Camping Safety Tips

The Guide offices, as I like to explain, exist in a place outside of geography. We are located everywhere and nowhere but always are just close enough to a landfill and railroad tracks that makes the rent that much cheaper.

But if you held me at gunpoint and made me point where we were located on a map, I’d point to the Midwest. This point would be truthful, absolutely genuine, as I am not the kind of man to try to pull a fast one over someone that has a gun to my head. Leon used to be that kind of man before the tragedy and although I could divulge such a story, I’d like to remind you that there are stories and then there are stories, and, in the case of the tragedy that befell Leon, it most certainly was the latter, italicized kind of story.

As many are aware, the Midwest is center of the world when it comes to lots of things: white people, craft stores, that thing people do with strangers on accident where you’ll be walking towards each other, and, in an attempt to avoid conflict and not run into each other (and it’s always such a noble attempt) you try to move out of the other person’s way, but the other person, also noble, will have moved the same way you’ve just moved and perhaps most ironically, for the same reasons you moved yourself.

But it’s also the camping center of the world. We at the Guide, with February upon us, have been struck by an urge to camp. We are from the Midwest, after all. Like our chronic diabetes, it’s practically in our DNA.

As the saying goes, to be unsafe is to be sorry and to be sorry is to look like a prick in front of your bros. So here are your camping safety tips:

Make sure your campfire is under control before you go to sleep.
I’d like to point out the semantic difference between making sure a campfire is under control and just extinguishing it for the night. Extinguishing a campfire is to claim its superiority over you. It sends a clear message to your fellow campers that reads, “I am not a master over the element of fire.” But to control it! Controlling it is something so much more! If you were to use the fire to, say, chase squirrels from the trees, ignite humming birds so they look and sound like little exploding boat motors whizzing through the air, or to show a moose would it means to be afraid, if you managed something like that before retiring to your sleeping bag, you have successfully bent fire to your will. Then, and only then, can you sleep soundly.

Is your tent secure? It should be.
I don’t need to tell you how to make sure you’re tent is secure. What I will do, instead, is tell you what could happen to you if your tent isn’t secure because fear is a powerful agent for safety. For starters, a strong gust could collapse the tent all around you. This might be accompanied by screams of your fellow campers and as you attempt to find the zipper for the tent flap you will realize it is a task impossible because your canvas coffin is dark in a suffocating way that is both hot and cold at the same time. Operating on pure instinct you may stand up, staggering around completely covered in your temporary housing, calling out to someone, anyone. The screaming will continue. Something will brush your leg. Is it another leg? What happened? If it is another leg, was it attached to a body? You will jut your arms out in futile attempt to touch something, anything. This last ditch effort will throw your balance off and send you tumbling to the ground. The ground will be wet (so wet you can feel it through the tent that you’ve become entrapped in, which was a very thick material, the main reason you chose that particular model) and the screaming will not stop. You might not wake up.

Keep food in sealed containers.
This just keeps random critters out of your provisions. The main reason is that then your shit doesn’t get eaten, but let’s also consider that if you attract any kind of critter you then run a chance of attracting a rabid critter. Rabies is a terrible thing to contract on a camping trip, mainly because the only known cure is to have your best friend tie you up and shoot you. And yeah, that would suck for you, no doubt. But think about the friend that has to shoot you. The tears (and eventual snot) that will run down his face as he tries to work up the courage to pull the trigger. He won’t be able to hear your name without thinking of that last sound you made before the gunshot silenced you forever. And because your last sound would be like an Indian war whoop, he won’t be able to watch any old Western movies with Indians fighting cowboys without getting all weird, you selfish prick.