Erik Shonstrom - I Probably Shouldve Brought a Tent

I Probably Shouldve Brought a Tent is about traveling with honesty, beauty, and awkwardness. Erik takes into account where his adventures fall in a long history of human conflict and shifting landscapes. He ventures out to these wild and majestic sites, all the while keeping integrity and humor close.

Teresa Lynn Hasan-Kerr, travel writer for Lonely Planet, Refinery 29, Culture Trip, Morocco World News, Coldnoon, Past-Ten, and Wry Times

I Probably Shouldve Brought a Tent is eloquent, witty, funny, and serious all at the same time. Shonstroms book is filled with captivating wilderness stories. He places you directly beside him in his stories and you feel the highs and lows of what he experienced. These stories quickly pull you into his journeys, flying through the pages, and yearning for more at the end! You wont be disappointed picking this one up off the shelf.

Scott Wurdinger, author of Philosophical Issues in Adventure Education and Teaching for Experiential Learning

Wild Curiosity: How to Unleash Creativity and Encourage Lifelong Wondering

The Indoor Epidemic: How Parents, Teachers, and Kids Can Start an Outdoor Revolution

The Wisdom of the Body: What Embodied Cognition Can Teach Us about Learning, Human Development, and Ourselves

An imprint of Globe Pequot, the trade division of

The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200

Lanham, MD 20706

www.rowman.com

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2022 by Erik Shonstrom

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shonstrom, Erik, author.

Title: I probably shouldve brought a tent : misadventures of a wilderness instructor / Erik Shonstrom.

Other titles: I probably should have brought a tent

Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Lyons Press, [2022] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021061006 (print) | LCCN 2021061007 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493060566 (Paperback : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781493060573 (ePub)

Subjects: LCSH: Shonstrom, ErikHumor. | Outdoor recreationHumor. | Outdoor lifeHumor. | SurvivalHumor. | Outward bound schoolsHumor.

Classification: LCC GV191.6.S53 2022 (print) | LCC GV191.6 (ebook) | DDC796.502/07dc23/eng/20220125

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061006

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061007

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For Cynthia, love of my life, ballast and bearing

And in loving memory of Marion Winifred Crider Shonstrom

19411992

I love you more than you love me

Oh no you could not possibly

Y EARS AGO I WAS A REPORTER FOR A SMALL-TOWN V ERMONT NEWSPAPER . I covered the municipal beatcity council, schools, police. I wrote frequently about stormwater projects. I nearly fell asleep writing these articles; reading them must have been lethal.

I remember sitting in the editorial office while Donna, our acerbic managing editor, formatted a piece Id just filed.

Were there actually twenty? she asked.

What?

Donnawho, in addition to editing the paper, was the treasurer of the regional Little League division, where she no doubt inspired the same fear in dues-paying parents as she did in greenhorn reportersspoke without taking her eyes from the screen where she adjusted columns and cut and pasted text.

Your article says there were twenty people at the Development Review Board meeting. Were there?

I think so, I said. I felt a trap being laid.

Did you count them?

I had not. Twenty was a guess, and I told her so.

She swiveled in her chair to face me. On a good day she was maybe five foot three. Brown hair, olive skin. No-nonsense fleece vest and leggings with clogs. Everything neat as a pin. Her eyes locked on mine. Ill never forget her next words: This is journalism. Dont write twenty unless you count.

She then turned back to her screen to continue laying out the next days issue. When the paper came out, I paged through until I found my piece on the meeting.

There was no mention of how many people had attended.

The lesson stuck with me. If something is called journalismor nonfiction, for that matterit should be true. Not just kind of true, or more or less true, but as true as possible. I realize memory is faulty. I know we embellish certain episodes of our past, gloss over others, conveniently order events to fit narratives. But I believeas cranky and old fashioned as it may bethat if you say a thing is true, it should be. Every effort should be made to be faithful to what happened.

Im out of step with others on this, I know. Geoff Dyer, the brilliant English writer, is known to blur the lines between fiction and nonfiction. Essayist John DAgatanotorious for his artistic interpretation of the truthand his fact checker, Jim Fingal, argued so vehemently about what constitutes fact that the editorial process (usually hidden behind drafts and inboxes) got published as a book called The Lifespan of a Fact When I found out the opening paragraph of Annie Dillards A Pilgrim at Tinkers Creekwhere a tomcat returning from its nocturnal prowls leaves bloody paw prints on Dillards blanketswas not Dillards story at all, but an anecdote she lifted from a student (with permission), I was crushed. I love that opening paragraph. To find out it wasnt exactly true; well, it took some of the raw joy out of it. For me.

The aforementioned folks are brilliant and Im a huge fan of their work. Their derring-do stylistically is something I can only marvel at. My quiver contains a slightly less sexy arrow. I try to be accurate. To tell the truth. No matter how shame-inducing or cringey.

Everything in these pages happened. Various bits have been read and verified by individuals in the actual stories. Names have been changed out of respect for privacy. Any omissions, misrepresentations, or mistakes are completely my own. I really did fall into a latrine once.

No one is clamoring for another book by some white dude about the transcendence possible in nature. I mean, come on Gag me with a Nalgene. But we all have a story, and this one is mine to tell. I hope Ive done it justice.

I have had to come so far away from it in order to understand it all.

L AWRENCE D URRELL

I M NOT SURE WHAT I FEARED MORE: THE SHEER FIFTY-FOOT DROP behind me or another minute without coffee.

For reasons lost to time and memory, I had chosen this particular week to try to kick my coffee habit. Perhaps Id gotten it in my head that my addiction to the bitter bean was out of control, and thought that I should curtail my caffeine intake. After all, I was living in Los Angeles at the time, surrounded by people who saw self-betterment as an extreme sport, and maybe I thought if I gave up my vices I might be able to improve my figure, clear my head, and land a $20 million contract with MGM Studios. Why, in my youthful idealism, I figured the best week to go cold turkey was when taking a group of thirty middle schoolers rock climbing in Joshua Tree is beyond me. What I do know is that in terms of stupid things Ive done in my life, it ranks right up there with the time I peed on an electric fence.