My current travel buddy was a little surprised when I told him I wasn’t much of a camper.

“But you seem so outdoorsy.”

“Well, I am. Just because I don’t sleep outside doesn’t mean I’m not outdoorsy.”

Can you really blame someone for wanting a warm and dry bed to lay your head down after a day in the mountains?

In truth, I’ve just never really been exposed to camping. I didn’t grow up with a camping family. “What’s the point?” was my family’s typical response to the idea. Thus my childhod was void of the quintesential American camping vacation.

But now here I am sleeping in a tent for 11 days (on day 10 now) with no real tent-sleeping experience.

I used to take an backwards pride in the fact that I’ve never set up a tent in my entire life. It was something I wanted to say when I was 80 years and on my death bed.

What intimidated me about this simple engineering feat probably goes back deep into my childhood. When I was seven years old I built a bedroom fort out of my Playskool picnic table and my dresser. It imploded on me in the middle of the night, leaving me with a boo boo on my head no Snoopy Band-aid could make better. It also almost killed my stuffed Siberian Husky White Fang. His ear never stood up straight again.

So it’s not that I don’t want to sleep outside, it’s that I don’t want to suffocate and die when the tent collapses on me in the middle of the night.

Childhood traumas do not die easily.

But there comes a time when we must face our fears, whether they be sharks in the ocean, the mean freckled-faced kid in the sandbox, or a bunch of nylon and plastic poles in the woods.

I was determined to figure it out. Long story short, after a few attempts that reminded me of an old Disney cartoon about Goofy camping, I got it.

Now it’s my last night in a tent after ten days of camping. It’s been great, and I feel like I should get a merit badge, but I won’t ever blame someone for wanting a proper shower and a proper bed after a long day in the mountains.