Friday, September 14, 2007

"Glamping:" New Definition of Wussitude

Vacation season is over, but OK, I have to do a separate entry on this one, which I've been chewing on ever since I saw an article on it in the LA Times August 19. There's this thing now called "glamping," (glamour camping) in which people with way too much money go "camping" without really having to rough it. Here's a quote from the article about one of the featured families, the Bondicks:

"After typing "luxury" into a Google search along with "camping" and "Montana," the couple settled on The Resort at Paws Up, a 37,000-acre getaway in the heart of Big Sky country. It's a place for affluent travelers who want to enjoy the outdoors but can't fathom using a smelly outhouse, a place where paying someone to light the campfire is a badge of honor, not the mark of a Boy Scout flunky.

The Bondicks, who live in a sprawling home on the edge of a state park outside Boston and hire a personal chef at home, shelled out $595 a night -- plus an additional $110 per person per day for food.

It's a hefty price to sleep in a tent, but the perks include a camp butler to build their fire, a maid to crank up the heated down comforter at nightfall and a cook to whip up bison rib-eye for dinner and French toast topped with huckleberries for breakfast."

A camp fire butler???

Friends, I'm over here sputtering for breath. I don't even know where to start. Why don't they just get him to put on a little suit and hold up a lantern in their front yard? Oh, man...

For one thing, I'm a known pyromaniac. Boy Scout flunky??? I think not, mes amis. Back in my camping days, I cultivated a fondness for fire-making rituals: preparing the ground, piling up a stone circle, gathering, sorting and sizing sticks of graduated thickness. I had to decide whether to build a cone-shaped or pyramid-style pile, and when and how to light it. I've been known to reward myself with a snort of camp Bushmill's for a one-match fire. (Lesson #1: don't put the bottle too close to the fire). Some of my campfires were works of art -- one thing I could do -- sort of proudly, oh, Wiccan or something. It was a matter of honor.

So, a camp fire butler??? If you were here, you'd hear my loud and lusty snort of disdain.

2 comments:

Krista Heiser said...

And here we've gotten guff over having a quaint little travel trailer! Compared to these elitist, we're roughin' it! LOL

The Cat Bastet said...

A camp fire butler?! $595/night plus $110/day for food?! These people have more money than sense and "wussitude" is great way to describe them!

Wish I'd been the enterprising person came up with the idea of charging $595 for camping -- and getting it!