When Mark Twain wrote his timeless book, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” he noted in its preface that most of its stories were true, accounts his own youth and of his schoolmates. Tom actually was a combination of three boys of his early acquaintance. His adventures tell of a time when youngsters experienced life in much more basic terms than today’s complexities afford.

    I have chosen for this piece to look at Tom Sawyer’s escapades as pertains to camping, an activity that remained nameless in his time because it happened as a consequence of normal mischief that happened to require sleeping outside. One did not “go camping.” Instead, sleep in the outdoors came as a requirement of some unrelated act of adventure.  

    The boys in this case have declared themselves pirates and have floated away on the Mississippi to an uninhabited island. Though the island is only a few miles from home, their imaginations carry them far away into a new world, a concept useful to modern day campers.

    In an earlier writing, we looked at Tom’s enthrallment with nature’s elements; insects, birds, trees etc. Here, Tom, Huck and Joe add to their youthful storehouse of gratifying pastimes involving outdoor group behaviors; such activities being valuable to today’s campers, who for a time escape into a state of unstructured, relaxed, carefree living.

    “After breakfast (of fried turtle eggs) they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other’s faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other…finally gripping and struggling until the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle…and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time.

    “When they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the dry, hot sand and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by and by break for the water again and go through the original performance once more. Finally it occurred to them that their naked skin represented flesh colored “tights” very fairly; so they drew a ring in the sand and had a circus – with three clowns in it, for none would yield this proudest post to his neighbor.”

    Today’s wish from me to myself and to you is that we could regularly have as much carefree fun on our campouts and during other outdoor times as Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Joe Harper had on Jackson’s Island. Do we do too much planning these days? Granted maybe these three didn’t plan enough on this voyage. They certainly didn’t foresee attending their own funerals, alive and well. But when they cast off down the mighty river, they knew only that their journey would take them away from their routines, and they were willing, though perhaps unprepared, to face any adversity in order to experience adventure.

    These three, by the author’s design, representing a wide diversity of today’s culture, would meet whatever each day brought with spontaneity.  Let’s go on a lightly planned outdoor adventure and be spontaneous! It’ll be fun!