Last week my husband and I spent a few days camping in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey, a surprisingly large and remote area in the midst of the great urban corridor between Boston and Washington. We planned this trip for several weeks, making shopping lists for meals we could cook on the propane stove, food that could be frozen solid and used as it thawed, and food that didn’t require refrigeration. We bought a tent, camping chairs, rope, and tarps. My husband sharpened several pocket knives to take along and made a small cooking table out of plywood. We bought a camping stove, a propane heater and a lantern. We found books on the Pine Barrens, researched the locations and reserved our spot. We took the car to the garage to have the tires balanced for the trips over dirt roads we knew we’d face. We checked the weather forecast — we were lucky! — and downloaded maps of the area from the internet. We brought along two GPS devices: one for the car, one for hiking. We tested the inflatable mattress, found the heavy blankets and quilts, the long underwear and the many layers of clothes we’d need. We bought a solar shower since the camp site had only a pump and an outhouse. We brought books, music, our recorders, and a solar-powered emergency radio. I made up a first aid kit. All of this barely fit in the car. I had to leave behind the yoga mat at the last minute.

Many times, exchange students or anyone else planning a trip to a new and different place goes through this kind of planning process and everyone tends to agree that it is important to prepare well before departure on such an experience. But we can sometimes over-prepare, especially when we are going to a very different place. In fact we over anticipated what we’d need to bring, and it was a burden. A good part of each activity involved searching through various boxes and bags and small corners of the car trying to find something we wanted to use, while much of what we brought wasn’t needed.

Part of our over-preparation also involved creating fantasies about what our experience would be like. We supposed we would spend our evenings after dinner sitting on the camping chairs huddled near the heater and lantern, reading. As it was, when I did open a book, it was more because I had planned to do this than because I truly wanted to read. Watching the campfire was much more appealing. 

And of course we brought along our cultural baggage as well, which included expectations about camping behavior and the value of being quietly immersed in the woods, watching birds, looking for deer and other animals and generally communing with nature. Part of my baggage held the assumption that people are foreigners in this environment and must behave carefully lest we destroy this place through our carelessness. But another group of campers — about 8-10 men in their mid 20s — seemed to have different assumptions.

We are city people. At home on a weekend night, we’re used to hearing loud parties in houses, rented spaces, and the few night clubs in the area. After the party noise quiets, we often hear the sound of a couple arguing in the street, or the laughter of two people who can’t end their conversation and go home. Occasionally there is trouble — fights or even gunshots – and we are likely to sleep through it. But on our first night camping, the shouted jokes and the increasingly loud conversation of our neighbors along with their oversized bonfire raised my suspicions more than was warranted. Inside our dark tent, I focused intently on the group across the way, trying to decipher what was going on. I asked myself questions such as: How much have they had to drink? What are they doing now? Do they have hunting rifles with them? Will more of them arrive? Will they wonder over this way? Could I call the park ranger on my cell phone (and where had we put that piece of paper with the phone number on it)?

I became hyper aware of the rustling of leaves and pine needles, of each movement in the underbrush and each shift in the light.  I filled in my sensory gaps with my imagination. Was it a person or a deer who walked behind the tent? Is someone shining a flashlight this way, or is it only the movement of clouds uncovering the moon?

We tend to assume our senses are accurate, but research has shown time and again that what we believe that we see, hear, taste, touch or smell can easily be primed by what we expect to experience. See Rachel Herz: The Scent of Desire. Much of what we sense seems to be what we imagine we sense. At the same time, we often ignore or dismiss as ordinary the sounds and sights we see every day, and we don’t seem capable of perceiving most odors once we’ve been around them for a while.

Our imagination is ours, and under our control. We can interpret our sensory experience in different ways when we imagine different meanings to it. I found the party of young men a little threatening until I was able to reimagine it from another perspective. In that other perspective, the forest is commonplace, and part of the public space people have available for their use. In that other perspective, a party out in the forest is safe: people can enjoy themselves freely and then camp overnight rather than trying to drive home.