When embarking on any new project, the most important precaution is to keep expectations quite a bit lower than what seems 'fair.' Give the world a chance to surprise you on the upside. This is what I tried to do in the first post on campground hosting.
Some of the campers did just that. One fellow -- and I swear he was the one who initiated the topic -- ranted about how much he preferred semi-open land to thick-as-dog-hair forests. What a relief it was to hear somebody more fanatical than me, on that topic!
Actually, in five days, I have had more quality conversations than in five years of solitary camping.
The trick is to encourage compliance with the campground rules without becoming officious; to be briefly friendly without being intrusive; and to resist my entrenched habit of steering the conversation in the direction I want, the excuse being that the other person is too much of a blockhead to talk about anything other than 'so where you from?'
I also need to stop seeing women as the impedimenta of the camping experience, and need to avoid certain expressions, such as, the average blockhead, motor-crazed yahoos, dumb tourists, etc.
The most pleasant memory of my first week on the job will come from a moving, visual image, rather than a conversation.
There
were two nice young families camped adjacent to me. Towards sunset, the
slender, attractive mother was on her mountain bike, imprinting the
lifestyle on a couple young boys who chased after her on their kiddie
bikes. Following the people came the family dog, trotting jauntily with a
big smile across his face. He was a friendly herding dog. Do you suppose he thought he willed the human members of his pack back home for the evening? Everybody looked so happy and healthy.
This image meant more to me than a thousand photo-clichés of yellow aspen at this time of year. Why so? Perhaps because I could only half-see them. They were backlit by sunset, so I only saw their silhouettes.
No views create such lasting impressions as those which are seen but for a moment when a veil of mist is rent in twain and a single spire or dome is disclosed. The peaks which are seen at these moments are not perhaps the greatest or the noblest, but the recollection of them outlives the memory of any panoramic view...
Edward Whymper (conqueror of the Matterhorn), Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the years 1860-69
What can you say about a camper who sells out to the Establishment, by flushing his principles and ideals down the toilet -- and a vault toilet at that! Yes, reader, the unthinkable has happened: this old boy has become a campground host. I feel compelled to justify aberrant behavior of this type.
If there is a better way to finish off a life than achieving Moral Perfection, go ahead and tell me what it is. Good ol' Ben (Franklin) would not have approved of this project if it were just a sterile sentimentalism. In order for Moral Perfection to be real and solid, there must be some way of objectifying and validating it. Otherwise, a person would just fool themselves with feelings that bounce around in the echo chamber of their own skull.
One way of validating this project is to look at the effect we have on other people. That is why solitary camping needs to be abandoned.
In the tab at the top of the screen, entitled "Summiting: Ideals and Suffering," there are many juicy quotes from William James, explaining that significance and meaning in life result from chasing an ideal through struggle or even Suffering. The same idea can be applied to chasing Moral Perfection.
If left to your own choices, Other People could possibly be a source of pleasure and support to you, rather than the Suffering we are after. There are few better ways to be guaranteed of Suffering than in dealing with the general public, and one of the lowest levels of the general public is the tourist.
The conclusion of this chain of reasoning is that the pursuit of Moral Perfection benefits by overcoming the Suffering imposed on us by the lowest of the low, the tourist.
Granted, if I really lived up to this, I would have chosen to be a campground host in a national park; or a big state park centered around a motorboat-lake, an hour's drive from a burgeoning metropolis; or a campground near a plexus of motorhead trails.
Instead I have bitten off the modest Suffering that should come from a 15-unit campground in a non-motorized area whose clientele consists of mountain bikers, climbers, and a few hikers. Ya' gotta start somewhere!
