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Chapter 10 - Third Class Fun
It can be many things. Biting into a piece of blueberry pie.
Having the grandkids over for the afternoon. Feeling the tug of a big fish at the end of your line.
Watching your favorite team make a big play. Getting to see a lynx cross the trail in front of you. As a birder, discovering a “lifer” you never thought you’d see. Enjoying a cup of coffee on the deck as a warm morning sun caresses your face. Having a moderate wind pushing you from behind as you navigate your canoe down a big lake.
All of these bring joy, and in another sense, fun. I refer to such experiences as “first class fun”.
To be included in this category, it must be intense but immediate.
Even the youngest human can appreciate first class fun. Babies when they’re tickled or see mom’s face. Toddlers with an ice cream cone. Adolescents when they get to drive for the first time. Young adults on a date. And, for any of us past the age of eighteen, adventures of each day as we get out and explore the world. First class fun is the easiest to understand and is evident when you see a smile on someone’s face –including your own.
Second class fun doesn’t begin to happen until we’ve started to grow a few chin whiskers. For most of us, even beyond that.
Second class fun isn’t evident in the present but can only be appreciated after it’s complete.
Riding from Ely to Minneapolis to watch a concert or a sporting event. The ride doesn’t feel like fun, but it’s necessary to be able to see the Twins play a baseball game in person. The result is fun, but the work leading up to it must happen for the “fun” to take place. The time between work and fun is minimal. The trip down can be boring and tiring but the end is worth it. The atmosphere of the stadium, the hot dogs and pretzels, a critical hit or home run or a stellar grab by a shortstop that initiates turning a double play make the effort worth the work.
There is a certain maturity that must be present to understand second-class fun. “Gotta eat your veggies before you can have dessert” is not what your average five-year-old wants to hear.
“Clean your room before you can watch TV” is another phrase that hurts the youngin’s ears.
As adults, we can feel antipathy towards what must happen before the fun can take place. “I have to mow the grass this morning before I can get on the lake to go fishing this afternoon.” “I must endure eight hours in the office before I can take the ATV for a ride this evening.” “I have to get the bills in the mail before I can enjoy my book” We may understand the need better than our younger counterparts, but we feel the pain just as much!
Perhaps the best way I can explain “second class fun” to my outdoor buddies is to relate what it means to “portage”. I have NEVER met anyone who looks forward to a canoe trip so that they can portage for miles and miles. Portaging is work, pure and simple. Loading and unloading the canoe is always a challenge. Arranging packs to travel well across the trail is never easy. They don’t ride well across my shoulders and back, and always seem to dig into my armpits halfway across. Paddles, fishing rods, bait buckets, landing nets, camera gear, life jackets and coffee cups always seem to end up in my hands. If I want to be efficient, I’m going to try to single portage which means heavier loads. Logs block my way, and my legs are too short to step over them. Rocks are slippery and test my balance. The canoe is clumsy, and most times aimed at a tree on the next corner. Tree roots reach up to grab my toes. Mosquitos are having a feast because my hands are tied up trying to not drop the paddles. My cap often falls to the ground halfway across and it’s either drop everything to pick it up or walk back to get it. Even a moderate hill between lakes feels like I’m climbing Mt. Everest, and down the other side I bounce the stern of my canoe on every rock.
Sweat runs into my eyes and fogs my glasses.
But....the fun begins when I can see the blue of the next lake through the trees. I know this horror is about to end. Sometimes a cool breeze meets me at the water’s edge and immediately abates the discomfort I’ve felt from the last twenty minutes.
Setting the canoe and packs down means that I’m at my destination or at least one portage closer. The relief to my shoulder and back is immediate. Fishing can begin.
Finding that perfect campsite with enough breeze to keep the black flies away and facing towards an epic sunset is just minutes away.
A gourmet dinner can be enjoyed.
Pitching a tent in the perfect spot signals a night of blissful sleep.
This makes the second class fun worthwhile.
Age, in itself, is not enough to allow us to appreciate third class fun. Years of experience and hundreds of miles down the road of life may give us enough insight to even know what this fun can be. Sometimes, we won’t know that our immediate efforts will ever turn out to be “fun”. It can take weeks, months or even years for us to know. Starting school at age five and not graduating for thirteen years is a lot of work before you see a diploma. Cutting firewood today and not having the enjoyment of sitting next to the warmth of fireplace reading a book and enjoying a beverage for many months. Ricing also comes to mind. Hot days struggling to move through wild rice paddies, shaking the stalks to rid them of their bounty. Bagging, parching and winnowing the husks can be back breaking work. Wild rice soup, breakfast cereal and sausage are the reward in upcoming months.
The topic came up with my buddy Tom a couple of weeks ago in a phone conversation I had with him. He had spent the past few days tapping and collecting maple sap from trees on his back forty. Carrying the five-gallon buckets through the woods to his garage takes a toll when you are past age 65. We were about to hit a cold stretch where he was worried about the sap freezing and was thinking he might have to haul them into his basement.
In any case, he was staring at a full two to three days of boiling the liquid down to the thickened syrup. “This is really some third class fun” he told me. It takes some real forward thinking to know that all this effort will lead to enjoying the fruits of labor on pancakes, waffles and ice cream weeks and months in the future.
Tom and I took a paddle up the Albany River several years ago.
We would be traveling about 500 miles through true wilderness by ourselves. While I was excited for the adventure, trepidation haunted me in the weeks leading up to our departure. I’d spent many days in the back country, but never so far from civilization and paddling the white water we were about to encounter. As the trip progressed, we had some great days fishing and other adventures, but much of the time was work and drudgery. Some days we would paddle for over twelve hours. When we passed the halfway point, the scenery was the same hour after hour. We paddled for twenty-seven days and by day ten, I was questioning my agreeing to a trip like this. In the end I was exhausted. The last two days were spent in Cochrane, Ontario waiting for our pick-up. I felt numb, completely played out. There was little joy in our accomplishment. The first question my wife asked when she pulled up in the car was “Did you have fun?” It was hard to mumble yes. I didn’t feel it.
It took almost six weeks for me to look back on the trip and feel the excitement of what the trip really was. As I began to read over my journal and put my thoughts down about the trip, I realized just how much fun I had. We took the journey in 2006 and I appreciate it now more than ever. I view it with pride in our accomplishment. I recognize it as being one of the biggest events of my life – a turning point in many respects.
That’s the thing about third class fun. We toil, sometimes with expectations, sometimes not. We don’t know the result for what seems like an eternity. The discipline, the effort, the pride – are all things we appreciate later in life and slowly come to recognize that it was worth what we put into it. “Fun” might be a strange way of looking at it, but it’s all part of the process to the outcome. If the final outcome was something you enjoy, then the journey has to be a large part of the fun!
