Last weekend, Rachel, five friends, and I went “glamping” in Bear Mountain, NY, about an hour outside of Manhattan. “Glamping,” a term I first saw in The New York Times, is what we call “glamorous camping” — i.e. there are public restrooms with toilet paper nearby, you can park a car near the campsite, and the boys do the hard labor, like pitching the tent. Of course, we went glamping in the rain, which is sort of an oxymoron, but we had a fabulous time and coined our own term, “damping,” for camping in the rain. It’s totally underrated.
On Saturday, we hiked the Doodletown trail. Rachel told us it was a ghost town and I envisioned dilapidated homes and buildings, wild, wild, West-style. (What was I to expect? Did I mention this was my first camping trip ever?) Well, Doodletown literally is a ghost town — the former buildings are invisible, long demolished in the 1960s. As we walked the trail, there would be signs indicating that we stood before the former Doodletown church, or school, or cemetery. It did feel a little haunted, but there were no ghosts — only a BIG BLACK BEAR. Meriko was the first to spot this creature, which would have potentially mauled us all (would the boys have sacrificed themselves first? Is that part of the glamping chivalry?) but we coolly and casually walked on and tossed a few apples behind us, to distract the bear from the smell of our juicy flesh. It worked.
A week later, the journalist inside me is still mystified by Doodletown. What was the real story on this funky town? I searched — where else? — nytimes.com and found all sorts of trivia:
- the last remaining residents left Doodletown in 1965, because of plans to build a ski slope in the area – never happened
- the land became known as Doodletown in 1762
- 5,000-10,000 years ago, Munsee Indians inhabited the area
- the people quoted in the NY Times article say to beware of snakes but don’t even mention bears…huh
- the British used the Doodletown trail during the Revolutionary War to attack the Americans, and they won that battle
- the town’s anthem went something like, “Arkansas, Arkansas, I lust love ole Arkansas, Love my ma, love my pa, But I just love ole Arkansas”…oh wait, that was our inside joke, not the NY Times. Trust me, you had to be there.
Bear Mountain truly does feel a world away from Manhattan, so do as we did — print out backpacker.com’s guide, hop on the train at Grand Central, find friends with a car, and show the rain who’s boss.
