of your senses are alive in nature,” she says. “Being out in the woods is a natural buzz anyway, but there’s something about being ‘wild and free’ with your partner. There is nothing more romantic than cuddling with my husband under a sky full of stars, or waking up in the perfect quiet of dawn.”
Camping can be about indulging your senses, but it can also be a romantically indulgent experience. No longer is it all about denying yourself luxuries and suffering against the elements with the barest of essentials. Camping has discovered decadence! Even the outdoor gear and clothing companies sense the romance in the air. You don’t have to shop at Victoria’s Secret for thong underwear; you can buy it from Patagonia. And what better place to show it off than in MSR’s two-person tent, the Hubba Hubba? They’ve also got a model called the Fling—proving once and for all that even mountaineers have time for a quickie. When you’re ready to commit to your outdoor love life, you can pick up REI’s wedding cake topper featuring a couple in mountain-climbing gear. (That outdoor retailer has even introduced a wedding registry service, where you can order things like backcountry margarita glasses and even a Lexan blender to make cocktails.) Couples everywhere are making it clear that camping is a big part of their relationships.
“Our industry has been asleep when it comes to sexiness,” admits Beaver Theodosakis, founder and president of Prana, the outdoor clothing company that had the groundbreaking idea of outfitting sexy climber bodies with equally sexy clothing. “I think that’s hurt the industry. The way the advertising used to be a picture of a guy out on a mountain by himself with ice in his beard. In our catalogs and ads, we try to show a more playful attitude, with guys and girls interacting and natural sexiness.” Yes, even mountain men have love lives these days.
Shifting your point of view to consider camping as a couple opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Couples who go camping together often find it improves their level of trust, their closeness, their ability to solve problems together, and their sex lives. One camper from New Zealand, Hillary, found that she could discuss things with her husband during camping trips that they would never talk about at home. Somehow, being outside makes him more open to conversation. For a lot of men, it comes down to feeling “in their element” out in the woods. For many women, leaving behind the worries of home and work makes the outdoors a great place to reconnect as well. It’s an environment where a couple can really come together. Getting back to basics while camping can bring you back to the basics of your relationship, too.
Heather, the camper from Arizona, finds that her husband can relax more in the wild. “When we’re camping together, what I like most about John is that he’s much more carefree and laidback,” she says. “He’s not ‘at work’ anymore.” Camping is their time to be close, Heather says. “We each have our separate things that we do: John skydives, and I do things like scrap-booking and spending time with my friends. But together, we have this passion for the outdoors that we share.”
This is true for a lot of couples. At home, two people can lead very separate lives, even under the same roof. But camping can give them the time and inspiration to really enjoy each other’s company. “I’m a writer, he’s into computers,” says Justine “We hate each other’s taste in music, clothes, houses, possessions. But it doesn’t matter if we can come together the way we do when we’re camping. I’m just living each moment, with the man I love, in the most beautiful mountains in the world. That’s very fresh and simple somehow. There’s just a calm that you’re in the right place, sharing it with the right person.”
Once you have started to camp as a couple, it’s something you can do together for the rest of your lives. It’s inexpensive, the gear lasts for years, and as long as you have transportation, you can enjoy a camping trip at any time. Jessica told me she recently met a couple who are traveling around the US, doing a lot of camping now that their kids have all grown up and moved out. “They are enjoying each other and the country so much,” she says wistfully. “I can’t wait till we can do the same…in a couple of decades.”
I often come across couples well into their 70s enjoying a hike through the woods or a paddle on their favorite lake. The best thing about it is seeing that romantic sparkle in their eyes. Getting outdoors together keeps them young and passionate well into their golden years. The playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” So keep playing outside with your partner, and you’ll stay young forever!
About this Book
As you have probably already guessed, this is not your average camping book. You won’t find anything here about navigating with a map and compass, or building an emergency shelter out of branches—unless you’re doing it for sexual role-playing purposes (there’s nothing like a little game of Survivor), in which case, may I suggest tying the supports together with a strong rope so you don’t have a mid-coitus collapse. This book is about making your outdoor experiences more romantic and sexier than you’ve ever imagined.
Throughout this book, you’ll read stories from couples who will give you a peek at their secrets to wilderness romance. I’ve maintained their anonymity and changed some details and names for obvious reasons—you never know whose mother might be reading—except where they’ve specifically wanted their name in lights. (And with some of their stories, who wouldn’t be proud!)
Chapter by chapter, we’ll look at how to introduce an absolute beginner to camping, how to plan your camping trips so that you both enjoy them, how to keep yourselves clean and attractive in the wilderness, how to make gourmet meals for two without a kitchen, how to approach different kinds of camping for maximum romance, where to go for the ultimate wilderness getaways, and, of course, how to have sex in a tent and just about anywhere else outdoors.
In order to keep things simple, this book generally refers to couples as one man and one woman. This by no means suggests that same-sex couples can’t use this book as a guide for planning their own romantic outdoor adventures. All couples will find that their relationship changes when they leave the comforts of home behind, regardless of gender. For the most part, there will be very little difference in terms of the challenges and rewards you will face. In places where same-sex couples may encounter their own unique situations, I’ll address them separately.
Ideally, both members of a couple should read this book. If you’ll excuse the pun, it will keep you on the same page when it comes to planning your camping adventures. If only one of you reads it, you can share with your partner the ideas you’d like to try. Bring them up over dinner, or on a lazy weekend. Get your partner excited about the idea of camping together, be sure to mention all of the amazing sex you’ll be having, then pick a time to get out there and give it a shot.
I sincerely believe that even the most urban of us can get into camping just by being open to the experience. But having a supportive and enthusiastic partner makes it so much easier and more enjoyable. So I encourage you to try it out—it’s good for you, it’s good for your relationship, and as you’ll see in this book, it’s good for your sex life, too!
Chapter 1:
Convincing Your Reluctant Partner that
CAMPING IS FUN
I wasn’t born into camping. We never went as a family because my father firmly believed that if you own a perfectly good bed, you should use it. So, I have to admit that before I started camping, I had some pretty crazy ideas of what it might be like. I thought that you had to find your way around with a map and a compass in the wild, because I didn’t know about trail markers. I thought you had to be able to make a fire in the rain to cook your food, because I’d never seen a camping stove. I thought
