Getting older isn’t all bad.

For one thing, getting older means I’m still alive.

MATTHEW DICKERSON

It has a few other benefits, too. A few weeks ago, my wife and I stopped at a U.S. Forest Service Androscoggin Ranger Station on our way through Gorham, N.H., and purchased an America the Beautiful pass. This is a lifetime pass for seniors only (over age 62) good for entry to national parks and federal recreation lands (Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, etc.) as well as 50% discounts on many amenities. It cost only $80, and covers us both plus two guests (as long as we are visiting the same park in the same car.)  And for only two dollars, seniors can get a lifetime pass to Vermont State Parks. The price of both of our passes together isn’t even enough to buy a greeting card with a photo of a state park.

When I was young (and my definition of “young” now includes anything less than a half century) I assumed that outdoors and comfort were mutually exclusive. Lifting 80 pounds of canoe onto the roof of our car seemed like a completely natural and necessary part of our canoe outings, just like feeling every single rock beneath my body was part of a tenting experience. And tents themselves had to be part of the overall experience of the outdoors.  When I was really young (by which I mean upstream of 40) I would even take pride in how much discomfort I could endure in order to enjoy the outdoors. Although, admittedly, I was only 20 when I decided I was old enough not to suffer through my father’s canvas war-surplus tent any more on our wilderness fishing trips.

Now that we are seniors (downstream of 60), we are much more accepting — I might even say indulgent — of simple comforts, without any feelings of guilt. We still like tenting. My wife especially enjoys the simplicity of sleeping in a tent and going to sleep when it gets dark. No artificial lights, except the requisite flashlight to get to the campground restroom. Except now, if we feel like getting a cabin instead of a tent site, we don’t feel guilty or embarrassed doing so. There is something to be said for being able to stand up and stretch in the morning without first having to crawl out through the tent door, find our shoes beneath the vestibule, and dig out our raincoats.

In our mid-50s, we splurged for a Wenonah lightweight Kevlar canoe weighing under 40 pounds. Out of habit, we still grunt when we lift it onto the car, but the reality is we can lift it with one hand each without even straining. So now when we go canoeing, we don’t risk injuring our backs and shoulders before we even get the canoe into the water.  (We just tire our shoulders out much more quickly after we get on the water.) A couple years ago we replaced our old camping pads with a new high-tech one: a queen-sized extra-thick Klymit pad that is both far more comfortable and far lighter and less bulky than our former pads. It fills up the entire tent. And I can’t feel any rocks or roots beneath, which barely even feels fair. We even use it when we are sleeping in a cabin. Last year’s purchase with our credit card points was a screen house to put over a picnic table at a campground. Camping with it for the first time at a state park in the Adirondacks, after a one-hour paddle around the lake, we spent the rest of the evening reading under the tent without any mosquitos divebombing us!

I also have come to appreciate simpler pleasures of the outdoors. No need for adrenaline. A couple weeks ago, I spent two solid hours watching a pair of loons feeding twin loonlets  a dozen yards off the bank below the picnic table. It was the exact same thing over and over again. The only drama was which of the two week-old gray fuzzballs would get the next tiny fish. One of them looked a little more aggressive and often raced ahead of its sibling and even if both parents returned at the same time with food, the same loonlet would get them both.

Thinking about all these improvements to how I appreciate the outdoors — none of which except the senior passes actually required us to be senior citizens — my only wish is that I had gotten old when I was a lot younger.