Friday, August 22, 2003

Taking the Family Camping

On any summery Friday afternoon, the highways in this part of the country are filled with vacationing people who are, essentially, just trading places with each other. Each weekend when Chicago sends a cohort of its good citizens camping and fishing at, say, northern Indiana’s Potato Creek State Park, then, in return, South Bend sends a team of its taxpayers to pitch a tent and drown a few worms at Illinois’ Lake Shelbyville. If you’re being traded like this sometime, I hope you’ll finish the long drive and pull into a shady campsite without any of the kids belting out what you yourself might be thinking: “Hey, this is just like the campground near our house!”

Even so, the business of setting up camp soon engages the whole family. While the adults pitch the tent, the children gather kindling and check out the trails that meander through the nearby woods. On our last weekend outing, before we had the tent up, the kids had already spotted a doe and fawn browsing among the trees. We saw deer every few hours, and the children captured a good number of tiny frogs, each one small enough to rest comfortably on a nickel. We saw chipmunks running off with our picnic crumbs, and long before the sun rose we heard birds through the thin walls of the tent. The kids found a dead snake whose remains were smaller each time they hiked over to visit it. All of that counts as pretty exotic for city folks. But the wild woodland creatures that truly made a lasting mark on us were the chiggers. Ah, isn’t nature wonderful?

Somehow we chose a weekend when the weather bureau predicted thunderstorms for Friday night and most of Saturday. Life being what it was back in town, we couldn’t reschedule. In the end we had to cook only one meal in the rain, and there were so many pieces of chicken on the grill that the downpour didn’t drown the flames. After the deluge we warmed ourselves happily around the fire, which the children stoked endlessly, amazed that in the country they got to play so close to the magical flames. Some water had worked its way into the tent, but the bedding stayed fairly dry, and we slept well. I woke up in the middle of the night and walked across the campground to the shower house. There were still coals in some of the fire pits, and a few R.V. campers left their colorful Chinese lanterns burning through the night. Above me, the Milky Way glowed, but without my glasses I could only see two particular stars.

By Sunday morning the air warmed up enough for swimming. The children struggled for a few minutes, wishing for more exciting waves and moaning that there was nothing to do. Then one of them discovered the lovely damp clay beneath the sand, and soon they were building an elaborate clay structure at the water’s edge, and so they moaned again when it was time to leave. On the trails that day they ran ahead, turning the business of hiking down the path into a fanciful game of intrigue and suspense. The adults lagged behind, hearing the kids’ voices through the trees, catching a glimpse of them occasionally, and hoping they would remember to let alone those leaves of three. All weekend long the children played in earnest, but the adults too, I think, played out the little changes and the happy inconveniences of camping. Look at my skills, look at this sturdy campfire I’ve built, I caught myself thinking. That’s camping for you – the kind of game that makes a weekend fresh.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on August 22, 2003
Family & Friends • Nature & Outdoors • Travel • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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