“You don’t know how to camp.”

The woman stood in line behind me at Walmart, eyeing my cart. She’d already asked if I was moving into a new house; something about the broom, the doormat and the massive bags of outdoor cat and dog food must’ve tipped her off.

I explained that no, I was just getting a couple of things for our camper (and life, in general). Then she spotted my broom and made her proclamation: “You don’t know how to camp.”

I paused for a second, both in surprise and wonderment because why are we having this conversation in aisle 13 at Walmart? So I explained: We take the camper to cattle shows, with three kids, two adults and more bovines than necessary. If I don’t sweep — a lot — it’ll be ankle-deep in that camper within 24 hours, with stuff you don’t even want to think about.

She rolled her eyes at me, but the woman behind her smiled and nodded. Solidarity. She knew livestock. I could feel it.

I suppose the essence of what I was trying to explain to the lady of Walmart boiled down to “this ain’t a vacation, lady!”

Clearly, livestock-showing campers do camping differently. We winterize by Labor Day — when everyone else takes off to camp — because nobody here is camping during harvest. We take brooms for nasty floors and bins for boots. We hang up starched clothes. We pack excess drinks and stack the freezer with frozen fruit cups, because we’re always working, hot and sweaty.

Could we even do the non-livestock camping thing? It’s a foreign land, but we’ve decided to give it a try — and in kind of a big way. We’re heading east to Washington, D.C., this summer for a family vacation. Sans cattle! I hope we’ll know what to do without them. I feel like there’s some relaxing to be done, mostly because we gave it a tiny try on Memorial Day, taking the camper for an overnight at our local church camp. Without cattle, it turns out you have downtime. You can read a book. Sip a drink. Relax, even.  

I tell you what — I may not even need the broom.