Camping – Page 4 – My Truant Pen

Four Flynns in a tent

It’s a great question why any of us choose to have children, in this age. We don’t need them for their labor. We no longer expect children to provide for parents in old age. We aren’t allowed to use them for spare organ parts. Kids are tremendously expensive, and an iffy proposition since it turns out their eventual success is much more about their efforts than ours. Having kids comes along with a burden of bearing others’ judgements, not sleeping in, cleaning up vomit, worrying and making excellent meals that no one will eat. And yet we continue to have children.

If I thought about why I wanted to have children, other than just seeming like the thing I ought to do, I think I wanted children so that someone else would get to enjoy childhood as much as I did. I thought back the the joys of my youth and wanted to offer them to someone else.

I remember in particular one car trip we took as a family. (My family practically grew up in a car.) My brother was a nascent reader – maybe four or five. My sister and I – eight and six years older – were already well versed in reading. On this particular day we drove through the rolling desert hills of Eastern Washington and told my brother about all the books we were jealous that he’d get to read for the first time: Mrs. Buncle’s Book, The Lord of the Rings, Shakespeare. My entire family breathed a deep sigh of relief when my brother finally picked up books and started reading along with the rest of us. We spent our vacations with book bags larger than our clothing bags. I married a man with the same predilections.

But the last decade or so has been somewhat lacking in the reading department. We’ve had a non-reader as part of our family for the last eight and a half years. Until now.

Last night, we sat around the fire on an incredibly buggy night on the shores of White Lake. (Ask me about how I and my phobia survived my first ever tick bite!) Adam was reading some book of Cthulu horror on his Kindle. I had managed to lure Grey into reading “My Side of the Mountain”. Ah – is there anything sweeter than watching your child devour a book you had loved as a child? He was deep into it, head dancing with dreams of living off the land, just as I did. And Thane was doggedly working his way through beginner books. He read “Are You My Mother” and “Put Me In the Zoo” and slogged his way through a Pokemon book. For an hour or so the four of us sat around the campfire swatting mosquitos and reading.

The joys of slightly older children did not stop there, though. Finally chased into the tent by the ravening hordes of starving, blood-sucking insects, we broke out a board game. On the tent of the floor, we played through an oddly cooperative round of Carcassonne – an actual game that Adam and I play for fun. Thane played a tough game, and Grey actually won. Then we read some more before bed. Thane tired before he finished his book, and I woke up to the sound of him slogging his way through it in the morning light (at a reasonable hour).

This Memorial Day camping trip was wet, but dryer than last year. It was cool, but warmer than last year. (Actually, Friday night was one of the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a long time.) It was irredeemably buggy. But it felt like the dawning of a new age, with the company of these cool kids who like to build forts, imagine themselves as outdoorsmen and sing old folk tunes in front of the fire. They can open the zipper to the tent, go to the bathroom by themselves and be safely out of my sight.

In the buggy, moist air above the loons of White Lake I had that moment of joyful realization: this is why I had children.

You can see all my pictures for May, including video of Thane reading, by clicking here!

Finding darkness

We sat next to the campfire, sparks ascending to heaven against the backdrop of idyllic lake towards glimmering stars peeking between lush birch and pine boughs. The mysterious and mystical call of the loon lofted over the glacier-scoured waters. My husband and I, softly singing together the old folk tunes, shaded our eyes from the 100 watt glare emanating from the next campsite.

It is fair to ask why I choose to go camping. As I walked the other night to the campground restroom, I started doing the math in my head. We’ve come here three times a year for five years now (since before Thane celebrated his first birthday). That’s fifteen camping trips. The trips have averaged four days. That’s two months. Two months of my life I’ve spent here at White Lake State Park, with coin showers and loon calls. What would inspire me to spend those two months here instead of back in my house, with cable and wireless and delivery sushi?

There are a few things. It is possible, in a campground, to have nothing you need to do. Rare, yes. Unusual. But possible. It is not possible for this to happen to me in my house. I could have a month of leisure in my house and never run out of things I need to do. I only ever run out of either energy or motivation. Do not underestimate the power of nothing to do.

The concentrated time with my family, where I am undistracted and capable of fully experiencing and (usually) enjoying them is lovely. The campfire – we humans are drawn to flames and the every-playing pattern of the salamander-tongues of fire springing from a rocky plain of throbbing coals.

But quite possibly my greatest motivation is to find darkness. There is no darkness in my life. I live within the aureole of Boston. Standing in the shadows of my back yard, hiding from the porch lights and street lights, I can see maybe 30 stars. The Big Dipper and Venus are there. But the sky is permanently bright. Inside the house, no room is free from the banal orange of the street light, the blue LED, like lurking lizards’ eyes, from the charging devices, the night lights and energy vampires.

I did know darkness, once. I was raised high in the mountains, where there is less air to capture and refract the light. Furthermore, I was raised in the mountains far from other people and their addiction to the bright lights. My parents actually stopped paying for the lighting of the street light outside our house, so we could enjoy our dark. I could walk up mountain roads to the dark and quiet graveyard – half hill, half vale – and listen to the quiet of the Northwest and watch the bright cheerful streak of the Milky Way spanning a star-filled sky. Sometimes, driving home from Seattle at one in the morning, I would be forced to pull over on a dark stretch, so bright and imperative were the stars.

The brightest darkness I have ever known was in Africa – in a tiny town in northern Mozambique. My travels across the southern tip of Africa had, even at the time, a dreamlike quality brought on by not knowing where I was or where I was going, and not having sufficient sleep, water or food. I was, perhaps, in Cuamba. There was a prayer meeting that night – all in Chichewa of which I spoke not a word. I didn’t know anyone but the missionary I was with. I do recall a little baby, whose name was Manuelito, peed on the dark suit of the pastor, who was less than pleased. I remember the dingy, 1950s/concrete feel of the living room in which we met. And then the power went out. It was not an infrequent even, but it signalled the end of the prayer meeting. I stepped out the door to go (where, I remember not) and was struck still and dumb by the stars. The entire town – the entire region perhaps – were dark from the power outage. It was late enough that no on had bothered to start generators or light lanterns. And what I saw on that night was a sight I had not seen before, nor since. The Southern Cross, landmark of a whole new night sky, lay at easy gaze across the still silent corrugated roofs of the town. That moment is surrounded on either side by a fog of memory, but itself blazes bright and clear.

All this is to say, not only have I known darkness, but I loved it. And I miss it. Part of the reason I go camping is to find darkness again, in a small way. In fact, at night on that walk to the bathroom, I often do not take a light. My feet travel the now-well-known path, finding careful way across star-studded field. I walk between the high branches on soft loamy paths, the mist swirling around me, the darkness undisturbed. I see others going with bright flashlights and loud voices, and almost pity them as being blinded by their lights. When you hold a beam of light, you can only see where that beam points. When you go in darkness, you can see all the darkness, the deeper shadows, the stars and the flicker of fireflies or lightening. (Although last night, when I truly found my way through thick, eldtrich mists periodically illumed by flashes of nearby lightening and accompanied by near-constant rumble of thunder, even I found it eerie. That might have had something to do with the Lovecraft I was reading, though.)

When I walk back from the bathroom, not only is it dark but I am blind. I’m extremely nearsighted, and always always always wear my contacts. Even my husband hardly realizes or remembers how poorly I can see. I’m bright-blind from the bathroom lights, blind-blind from nearsightedness, and still turn on no light. I walk through a fuzzy, dark world more felt than seen. And I savor it.

So deeply do I love the darkness that I actually get confused by the bright lights my fellow campers bring. My neighbor this weekend had a Coleman lantern that easily exceeded 100 watts. He sat next to it for hours, playing on his (backlit) phone. Its beams cut through the humid air like rays from a medieval painting of Jesus’ natal star. It cast shadows from 30 feet away. Here was someone who had, at expense and effort, left his home to come to the shores of White Lake. And once there he turned on the lights, up the radio and played Candy Crush. (Of course, I update Facebook and write blog posts while out here, so I’m hardly innocent, but I do enjoy my moments of dark and quiet in the evening.)

We gather our things to go, and say farewell to our summer abode. We sweep up sand and needles, and shake out towels. We fold, wipe, stuff and pack, thoughts toward school and home and the coming year. But I fold up, along with the tarps and sheets, a little scrap of warm darkness – gemmed with stars and lightening – to carry with me through the winter.

Teaser: we have brought home not only Data, but his beloved brother Tiberius. Expect a post tomorrow with details and pictures!

Camping with kids in the 21st century

The last camping trip we undertook was, as I said, a Fine and Pleasant misery. Near constant rain, freezing temperatures and winds conspired to keep us damp, cold and in the tent or the car for most of the trip.

This trip, a mere four weeks later, could hardly be more different. The temperatures were literally double Memorial Day, making gentle waves between 90 and 65. We had a spectacular time this trip. For the first time maybe ever we just stayed in the camp and went swimming and sat around and generally had a superb time. (Well, except for our trip to go see Despicable Me II, which the boys thought was hilarious and which Adam and enjoyed enough.) All in all, this camping trip was one of the most enjoyable we’ve ever had as a family.

Last time I went camping, a number of my friends and readers mentioned that they’d love to hear how one goes about camping these days. (Ok, so maybe that was one person… but it totally counts, right?) Having once again read far too much McManus this trip, I’d be happy to offer my expertise on the topic.

I was trying to remember why I decided to go camping the first time. I mean, I’ve loved camping since I was a little girl. I remember camping when I was five and my mother was pregnant with my brother. I loved wandering the woods, building dams in mountain streams. I loved the sound of the zipper on the tent, the patter of pine needles on the canvas roof. But for reasons that escape me, Adam and I did very little camping while we were unchilded. I think I thought I was too busy, when in fact I was just prioritizing wrong. I was also, in truth, still a total snob about East Coast vs. West Coast mountains and disdained the mountains and woods that were available to me.

But likely the summer I was pregnant with Thane I realized that this was it. This was my life. I lived in New England. I owned a house. And if I wanted to go camping with my kids, I would need to go camping in New England. My longing for backpacking as a family, of reading by the stream while their feet went numb and they built a dam, would only happen if we actually went camping.

Actually taken two days before the famous "dance class" picture — Actually taken two days before the famous “dance class” picture

Thane was 7 months old the first time we went camping as a family. I, more or less at random, picked White Lake State Park for our trip. It had facilities (a bathroom, running water), it was a reasonable drive for us, and it had a very highly rated beach. I figured it was as good a start as any. That first camping trip, I don’t think we had any chairs. We brought the pack ‘n’ play for baby Thane. We bought a cheap tent at Target (which I loved, by the way, until it died a good death this year). We froze because I didn’t bring nearly enough blankets. It was tough to work camping around naps and babies and lack of expertise. But yet, somehow, we kept coming back. Nearly every trip back, Adam and I review the trip and make notes on what we should do differently next time. We’ve gotten to a point now where it is pretty optimized and all we need to do is make adjustments for the particular time of year and the boys’ stages in life.

So… if you, dear friend with small children, were thinking about camping, what would I recommend?

First of all, gear. We have always had insufficient car space to take all the gear I’d like to take. I joke that our camping trips are equivalent to a space shuttle launch, in terms of our careful choice and selection of gear. The absolute minimum requirements are: a tent, an air mattress for the grownups, a chair for each person. Chairs are unexpectedly key; trust me. Most of the rest of the gear is small and/or optional. It’s definitely wise to have a light source per person and a knife. My husband will add that you should have roughly a thousand feet of rope and three tarps – definitely preferable if it rains. Tents start to leak under sustained precipitation. Then there are the nice-to-haves: table cloths, wood-shop class name plates (I don’t have one and confess to actually wanting one. I have years to go until my sons take woodshop though. I wonder if Boston suburbs actually teach woodshop?) Finally, approximately a thousand toys, which should be doled out to children gradually over the trip.

Food is actually a challenge. I have no problem planning breakfast. First morning: eggs and bacon. Second morning: pancakes and bacon. Third morning: instant oatmeal. Lunches can be managed with a loaf or two of bread, cold cuts, cheese, peanut butter and jam. Pretzels, cheese sticks, apples and snack foods fill out the lunch. Oreos and smores are the traditional desserts. Dinners, though. Dinners are tough. Usually we have hot dogs/sausages the first night. I tried hamburgers, but they never turn out tasty. Sometimes I’ll bring a soup – either a frozen stew I made ahead of time, or two cans of some sort of Campell’s. But usually I only plan on eating at the campsite for half the time – the rest of the time we’ll eat out.

Next summer I bet Thane will be reading too

And that’s one of the secrets of my brand of camping: we don’t stay at the campsite most of the time. We go on “Car walks” up the Kancamagus Highway. We go climb a local (small) mountain. We drive to North Conway or Lincoln for various excuses. (Starbucks!) We visited Mt. Washington and the Polar Caves. We bring our food with us, so we can stop and make our lunch wherever we find ourselves. But it’s nice to go to a nice clean restaurant and have dinner out. These car walks started, I think, because Thane had so much trouble napping in a tent and so much less trouble napping in a car seat. (A fact that remains true even today. Someone is snoozing in the back seat as I write, which would not be true if we were at the site.)

So one secret to camping with small children is to not be a purist. Our camp site has lovely amenities. It also has full cell phone coverage. We eat out while camping. We watch movies. We have digital devices, although we try to save them for times when there is not too much opportunity lost.

Key: build traditions. Have a favorite diner you stop at on your way down. (Like Miss Wakefield’s.) Stop by a little roadside stand. Have a favorite hike, or cookie, or campfire song. Have a set of toys that are sacred to camping. It takes very few times to have something become a tradition when you have small kids. Three times is plenty.

Our Miss Wakefield ritual is down to the exact parking spot

Finally: Starbucks Via is a great way of getting your morning coffee. Just putting that out there.

So how about you? Do you go camping? Are you horrified at how many compromises I’ve made to pure camping? Are you horrified at the thought of coin-operated showers? Have you found a great way to bring your kids camping? (Or your spouse?) Do you aspire to go camping? Do you have any logistical questions I have failed to address?

Fire Spotter

I read an article about the inevitable demise and diminution Fire Lookouts, and watched one of my dreams go from unlikely to never-going-to-happen. I have a few daydreams like this one – that required my life to take a different path in order to ever happen. See also: being a Starbucks barista*.

But the fire lookout was one of my favorite daydream jobs. I imagined getting out of school and being shiftless for a while and landing a job for a summer as a firespotter. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for old codgers, and some of my favorite old codger stories were from firespotters from the mid century. They’d talk about backpacking in all their supplies to their remote, mountain-top eeries. There’s quiet up there, and nothing you don’t bring in yourself on your own back over miles of so-so trail. The views are, by definition, amazing. Fire lookouts have the best views possible, the better to spot tell tale tracks of white or gray where none should belong. A lookout would develop an intimate and loving knowledge of that masterful view… which valleys held mist until midmorning, the way the clouds curled over the peaks and ran like a waterfall down the other side. The lookout would know topography of their charge in full-moonlit nights, and would experience true darkness when the faint lights of their own tower were off and the clouds cut off starlight.

A firespotter’s job would be to look out the window, intermixed with the great and healthy labors of keeping one’s self fed. I imagined a life of good exercise, quietness, mastery, importance. And of course, the novel, the journal, the poetry. With so much space and so much quietness, surely my pace would slow. Surely I would coax out those words, slow-crafted, home-brewed, that would make of me an author. Surely with the racing clouds as my muse and the high mountains as my foundation I could find the words to paint my beloved Northwest, my new Albion, as richly as those before me painted the fields of England, the moors of Scotland. The fir, Oregon grape and madrona would take their right place in my mythology next to the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree. I even had the spot picked out – I would man High Rock.

The last time I was at High Rock – 1998. That needs to change.

Sunny weekends would bring hiking visitors – a chance to catch up with people. I imagined evenings, with the long slow gloaming of high places keeping my mountain lit to the last, with the mercury notes of my silvered trumpet sliding down the hill and traveling for miles across my beloved countryside.

Of course, the summer would end, or the year would end, and I would return to the fast world of busy humanity renewed, written and sure of myself. Then I would build a life (much like the one I have now), only with that summer of solitude behind me.

Of course, that didn’t happen. I got a job before I graduated. I married two short months after I was handed my diploma. I have never been shiftless and footloose. And now they are closing the mountains to human eyes, counting on the more reliable satellites and planes and motorists with cell phones instead of the lonely mountain spotter. I haven’t been able to even so much as backpack in a National Park for years; the closest I ever got to that kind of solitude.

Would I trade my husband, my children, my career, my home and my life to be a fire spotter? Um, no. I’m quite sure my vision was lacking in a few key details. (I mean, I’m an extrovert. How many days before I went completely crazy?! Two?) The mid thirties are an age though where you start acknowledging some lives you will never lead, and that idyllic summer is one of them.

What about you? What adventures did you always wait for just the right moment in life to invite you to partake in? What daydreams have passed irretrievably from you? Would you have wanted to be a mountain fire-spotter?

*I’ve wanted to be a Starbucks barista since I was 16. I applied a few summers, but they weren’t hiring summer help. I haven’t totally given up on this, since perhaps after I’m done paying for college I can do any job I want regardless of pay and maybe Starbucks will still be around and I’ll still want to work for them, and I’ll do it by gum.

A Fine and Pleasant Misery, part 2

“The rollicking old fireside songs originated in the efforts of other campers to drown out the language of the cook and prevent it from reaching the ears of little children. Meat roasted over a campfire was either raw or extra well done, but the cook usually came out medium rare.”

Patrick McManus – A Fine and Pleasant Misery

On Monday, the weather finally relented. My brother had arrived the previous night, along with darkness. I had visions of sneaking off to go hike Mt. Chocorua, which has been mocking me incessantly since we turned back half a mile from the summit for some lame reasons like, “Running out of water”, “Thunderstorms approaching” and “Knee desperately needs surgery for major tendon tears”. But there was a mass mutiny by the menfolk at the though of it, so I compromised.

We decided to do the Boulder Loop Trail, which was marked at 3 miles, and moderate. I have to remember that the person who rated the trails in my guidebook is a sadist, who definitely never hiked the trails with a four year old. The hike became even more exciting when the folks at the front of the trail, too absorbed in discussions, failed to keep with the trail and we accidentally headed on a path designed to take us straight up the granite cliff faces.

I fell – with my camera and my youngest child – and the pictures stop at this point. Oh, I took another two hundred and fifty… the camera works fine. But somehow those two hundred and fifty are not ON the memory card. I know they got written because the ID has incremented, and I’d used digital filters on some. I had given them up for lost, but when I was whining about it last night one of my friends who works with digital recovery volunteered to see if they were really gone, so hope remains. The camera mysteriously began working again as we left White Lake.

Anyway, it wasn’t a LONG fall, but it was enough to point out to us that perhaps we were not on the right path. We did eventually rediscover our route and the path, but the rest of it took on the aspect of a bit of a forced march for the littlest one. Coupled with his complete lack of fear of heights … (I wish I could show you want that meant, suffice it to say we were very high and the fall was very long) … it was not a restful hike. But it was fun! And we did it! And Grey hardly complained at all!

That night, we finally could sit around the campfire. We sang songs, quoted poems, and read some McManus aloud to great hilarity. Grey stayed awake, from the tent, for much of the McManus. I’m hopeful from the chortling within the tent that the great man’s wisdom might transfer to yet another generation. There were stars to be seen on the walk to and from the Sanitation Center.

The traditional first and last stop of the camping trip

Tuesday, as we broke camp, was some of the finest weather I’ve seen in many a day. It was sixty-five, clement and bright. Perfect. I tried to console myself, as we folded the barely-soggy tarps, that this made the breaking up that much easier to do. But in truth, it had finally gotten good, and so it was time to go.

Today, a weekend later, we have a heatwave going on, with temperatures above 90 for three days in a row. And I find myself wondering, WHERE WAS THIS WHEN I WAS NEXT TO A LAKE!??! But looking back on my adventures, I’m forced to conclude… it was indeed a Fine and Pleasant Misery.

I can’t wait to go again!

Again, you can see what pictures remain of the trip here.