Digging the Glamping Queens
by Ryan Wildstar
Although the term “glamping” didn’t appear in the modern vernacular until about 2005 in the United Kingdom to describe overly pampered campers in the moist and mossy British countryside, one could posit that the inauguration of said practice actually occurred on June 7th, 1520 on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in the Pale of Calais. It was there that a 20-year-old Henry VIII, not yet gouty or uxoricidal, set up a 12,000 square foot billowing “cloth of gold” campsite outside the walls of the Château de Guînes for a tête-à-tête with Francois le Premier, the reigning king of France. Indeed, this might be the first ostentatious “glampsite,” complete with a gilded palace of tents (over 2,800 tents in total), a retinue of over 2,000 sheep and livestock to be consumed over the next two weeks, royal monkeys appliquéd in gold leaf and two enormous fountains of ever-flowing red wine.
That said, I maintain that when it comes to glamping as we know it today, my husband and I, along with our dearest friend and brother from another mother, Alan (an absolute aesthete but still one of those outdoorsy, sporty kind of gays) and our other homo brother, Gene (a flamboyant Chinese-Hawaiian dandy affectionately known as “Gene the Queen”) just might be The OGs (The Original Glampers). A few months after the 9/11 attacks in New York, while we were still starving Bohemian artists living in Paris, we came back to Washington State to visit our family and friends. One night over appetizers with Alan and Gene at the Flying Fish restaurant in Seattle, Alan announced that he had planned a three-day camping trip with the four of us at The Boulder Creek Campgrounds in the Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest of Western Washington. To which the three of us almost spit our mouthfuls of crisp Picpoul de Pinet all over our freshly served tuna tartare. Gene turned to us and rolled his eyes with a flare of utter disdain that only Gene could muster and shrieked cattily to Alan, “CAMPING?!? . . . Us?!?” He gestured at himself and the two of us, “My dear, you seem to be confused. We said we were CAMPY Queens, not CAMPING Queens!”
Alan (a jack-of-all-trades with impeccable taste and an unrivaled lust for life) and Gene (a career waiter in his mid-50s and a gourmet chef in his own right) and I had all worked together as waiters for many years in restaurants in Seattle and individually in fine dining restaurants the world-over. Alan and I had met at one of Seattle’s top restaurants in 1998, where he was the head waiter and I was the bartender & sommelier. We’ve been brothers ever since. Together, the three of us had organized countless extravagant dinner parties, complete with lavish 10-course meals for upwards of 40 people. So Alan persuaded us all that it would be a “glamping” trip we’d never forget and we would all have a blast. We took the bait.
On a Thursday afternoon in Seattle we all reconvened at Alan’s 1920s Capitol Hill apartment to go shopping for our trip that weekend. Our main stop was the world-famous Pike Place Market, where we loaded up on fresh produce and fruit and then four whole lobsters, three enormous bluefin tuna steaks, a whole sea bass, two pounds of mussels and clams, three Alaskan king crabs, a pound of langoustines and three dozen colossal scallops. Next we popped in at DeLaurenti Food & Wine to procure some Prosciutto di Parma, paté de campagne, duck foie gras, hunks of 36-month cave-aged Comté and creamy Saint Agur plus giant wedges of Brie du Pommier, aged Garrotxa and Manchego. We may also have purchased some of their lovely smoked bacon, fleur de sel butter from Bretagne, a dozen locally farmed eggs, early harvest Italian olive oil, Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena and perhaps a few containers of their house-made antipasti (black tapenade, artichoke spread and gigantes bean salad).
Then it was over to the renowned Don & Joe’s Meats for dry-aged ribeye steaks, hot and mild Italian sausages, Mexican chorizo and veal sweetbreads. That was followed by a trip to Le Panier bakery for half a dozen fresh baguettes, a round of pain de campagne and an assortment of pastries (amandines, kouign-amann, petite palmiers and a selection of éclairs).
Last stop was a meeting with one of our former wine reps for a selection of wholesale-priced high-end wines that only friends who have friends in the wine world benefit from. We bought one mixed case of old vine Carignans and robust Grenaches from the Languedoc, some aged Burgundies (both white and red) and several quotidian Côtes du Rhônes. Our second case was a mix of vintage Barolos and Nebbiolos, Champagnes and Crémants d'Alsace. And our third and final case was a smattering of Sancerre, Muscadet, Chenin Blanc and a few vintage Rieslings from the Mosel. We also made sure we had three cases of San Pellegrino, a case of Peroni and Leffe, a bottle each of Quinta do Noval 40 Year Old Tawny Port, 1983 Rieussec Sauternes and Don Julio 1942 Tequila, several containers of freshly squeezed juices, a bag of Italian espresso beans (Alan packed his own grinder and French press) and crates of the appropriate glassware, silverware and dinnerware (fine china, naturally) for everything aforementioned. Oh, and Gene brought an ounce of premium Washington indica.
The shopping was now complete for our *three-day weekend* glamping trip. Yes I said *three days*, and no, I’m not joking (although I will admit that I am, on rare occasions, prone to slight bouts of hyperbole). The next day, we packed Alan’s Land Rover to the hilt and set off for the Boulder Creek Campground. We arrived mid-day and drove through the entire campground multiple times until Alan found his perfect spot, just a short walk to the idyllic Boulder Creek itself, a pure stream of fresh water descending from the majestic base of Mount Baker. Having secured our spot, Alan threw a crisp white table cloth over the picnic table, put down four soft throw pillows for our delicate behinds and we sat down for an aperitif of black olive tapenade, artichoke spread and a basket of hand-torn rustic baguette. We toasted to our glamping trip with a couple bottles of perfectly chilled Veuve Clicquot (from before it was owned by Louis Vuitton and still palatable) and a few bottles of Cremant d’Alsace before setting up our newly claimed glampsite.
While we were enjoying our aperitif, several other campers began to arrive, staking claim to their own sites nearby. The campsite next to us was soon occupied by a rough-looking family who appeared as if their weekend respite in the woods was simply an escape from their meth-riddled trailer park. They eyed us suspiciously as we raised our crystal Champagne flutes to welcome them to what was about to become the set of Queer Eye for the Straight Forest.
Alan said he would pitch our tents (no pun intended) if the two of us and Gene would start unpacking and set about making the place beautiful. He didn’t have to ask us twice. Gene placed Alan’s enormous 1980s boombox stereo in the center of our glampsite, plopped in his favorite CD of Jessye Norman’s legendary recording of Les Nuits d’Été by Berlioz and turned it up full volume. From there he did an elaborate hula over to a large picnic basket in the back of the Land Rover (Gene was a trained hula dancer in Hawaii), from which he pulled out a stack of tapered candles, multiple silver candle holders and a gigantic wrought iron candelabra. Reaching out his arms, he beckoned to me, “Get to it, Liberace!” With a dramatic pirouette, he pas-de-bourréed across the glampsite, lip-syncing to Jessye Norman singing “Villanelle.” From another large picnic basket, he began to extract swaths of linens and various accoutrements he’d packed for the occasion, with which he then proceeded to titivate the surrounding foliage, draping Art Deco scarves around trees, fanning out peacock and pheasant feathers in the surrounding bushes, laying down Persian rugs outside our tents and adorning drooping branches with Chinese lanterns. Our redneck neighbors grew very, very circumspect.
By dusk, our “field of the cloth of gold” was laid and we were ready to have a couple shots of tequila, smoke a joint and play Scrabble at the picnic table, which was now covered in several ornate shawls and the giant wrought iron candelabra aflame with ten long tapered crimson candlesticks. The lanterns hanging from the trees were all lit and our glampsite was magically transformed into the kind of inviting caravanserai a group of weary spice traders, seeking oasis from the long Silk Road, might happen upon at nightfall. We finished a game of Scrabble and then set out to orchestrate our evening feast.
Alan lit a fire in the grill pit and proceeded to create our first course, a cioppino with mussels, clams, sea bass, langoustines, scallops and crab legs in a lush broth of seafood stock, tomato, fennel, garlic and white wine. We sopped it up with fresh baguettes and two bottles of very refreshing Domaine La Rocalière Tavel Rosé. Then Gene broke out his seasoned wok and proceeded to construct our second course of handmade crab wontons drenched in browned butter and sprinkled with shaved black truffles. It was a moment none of us will ever forget, watching Gene in a headlamp singing along to Maria Callas while folding wontons into a giant wok over the open fire. I paired his sumptuous crab wontons with some extraordinary Muscadet from my friend, the legendary biodynamic guru of Loire, Jo Landron. For our next course, Alan prepared perfectly grilled Maine lobster tails in a bath of melted Breton fleur de sel butter and I made my signature asparagus and chanterelle mushroom risotto with homemade chicken stock, a limestone-heavy Sancerre and 36-month aged Parmigiano Reggiano. We devoured it with several bottles of vintage Domaine de Veilloux Romorantin and the sultry tones of Annie Lennox’s Diva. This was followed by pan-seared dry-aged ribeye steaks drizzled with a creamy peppercorn sauce and accompanied with fire-roasted baby red potatoes coated in Italian olive oil and pink Himalayan sea salt. This we paired with three bottles of Chateau Rayas Chateauneuf-du-Pape Reserve and Cesária Évora’s Miss Perfumado. After we had sufficiently gorged ourselves on beautiful food, beautiful conversation and immaculate wines, it was time for a post-dinner puff and a cut-throat game of Hearts with some chilled Rieussec Sauternes and kouign-amann for dessert. (Did I mention we were starving Bohemian artists in Paris? We were hungry!)
And that was just our first night! The next morning, Ryan and I awoke, hungover to be sure, with our stiff, dehydrated bodies pressed against the cold hard ground. Our air mattress had sprung a leak in the night and deflated. Always the early riser no matter how severe the revelry, Alan was awake at the crack of dawn and we warmly welcomed his hearty breakfast of poached eggs on toast, grilled Italian sausages, hash browns, fresh pomegranate juice and French-pressed café au lait. We might also have had a few ice cold Peroni with our country breakfast.
To get our blood circulating, Alan insisted we skip the campground showers and go for a refreshing dip in Boulder Creek. The temperature of the water was, as one might expect . . . glacial, and we were most certainly awakened and revived. Gene and the two of us spent the rest of the day lounging in our oversized, padded, collapsible outdoor armchairs (with lumbar support) reading and listening to music while Alan went hiking. By evening time, it was a rinse and repeat of the decadence of the night before. After cooking and digesting another Rabelaisian meal (think Babette’s Feast meets Boulder Creek), we spent the rest of the evening savoring beautiful wines and making each other laugh heartily into the night, much to the chagrin of our Confederate neighbors Billy Joe Bob and Sissy Mae, who were angrily grinding the remains of their rotted teeth and berating their dirty-faced, half-nude screaming toddlers whilst guzzling cans of Bud Light and blasting Billy Ray Cyrus to drown out the sound of our unabashed gaiety.
By check out time on Sunday morning, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the entirety of Boulder Creek Campground, as amused and intrigued as they may have been by us (we even gave the hillbillies some leftover seared tuna steak and cioppino which they eyed with alien distrust but accepted nonetheless) were happy to see the backs of our heads as we loaded up the Land Rover to head home. There was one final coup de grâce though. As we drove through the campground, Gene rolled down the passenger window, stuck out his head, and began to sing theatrically to the tune of “Mein Herr” by Liza Minelli in Cabaret: “Bye . . . bye . . . BYE Boulder Creek! It was a lovely week! But now it’s over!” We collectively burst out in hysterical laughter and then, as a final gesture to our flag-waving “camp-patriots,” Gene slipped in a CD of Moroccan-Egyptian pop star Samira Said singing “Leila Habibi” in Arabic and turned it up full blast as we exited Boulder Creek, leaving our unforgettable glamp stamp behind us . . . forever.
In loving memory of our dear brother, Eugene Chang (aka “Gene the Queen”):
....and I thought camping in an RV was the epitome of glamping! I think it's time to up my camp fare of beer & hot dogs a notch.