Earning the Camping Badge

If they gave out scouting awards for mothers, this weekend would have been my time for my camping badge.

I piled my oversized conversion van to the gills with bikes, tent, stove, tarps, and the only 2 children I could convince to go with me on this camping trip.  The other 3 conveniently remembered they needed to change their sheets that weekend, prepare for senior English, reconnect with a kid from grade schoool . . . you know.

I did pull out of the driveway with some trepidation . . . after all I am a mom long on ideals and quite short on practicality.  Much more likely to pack a scatter rug with a leaf motif that matched the tent than to remember bug spray . . . ice . . . tent poles.

By the time the conversion van groaned up the mountains and eased itself on into the campground, I was truly hyperentilating and wondering if I was crazy and if earning this badge was really within my motherly limitations.

Come to find out, earning the badge was quite doable, if taken one small step at a time, engaging the help of others.  And the extra credit was out of this world.

#1 - Put up the tent.

Check.  How hard can this be in the year 2012?  I remember my grandparents wrestling with huge canvas monstrosities and miscellaneous posts and poles of wood, metal and varying shapes and sizes.  Coleman even attaches the three step directions to the tent itself .  Thank you, Coleman.  You know me.

#2 - Cook in the great outdoors.

Check.  Oh my, did I feel proud.  Attaching my own propane, lighting a flame, scrambling the eggs, frying the bacon, toasting the bread.  Never mind that I have visions of my grandfather digging a ditch, filling it with coals, and nestling homemade biscuits down inside in a Dutch oven.  No one expects me to go back to the pioneer days.  It's 2012.  I cooked in the great outdoors.

Extra points if your kids actually eat what you cooked.  Mine did.  They knew it could be a long four days.

# 3 Wash dishes outside.



Check.  Once again a faintly romantic feeling, scrubbing the dirty pans and bowls while breathing in a little campfire smoke and feeling the sun shine down on your shoulders.  Lasted about one meal.  Lasted until I realized you need 2 (not 1!) dishpans for washing your dishes . . . one for washing . . . one for rinsing.  That's also 2 dishpans full of hot water you need . . . one for washing . . . one for rinsing.  And that's 2 trips back and forth to the community water pump . . . one for the wash water . . . one for the rinse water.  And a half hour to heat the water on the aforementioned propane stove.  More cooking after I've finished making the meal?  Huh?

#4 - Build campfire.



Check.  Sort of.  Does it count if you need all kinds of help here?  Help like squishy gel fire starter that you can purchase at the camp gate?  Help like newspaper from your parents' campsite that they wisely did not leave out in the rain?  Help like your 13 year-old taking over the entire operation?  If it's your campsite and your fire ring, then I think you get credit.

Those are the essentials for the badge.  At this point I was home free.  The rest is just extra credit.  And oh boy, give me that extra credit.  It's why I love camping. 

Kids splashing in the river:





while I look at the newest issue of Artful Blogging and am neither convinced to get wet or cold.

Games with extended family:

Bike rides folded up inside iridescent greenness.

Sitting still, hearing silence, watching sunshine through a smoky campfire haze.

Camping badge earned.  Camping extra credit enjoyed.

Kids in Nature

As delightful as camping was for me, nothing, nothing can top the joys of seeing your children interact with nature!

Could we just have a moment of reverent silence for the wonder of experiencing a week without screens, hand controls, or ear buds!!

Yes, thank you, we can.

The river ended up being the source of all things fun and delightful.

To begin with, you had to ride to the river . . . use your own muscles. No rolling along in an air conditioned van.






Once there, you had the option of swimming, jumping from a high rock ledge





into a freezing cold deep pool

or playing at shore's edge, creating masterpieces of unknown significance, purpose, or origin.

The river has created it's own perfect skipping rocks, making for another hour of enjoyment.






Or you can totally remove yourself from all sense of sanity and go tubing.

We did. It was 10 in the morning, damp and grey.






The air was 71 degrees. The water felt like 51 degrees. Not another soul brave or foolish enough to be out on the river.






My rear end felt like it was going to freeze and my feet went numb.

It was magical.

(I do so wish I could say that the tan legs with the perky blue Crocs are mine, but,
unfortunately, mine would be the white legs in the soggy tennis shoes. ::sigh::)

And then there were the falls, where the boys slid down the side on long rock slides, into a deep pool.

And other parents looked askance and wondered to themselves what mother would let her kids slide so recklessly by the falls.

And I looked about blankly and pretended not to know whose kids they were. Nope, never saw them in my life.

And after she got over sobbing about the injustices of not being able to slide by the falls at age 6, Youngest Daughter found fun of her own and skipped over little pools and breathed in the spray and the mist of the blasting falls.





And when each day was over and Nature had worn my kids out to the consistency of wet noodles, they went to bed exhausted, watched over by a "kid's best friend," and got enough sleep to have the strength to get up and do it all again the next day.

And that, my friends, is just another reason why I really, really love camping!

Playing Camping

Last week I camped.


For the first time as an adult I camped and I loved it.




Smoky campfires in the mornings. Sitting on piles of gnarled tree roots in the afternoons with the sun dappling through the leaves and the river running over the rocks and pebbles while children jumped from a high rock ledge into a deep, freezing water hole. In the evening, peaceful night noises, wind through the tent screens, leaves blowing overhead, lulling me to sleep.






I am a pathetic novice newbie camper, but I'm learning. On this trip, I forgot matches and newspaper for the campfire, turkey for the turkey and cheese sandwiches, jelly for the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a flashlight for all hours between 9 pm and 6 am.






On the other hand, I remembered amazing non-essentials like a bucket, thick rope and extra tent stakes. Never needed them, but I did feel like such an accomplished camper, packing them into the van.






I had my own cozy tent and felt very much like I was playing "house." I got my "playhouse" all arranged and chose to sleep on sheets and my grandmother's old quilts rather than a sleeping bag. With the tent set up, I fancied myself Jane Goodall among her apes or Meryl Streep in "Out of Africa."

Only they wouldn't have forgotten the matches!





In the course of the week, I conquered putting up a tent, cooking on the Coleman stove, rain-proofing the campsite, building a fire and showering in the bathhouse where the warm, high-pressured water left me makeup-free for the week and with scary camp hair that remained quite out of control.

It was camping bliss! Pisgah Forest Nirvana! Pine and hemlock deliciousness! It is now in my blood. I am hooked!