from that count. Unless, of course, you love to sleep in a tent like a pup in a newborn litter, with all of your gear outside. So, I think my tent is supposed to be a four-person tent, but it is ideally built for two. 
• A lot of pockets that suspend from three walls.
• A loop at the ceiling peak from which I can hang a lantern or keys or whatever. 
• The door is off-center - toward the right- so I've got a more spacious living area in the left side of the tent.
  
• I can almost completely stand up  in my tent. 
  

Related posts on tent camping

 2018: Missouri: Arrow Rock Camping, Part 1: Cold Coffee and Some Walks 

2017: Arkansas: Lake Catherine State Park, Part 1: Nostalgia

2017: Texas: Big Bend National Park, including a video of a tarantula checking out my tent

2012: New Mexico: Oliver Lee Memorial State Park: My Temporary Home

 

Tarantula on my tent, Big Bend National Park, Texas. September 2017.

In a post about tents and camping, how can one not include something about ..... bears? 

From A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson, about that night in his tent 

From the hilarious Hairpin interview with Molly Langmuir on her solo hike in the Tetons, where every moment was consumed by the fear of bears. Below, an excerpt: 

"The ranger who gave the canister you’re supposed to keep all your food in and leave 100 yards away from your tent at night explained that even if you drink an Emercen-C in your Nalgene you should put it in your canister, and that was actually what put me over the edge. Because if bears can smell an Emercen-C in a closed Nalgene, they were clearly a sort of advanced supercreature that could definitely sniff out the crumbs I’d likely drop on myself at some point. Plus, for all I remembered the last time I had used my sleeping bag I had been binging on beef jerky right next to a barbecue smoker. Also I didn’t know how far 100 yards was."

I remember solo camping at Padre Island National Seashore over the Christmas-New Year week one year, where I'd looked forward to actually camping on the beach .... until the campground host told me of the recent camper whose tent had been invaded by the local coyotes one night while he slept! That asshole. By whom, I mean, the campground host. 

Although I pitched my tent next to a group of young, robust Russian men, working in Dallas, I slept that night with a knife in my hand, hyper-alert at every tiny snap of my tent wall from a breeze, thinking of those coyotes. 

 

Arkansas: Lake Catherine State Park, Part 5: Engineering

Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas. October 2017.

October 2017
On the way to Missouri
Lake Catherine State Park


Tuesday evening brought a couple of challenges to my little campsite kingdom.

First there was the rain.

I'd chosen a level site for my tent construction.

What I discovered, however, was the lack of drainage for when the rain fell, and fell, and fell.

I found myself digging storm trenches around and away from my tent.

Water diversion, Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas. October 2017.

On one hand, this exercise caused no little consternation. Sleeping in a sodden tent is no fun, even though, fortunately, I could sleep off the floor, atop the springy cot my nonagenarian aunt gave me a few years ago. Because I would be leaving the next morning, it probably meant I'd have to pack a muddy, damp tent.

On the other hand, there was something satisfying about having to eyeball a problem, analyze how to fix it, and then execute on the plan, with adjustments on the fly. It reminds me of what an algebra-loving acquaintance told me once: "Every day is solving for x."

To divert the water from the tent, I had to dig trenches and clear debris from the corners of the railroad-tie-built platform so the water had a place to drain into, down, and away from the platform altogether.

Not having a shovel, I used the sturdy cap/cup to my large coffee thermos for the digging, and a knife and stick for the debris removal.

My next door neighbors, RVing it in a vintage Class B Pleasure Way, brought over a camp shovel for me to use in my excavations! They'd bought it awhile back and never used it. This helped a lot.

Water diversion, Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas. October 2017.

 Second, the uninvited guest. 

A goddamn wood roach or some such invaded my tent right before I went to bed. I tried to trap it so I could, if possible, scoot it out of my tent, and if not possible, kill it, but the damn thing eluded me. I do not like unpredictable strangers crawling about in my bedroom at night.

Eventually, I just had to live with the situation and hope it didn't surprise me by flying into my face or ear or start crawling up my arm or something while I slept. **Shudders.**

It didn't.