I suppose it’s a little unnerving that in almost every campground we’ve stayed, there are posters and bear boxes to help us stay “bear aware;” and yet we’re undeterred living and recreating in Montana, where even highway billboards warn that we’re in “bear country.” We’ve tent camped countless times in the mountains far and wide, even in Glacier, sometimes where bears have been sighted in the exact spots we’ve pitched our tents, but no matter. There’s honestly nothing I like better than camping. I’ve been to Europe’s cathedrals, castles, museums and to both coasts of the US and all along the way. While the inns are absolutely enchanting, bed and breakfasts charming, and hotels luxuriously pampering, there’s no place I’d rather sleep than in a tent on a blow up pad curled up next to Todd in our zip-together, flannel-lined sleeping bags near a creek. We spent this past Thursday to Monday of Memorial Day near Anaconda at Georgetown Lake, the first night one of just two couples in the entire campground, gloriously quiet and chilly, the perfect backdrop for a strong fire and doubling up on fuzzy blankets. Because we’re nearing the summer solstice, it was still light when we went to sleep, and the birds awoke in the early fours. But because we had no obligations and the morning was frigid (in the 20s), we lounged till after 9, unheard of for us. :)
I was maybe 13 when I first stayed in a tent and slept in a sleeping bag outdoors while visiting a friend in Utah. She and her family took us up the canyon where we slept by the creek, and I was transported from my everyday San Diego nightlife of sirens, traffic and commotion, wholly converted. I only went one other time while I was in college, to Zion and Bryce Canyon, with extended family. But once we got married, we went every chance we could, first alone and then as our babies and children came along, to state parks in Utah, Illinois and Indiana, traveling across the country, back to his childhood vacation spots back in Missouri and our favorite for little kids, the Black Hills of South Dakota. (We like to introduce newbies to camping by taking them here because the campground is like a park with grass, bike paths, flush toilets, and even showers and a nightly program.)
We’ve camped in blistering heat where we’re sweating from our knuckles, in nonstop rain, and even in snow. We’ve gone days without showers, we’ve forgotten very important items (ie bowl and spatula for pancakes), our kids have thrown up and urinated and had diarrhea many times on the road and in our tents, we’ve gone with our new-born babies, toddlers who can’t walk, and of course with teenagers, but it’s all manageable. We took a two-week cross-country trip with our five kids once and camped for a week in Missouri and fit everyone and everything in our mini-van. I bet our oldest was about 13, but with stow-and-go and a good-sized trunk, our small table-top stove, pots wrapped around their feet, camp box, and a topper for the soft things, we had everything we needed. In our minds, there is no better family vacation to entertain all ages: littles are easily distracted by sticks and bugs, middle kids can help with the tents and gathering wood, and the older ones can chop wood and make fires.
The only part I don’t like is assembling the food. :) We have the same things every time we go, but it’s thinking through all the condiments and putting them in tiny containers and making the flavored rice and tin foil dinners and cookies and deciding what we’ll have for lunches and snacks that is healthy and small… (too much junk has led to the throwing up). But we’ve never run out of food, and even pb and j tastes better when you’re camping. I have a camping list I print out for every trip and add to it each time as we notice things that would make it better.
I know we should be graduating to a camper, but we’re hold-outs. I prefer organic dirt to inside dirt. And when our kids were little, we wanted them to learn how to survive and thrive in nature, to know how to cook on a camp stove and to use the bushes if they had to. We wanted them to learn how to make and be safe around fires, how to set up a tent and chop wood, and to entertain themselves with sticks and nature by building forts and collecting things. For birthdays we’d get them sleeping bags and pads and other camping equipment; even now that’s what two of our kids wanted for their most recent birthdays, upgrades on their pad and a new group-sized tent. :) Our kids have continued camping in college with their friends, and nothing warms my heart more than to get pictures of it all, especially the ones they send of stars and flowers and mountains and sunrises and sunsets as they try to capture what they’re experiencing. In all we tried we instill in them and expose them to and teach them, their love for nature and the outdoors and knowing how to live simply and self-sufficiently makes us the most happy. I think because when our family’s in nature, we realize how much more there is to life. We're awe-inspired by the world and its grandeur. It’s humbling to join it, to leave the trappings and our worries behind, to breathe and relax and feel a freedom from regular life. I love that our kids go hammocking so much, that they have asked for hammocks for their birthdays along the way, that they seek and carve out time to be in nature both with friends and often even hiking and walking alone. We honestly feel that there is no better vacation, get-away, weekend retreat, re-set, or drug than our Montana bumper stickers encourage: Get Lost. :) Last year as we filled in our summer calendar, we wrote Camping on every free weekend and Hiking on every free Saturday if we couldn’t get away for the whole weekend, and it was soul-filling. There was a time when the kids were teenagers and working that it was super hard to get away, but now they’re making it a priority on their own, teaching new friends (and kids!) to love it; and we’ve come full-circle, back to the two of us, inviting other families with kids to join us. I know it takes some preparation, it can be messy, there’s a ton of laundry, there will be mishaps no doubt. But for us, it has been an absolutely invaluable part of our family’s culture, and I’m so grateful for the memories, for all the times we tossed the excuses aside because I never feel more authentic, relaxed, or at peace than when we’re on our way out of town heading to the mountains. :)
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