The Tent Dresser

Each B.C. day weekend I return to the island and enjoy three days of camping with childhood friends I regrettably don’t see as often as I would like. A four hour drive from our hometown of Victoria takes us to our not-so-well-kept-any-longer secret spot at Hornby Island, a jewel of an island in the Georgia Strait with beautiful white sand crescent beaches and the best six-gill shark diving anywhere on the west coast. An abundance of beverage-soaked sun tanning, scuba diving, mountain biking and endless reminiscing take up the bulk of a few days that always pass far too quickly for my liking.

The whole I-haven’t-looked-at-my-watch-since-yesterday carelessness and don’t-care-if-my-feet-are-encrusted-in-sand slovenliness is truly a tonic for my soul. I love the whole haphazard existence of it. I walk by the wash huts and see guys in their shaving and think “why on earth?” as I run my filthy palm over my 45-hour shadow. I can happily eat chunky soup and hot dogs every night and don’t mind one bit waking up in a tent with an acrid stale campfire smell about me and all manner of items strewn about randomly. Granted I’m sure it would wear on me over an extended period of time but for those 3 days each year, I’m in heaven.

Speaking of tents, last year one of the guys’ girlfriends decided a little more order was needed in their nylon domicile. I don’t recollect whether they were purchased explicitly for the purpose, but they brought eight of those cheap plastic “click” stacker shelves and made what she coined “the tent dresser.” Years ago we would have scoffed at such logic and practicality in our disheveled bushman utopia, but we all admitted it was a fairly nifty idea. While my sweatshirts often served as my pillow come morning, Big O’s were neatly folded next to his sleeping bag.

Now, I’m loathe to disappoint those persons who are eagerly anticipating my announcements of cymax stores’ new tent dresser, but alas, there’s no such thing.

However, for those of you who are not constantly inclined to revert back to your wonderfully disorganized youth and do in fact keep your garments impeccably arranged, a new dresser or chest of drawers from moredressers.com may be very much to your liking. Myself, I’ve rather grudgingly come to accept the need to organize my dresser chest; socks n ginch on top, shirts and the like in 2 and 3 and pants on the bottom. However, that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten a simpler time when each one contained a mish-mash of each as I frantically rifled through in search of the right Metallica t-shirt to wear to school. The spray-on jeans and converse hi-tops were much easier to find.

I’m not much for anything pricey, and moredressers.com also offers a fair selection of cheap dressers for like-minded individuals. If it’s nothing more than a box for your threads, that’s likely the way to go.

Now if they had one that was somehow imbued with the sweet aromas of campfire, seawater and a few-too-many the night before, the nostalgic sway of influence would surely be to much for me to resist.