I HATE CAMPING.

It’s dumb and the ground is too hard to sleep on in the summer, and too cold in the winter.

Plus there’s stuff crawling on that ground in both seasons. Not that there’s anything wrong with that stuff — au contraire — the stuff totally belongs there. It’s me who doesn’t.

I belong about 6 feet above the stuff — which is how far the genes my forbears passed on allow me to be above it. Out of simple respect to them, I try to remain vertical amongst most flora.

Look, I really don’t mind stuff like bugs and bears and bobcats and snakes. They’re not the problem — truly. I actually love that sort of fauna. In fact it was only weeks ago I accidently picked up a black widow. And I like glimpsing the gray fox that comes around sometimes. Plus just the other day I lassoed a blue belly lizard with a lariat made from tall grass (next time you see me just ask — I’ll show you how).

I dig sharing the natural habitat of all such creatures — it’s just that when bedtime comes I want us all to go to our respective accommodations. Theirs in the cave or tunnel or burrow or whatever tree branch it is they cling to.

And mine is at the Best Western.

I was not always this way, mind you. There was a time when I dreamed of sleeping on the ground.

I was 8.

Heck, back then all of us neighborhood kids wanted to sleep outside. And, since most of us were Boy Scouts, we got to. That was handy for my brother and me because Dad — who was from the old country — was not especially eager to take us anywhere that required sleeping out of doors. Maybe because where he came from some of the poorer relations slept outside as a matter of course. And those who were slightly less poor lived in such dilapidated shacks they probably should have been sleeping outside.

No, good old Dad was just fine with sleeping on a box spring and mattress all fancied up with high-thread-count sheets and duvets and such. But back when my brother and I were boys we would, along with the neighbor kids, go on Scout camping trips every chance we got.

Since I was a year or two older than the other kids in the neighborhood, I was a more advanced Scout, which meant I got to do the camping trips they didn’t get to do until the following year. And the trip that stands out best in my memory is when my troop went to the Ventana Wilderness in Big Sur.

Big Sur is stunningly beautiful — but we couldn’t have cared less about that. We were there for the archery and sleeping bags and swimming in the river and shooting .22 rifles and throwing knives (disclaimer for parents with kids in Scouting: All those things before the “knife throwing” part were sanctioned and supervised by grownups — some of whom didn’t start drinking until well after lunch).

And we got to sleep on the ground. What’s more, since I had a goose-down-filled sleeping bag with just an opening to stick my face through, I was so warm I could sleep outside the tent all night.

During that time I supposed I’d be watching the stars silently trace their paths across the sky. What I actually watched was a cloud of mosquitoes as they hovered above me looking for the source of carbon dioxide exhaled from lungs (mine) that told them their next victim was very close.

I held my breath as long as I could until I was distracted by a weird thumping sound. I say “weird” because I could feel some of the heavier thumping, but only hear the lighter thumping. This all made more sense as the gigantic mother boar and her piglets came plodding down the boar path I’d apparently laid my bag out on.

And that was a fascinating scene. Surreal? Yes. Scary? Check. But also kind of cool — I mean I knew that a mother boar with young would be super aggressive. And with those sharp tusks that stuck out either side of her toothy maw, I was pretty sure she would filet me when she saw me. But I just lay there, sort of like a convict who’s strapped to the table before the lethal injection, trapped, soaking it all in.

God knows why, but the monster boar just kept going. All I can figure is that she already had enough kids to deal with and she couldn’t be bothered with one more. When my heart slowed back below drumroll tempo, I drifted off to sleep.

It must have been at that point the mosquito cloud located the flesh poking out of the feedbag below. Because when I awoke the kids coming out of the tents looked at me with a slackjawed stare. Which intrigued me until I was distracted by the throbbing itch that seemed to be everywhere on my face — so I asked the closest kid “Hey, you got any sandpaper?” He didn’t.

But that was OK, because later in the day I found relief in one of those neat little streams that flow down from the melting snow at the mountain ridge. I’d put the temperature of that water somewhere around 17. Or 5. But definitely not 0. Only an idiot would swim in 0-degree water — and I was no one’s fool. I found that splashing the water on my face made the itching stop. It also made it hard to blink — or for that matter move anything above my neck, but I decided that was a fair tradeoff.

Those were the events of the first 24 hours of that camping trip. From there it got way more interesting. The archery and the rifles were fun, but I think everyone would agree that the knife throwing was the best spend of our time.

And as for the bugs and beasts and such, the creature I recall most clearly is the big steelhead trout I later fished out of the icy little stream. I guess because he almost got away as I dragged him up on shore with my fishing line. As he flopped back toward the water I had time to run down and grab him. I think he would have made it though, had he not been so numb from the frigid water.

I’ll never forget cooking my big trout for dinner that night. I wrapped him in foil along with some lemon and garlic butter and set him on a big rock next to the campfire. Sure I burned the hell out of my fingers taking him out of the foil — but it was totally worth it as I enjoyed the slightly crispy filet that had been facing the warm glow. It was marginally less worth it as I choked down the raw filet that was facing away from the fire.

Man those are good memories … (Oh hey, hold on a minute would you? I think I hear Loretta calling me).

What honey? We’re meeting the kids down by the coast this weekend? You promised we’d go camping with them?

(I utter a word that rhymes with truck)

What was that? No, I said what a stroke of luck — I love camping!

John P. Gavin is the author of “Online Dating Sucks … But It’s How I Fell In Love,” which is available on Amazon and at Bookshop Benicia.