By Molly Freedenberg
This may seem like a strange time of year to get nostalgic about camping, but the truth is, much of my adult backpacking adventures have been in winter. Most of those trips were with my college boyfriend, and we scheduled our outings around October and November’s breaks and long weekends before the second semester’s term papers and thesis craziness kept us campus bound.
So while the sun and heat of summer might remind most people of climbing mountains and forging across rivers, it’s the crisp clearness of fall and winter that reminds me of Gore-Tex and GORP. Which is perhaps why this week I finally reached for a book that’s been sitting on my shelf for almost two years: Michelle Waitzman’s Sex in a Tent: A Wild Couple’s Guide to Getting Naughty in Nature (Wilderness Press, 2007).
The premise is exactly what you’d think: how to get it on in nature. How much about this topic isn’t entirely intuitive, you might ask? According to the book’s author, the answer is “a lot.” In fact, it seems this book is mostly geared towards novice campers and the mountaineers who love them, and also assumes both parties are a bit naieve when it comes to sex.