All I’ve Ever Wanted. Camping and Reading on Summer Vacation

Hi Friends,

It’s been a while.  What have I been up to?  Well, we bought a used pop-up camper in June and we have been out on weekends camping with it since then. We have camped once in our backyard and been on three weekend trips since then. We have visited some Pennsylvania State parks that are new to us and some that we have been to before.

I grew up in western Pennsylvania and camped at many parks in my area but now I live in eastern Pennsylvania so there is plenty of new stuff for me to check out with my family, which is great because I love no crave novelty.

So you could say that this summer, I have been reading and camping, which is funny because this is how I spent great amounts of time during summer breaks  from ages 7 to 17.

So truthfully, I am living the life I always wanted to live, reading and camping.

You see, when I was a child my father was a state park ranger during the summers, while off from his school year teaching job.   He had an interest in visiting other state parks where he did not work, especially parks with nice lake beaches. We often spent his days off, usually Monday and Tuesdays and half of Wednesdays because he mostly worked the 4-12pm shift on workdays, camping as a family in our pop-up camper at Pennsylvania State Parks.

When I was a youth, my parents, but especially,  my mother, would often buy us books while we were out camping or right before we left for camping and I remember spending much time reading at state park beaches or around state park campgrounds.  I also have vivid memories of picking out books at bookstores or from campground store used book boxes and being excited that they had books from my favorite preteen and teen series. 

These days I am reading very little at the campground because I am busy keeping my boys out of trouble, but when I am not camping, I am doing plenty of reading at home.

I am a little proud of myself because I just finished the first entire book that I have read in a while.  It was called The Secret of Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel.  I became intrigued by this book because I heard a brief amount of her interview with Terry Gross on the NPR program Fresh Air before my older son asked me to change the station to something he would like. (Perhaps, Coldplay or Post Malone)

  I knew about Alison Bechdel already because I picked up her book Fun Home at the library before it was a Broadway Musical and kind of a “Big Thing”.  I tried it somewhere around the year 2008.  It wasn’t my thing at the time.  I was also familiar with her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For because it was in an alternative newspaper I used to read in the Catskills but again, it didn’t really pique my interest.

However, I really loved her book The Secret of Superhuman Strength. It is an autobiographical graphic novel (comic) about the author’s lifelong interest in exercise, particularly in terms of outdoors, athletic pursuits.  It also deals with her interest in transcendentalism, transcendentalist authors, Jack Kerouac, Buddist concepts and generally being an introvert and dealing with other people.

Here are a few reasons why I really bonded with this book:

1.  I learned by reading the book that the author, Alison Bechdel, was born and raised in Central, Pennsylvania.  She was raised in Beech Creek, PA which is in Centre County, not far from the town of Loch Haven.  I, too, lived in Centre County at one point in my life. I loved feeling like an insider because I knew about some of the places she mentions.  For example, at one point she referenced the store Appalachian Outdoors which is a great outdoor gear store in State College that my cousin even worked for at one point in her life.
2. Bechdel, majored in art in college but the book really explores her reading interest in eastern philosophy, transcendentalism, and the outdoors.  I, too, walk the line between being an outdoorsy girl who majored in Geoenvionental Studies and a girl who I minored in English in college and has a master’s degree in Library Science.  I was very interested in Transcendentalism, which is a literary movement popular in the 1830’s that focuses on the environment, feminism and inter-connectivity, in my English classes.  Though,  I must confess that I had trouble getting the whole way through Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in college.  I did enjoy dipping my toes into the Transcendentalism waters and always kind of looked up to those writers.  A book that is perennially on my need-to-read list is Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, which is more recent, but kind of akin to the Transcendentist works of the 1800’s.
3. Also I loved that the author, Alison Bechdel really lets the reader into her life.  I am a memoir junkie, I must admit.  I like it when the author is really open about their life in terms of showing their warts and all. It helps me feel like I am getting to the truth of their writing. I like knowing about all the thought process, strange rabbit holes, and life detours she has gone down.  I really related to her struggles with figuring out how to relate to others and figuring out what you are really interested in in life.
4. Like me, Bechdel sounds like a vigorous person who needs a large amount of exercise and activity to be able to do life.  I often feel like I am a border collie who is in need of a task, otherwise I am liable to metaphorically chew up the furniture in my own house.  After reading this book, I feel like I have met someone like myself.
5. Bechdel is also a runner and much like myself, almost needs to run daily to get sleep, relax and in general enjoy life.

So long story short, if you like memoir-type graphic novels about life, exercise, the environment, environmental writers, relationships, eastern philosophy, ageing, and being okay with oneself this might be the book for you.

This summer I plan to continue camping with my family.  I also am currently reading  Allie Brosh’s Solutions and Other Problems.

After that I would like to read Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion because I loved previous books by both of those authors.

I also plan on running more so I can stay sane.

In theory, I am planning on running the Delaware & Lehigh Half Marathon Run/Walk, for the second time,  on Sunday November 7, 2021.  I am registered so I will be doing it, but I am a little daunted with the idea of training for it as of now. I want to improve on my finishing time from two years ago when I ran it.

If you want to read another post about me running Delaware & Lehigh Half Marathon click here.

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In the future, I will probably review some of the Pennsylvania State Parks that we visit as well as other fun adventures.

Talk to you later.

Love,

Katie