The camping in and of itself was tolerable; and the rafting he grudgingly admitted was even a little bit fun, but the paddle-boating, the kayaking, the rambling, the rock climbing, the all-terrain biking, and the hiking, oh lord, the hiking was just too much. All this outsiderness is just so tedious and so exhausting, he thought. Okay, it might be gorgeous out there, but he was content to enjoy that beauty conceptually. And the outside was teeming with things that just wanted to eat you. Even if they had to do it in tiny little bites, they wanted to devour you. It just seems such an itchy place to put oneself. Even our ancestors knew better: they were cavemen, because they had caves. And who decided that such a lifestyle epitomizes health? That participating in such activities proved the strength of a person’s mental and physical character? In advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs, they often show the presumably diseased person hanging off a precipice all muscles and sweat, or mountain biking in lycra shorts and asymmetrical sunglasses.
