The Detroit Free Press ran an article last week entitled, “Incompatible camping couples find way to keep peace” about couples who don’t share a love for the great outdoors. Such a disharmony in outdoor values can be tricky to navigate in a marriage, especially if your husband happens to be an avid outdoorsman, as the article reveals at the beginning:
Peggy DuFresne does not enjoy eating with a spork. Or sleeping in a tent. Or bugs. Or smelly feet.
“I like the outdoors and being outside and all that, but I am a very light sleeper, and I hear everything at night. I hear everyone snoring. I can’t get comfortable in the sleeping bag. I’m always the one who gets wet,” says DuFresne, 55, of Clarkston.
This would be no big deal — except her husband is Jim DuFresne, a camping and backpacking expert. In 2005, he authored a definitive guide to Michigan’s best campgrounds. He writes Lonely Planet backpacking guides from remote Alaska and wild New Zealand.
According to the article, over 70% of people who camp go with their friends, while only 58% go with their spouses. Apparently, couple camping schisms don’t fall down traditional gender lines either. The piece includes a number of men who are less than enthusiastic about the outdoors, yet married to women who are always juiced to get out in nature.
Do you have and your partner have camping beef? Is one of you constantly gung-ho about spending the night outdoors, while the other would prefer to be snuggling up at the Red Roof Inn.
If you’re still trying to gauge your outdoor compatibility, the article included a camping compatibility test that is below. Take it with your significant other to find out if you’ll are a match made in camping heaven or not.
More Details: How do you and your significant other match up?
Are you camping compatible with your spouse or partner? Take this 10-question quiz to find out. Each of you should take the test separately and then compare answers. Choose the sentence of each pair that best applies to you:
1. I don’t mind eating with a spork.
2. My idea of roughing it is a sleeping bag under the sky.
3. I’m pretty good at setting up a tent.
4. I like s’mores.
5. Mosquitoes don’t bother me.
6. I can answer nature’s call anywhere, whether in the woods or a latrine.
7. I sleep great when I’m camping. It’s peaceful.
8. Camping isn’t work; it’s fun and life-affirming.
9. I know the next line in the song that goes, “The other day … I met a bear … out in the woods …”
10. I hope camping is always part of my life.
1. I don’t do sporks.
2. My idea of roughing it is no cable TV.
3. I’m pretty good at choosing a pillow style in a hotel.
4. S’mores are overrated.
5. Mosquitoes eat me alive.
6. Latrines are disgusting, and the ground probably has poison ivy. I’ll hold it.
7. I can’t sleep when camping — all those snores, noises and cold.
8. Camping is just one tedious chore after another.
9. Nope, sorry, that song doesn’t ring a bell.
10. I am more content with my life if I don’t go camping.
Scoring:
7-10 identical answers: Congratulations! You are camping compatible — you both love it or hate it.
4-6 identical answers: There’s still hope. You may be able to talk your sweetie into camping — or abandoning it.
0-3 identical answers: Uh, oh. You are Camping Incompatible. Luckily, it’s not fatal. Best solution: Camping fans should brainwash their children so they become camping companions.
By the way, the last line in the song verse is, “a-way out there.”
And also, question 4 is a red herring — nobody hates s’mores.
1 Comment
Hi I love camping my whole whanau do we go for about a month out the beach, My kids use to hate it 5 years ago but now they want to set up their own camp and of course next to us. Oh don’t worry we have had our moments rain, holes in the tent, winds that were scary as, but hey that is all part and parcel of camping. We love it because you can’t get a signal out there and our teenage daughter has to talk to us which is awesome. She loves camping she doesn’t say but has her own car and always comes out lol.