Man Versus Nature - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/80/running-after-antelope

I'm not a runner, and I'm not a hunter either, so I wish I could just call this one in and just assume that I don't have anything to add to this particular one, but I'm sure that if we broaden it just a bit and try to go to man versus nature, then I'm sure I can scrounge up something considering that that's one of the major conflicts within literature and story telling.

Boy Scouts is one of those things that I didn't do in my own free will. Had things been different, had I been able to choose my activities, I would have never picked Boy Scouts. Being outside, hiking, biking, climbing, boating, and whatever else, is not my flavor of fun. However, church has it set up that young men's activity every Wednesday was Boy Scouts. It wasn't church, it wasn't religious, it was once a week, every week, Boy Scouts.

We worked our way through merit badges, camping trips, hiking trips, orientation, and pioneering, and I was never a fan of it. Learning how to tie a bowline - useless information to me. Learning how to navigate through a forest only using the stars to help guide you - useless information while growing up in the metropolis of Las Vegas.

Hiking was even worse because in Vegas there's no nearby area where you think, 'You know what? It's 100 degrees outside, and it's only eight in the morning, and the one thing that I want to do is walk for ten miles for the rest of the day.'

Boy Scouts was one of those things that I managed to do quite a bit of stuff, but unfortunately it wasn't until I was 16 and had direct control over the stuff that I did during those Wednesday meetings, that the fun stuff that I did was anything that I actually wanted to do. I'm sorry, but I'm just not that big of a fan of getting stuck out in nature, getting lost, or 'roughing' it.

You know what I want to do when I go camping? Sleep. Sit around and read. Enjoy nature by opening up my tent door and sitting down on a padded sleeping bag and going 'wow, I sure could fall asleep' and then falling asleep. I don't need to trek miles upon miles, I don't need to see the waterfall that has no water actually falling from it because of the drought that has been hitting the west like a red headed step child, I can just find a camping spot, stay there, and read.

You want to know my favorite activity while camping? D&D camping.

You can go share stories over the campfire, or sing songs, or whatever it is that you enjoy doing, but do you know what's really fun? Having the entire group of people around the campfire involved in that story telling.

Do you know why it is so awesome? Because no one can interrupt you when you're out camping. Everyone is interested in the story, everyone wants to know what happens next, and because they don't have all of their electronic devices with them. When there's a group of people and literally the only thing they have to entertain themselves is a story that they're a part of, they get attached to the story. The only thing that is tricky is doing dice rolling, but generally speaking camping D&D is more roleplaying and talking than it is roll playing and killing.

I'm not one that wants to go out to nature to conquer it, I just want to go out to nature so that I don't have to deal with electronics and have no one bugging me.