The RV nearly blotted out the sun when it trundled into the camping area adjacent to where several friends and I had set up our own communal site in eastern Utah last weekend.
Out popped the extensions to create a home with more square footage than Trump Tower, followed by the awning and the patio furniture.
And then the family unloaded from a trailer several dirt bikes and ATVs — and loaded several guns for afternoon target practice.
Now typically I am a fan of “dispersed” camping on public lands, where you can get away from the crowds and din of established campgrounds and find your own piece of nature.
But with that comes an anything-goes attitude and the potential that your neighbors might have a different definition of “camping.”
Ours thought it was fine to blast really awful music from 1980s hair bands at jet-engine volume late into the night and to run their external generator at all hours, apparently to keep on the floodlights and, most likely, a television inside their motor home.
Although I’m becoming more accepting of creature comforts as I grow older — I have watched with envy as several of my friends have invested in trailers with pop-up campers and conversion vans complete with showers — my idea of camping still involves a tent, a sleeping bag and a crackling campfire.
Even the notion of “car camping” once was anathema to me, but now I don’t mind being able to bring a spacious tent, a cot and a camp chair to a drive-up campsite.
Still, I harbor the ideal that camping will essentially remain camping: roughing it, however generously defined, in a quiet, remote, scenic area far from the trappings of “real” life.
Our neighbors last weekend seemed to think the opposite, adopting an “we’re always gone but we’re always home” attitude and bringing with them everything they might conceivably want — to the point that it hardly seems like camping at all.
I deduced, perhaps through improper stereotyping, that our neighbors and I probably have absolutely nothing in common, even down to the restaurants we frequent and the way we vote.
If the loud music and rumbling generator weren’t enough of an intrusion, though, they managed to offend everyone throughout the camping area when they cranked up their motorbikes and ATVs after midnight and carved donuts in an adjacent grassy area.
Was this simply harmless, crazy fun times shared by good ol’ boys after a few too many Budweisers, or a blatant act of disrespect toward others nearby and the camp environment, not to mention the local vegetation?
Put another way, if a redneck cranks up Journey’s least-greatest hits in the middle of the woods, does it make a noise bad enough ruin the night for everyone within a full square mile?
You probably can figure out how I would answer those questions.
I subscribe to the idea that quiet interaction with the great outdoors is better than loud, that fresh air is best enjoyed by actually being outside, that insulating ourselves with modern comforts deprives us of hearing the call of the whippoorwill and feeling the coolness of a passing cloud.
I also believe that an increasingly ignored outdoor ethic calls for enjoying the backcountry unobtrusively and in a manner that doesn’t diminish the experience for others — even if there aren’t any others around.
There’s nothing wrong with howling at the moon or sharing laughs around the campfire late into the night, but that seems a far cry from the locust buzz of two-stroke engines and artificial daylight.
Suffice to say, it was to our relief and delight the next afternoon when we realized that the motorhome was gone, leaving only the tread marks of knobby tires and a few spent ammo cartridges and bottle caps discarded in the sand and grass.
We all got a good nightap sleep.
This weekend, though, I’ll be backpacking into a wilderness area, miles from the trailhead, seeking true tranquility.
Steve Lipsher (slipsher@comcast.net) of Silverthorne writes a monthly column for The Denver Post.
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