Happiness is a car packed for camping

 

Happiness is a car packed for camping, except for the one time I went camping with my family as a kid and the return trip was anything but. En route to our site we ate at a restaurant in New Hampshire where the dinner portions for hamburgers and steak fries were huge. My parents were strict about “clean plates” and I was desperate to have ice cream for desert so I overate. By the time we got to our spot and the tent was set, I felt incredibly sick. That evening, confused on how to unzip the tent, I vomited on several sleeping bags and a couple pairs of feet. It was an ordeal not fought with aplomb on any side. We went back to Dorchester the next morning with my dad furious. I felt horrible about it for years and I did not go camping again until I had two children of my own.

  Raised in an urban environment, I felt any natural setting to be magical and mysterious. I’d marvel at tides, marshes, and pine tree forests. I would feel like I had time travelled to an ancient past, with the terrain so different from my neighborhood of three-decker apartments and chain link fences. As a child, I wanted to know more about nature, but I grew up figuring I could only be welcomed for brief stints before danger would come lurking or I would wreck the moment.

  As a mom, roaming Target four years ago, I saw the book “The Down and Dirty Guide to Camping With Kids” by Helen Olsson on a shelf and my curiosity was peaked. I looked at the book, didn’t buy it, but kept thinking about it. That kid that ruined the family vacation wanted a new camping story. I ended up buying the book a week later and now I review it at the start of every summer as I mentally gear up to get the camping stuff together. It is thrilling to me to change trajectories, to rewrite my profile, to escape walls, electric outlets, and the everyday objects for a tent. Like a giddy general preparing for a military campaign, I plan and pack for all possible exploits and mishaps, whilst keeping the volume minimal.

It’s my version of a hero’s journey with the call to adventure with earth, air, fire, and water as my allies. I notice the real temperature and change of light. Sounds take on new meanings as birds, critters and bugs communicate. The direction of your attention shifts and you take a break from looking at your appearance. You don’t need clothes to match, hair smoothed, or make up on. Dirty becomes a sign of good camping. Camping helps my children look outside their material selves to be brave and adventurous. Camping can be a teaching tool- to show children how to prepare, prevent mishaps, and roll with things when necessary. We metamorphose and ascend in this special world.

Camping is a fabulous way to remind yourself of what you really want and need and how much you can go without- at least for a week. Honestly, we don’t do that much, yet the activities we do camping all feels so decadent like reading in a hammock for an hour- absolutely glorious. On a recent camping trip the girls spent everyday swimming, playing Marco Polo, Hair Salon with pieces of bark for brushes and scissors, and Chef competitions with pond debris.  At night, by the fire, they happily toast marshmallows, sitting in a trance with the glowing embers and soft crackling. It feels good to do things that humans have been doing for ages with the adage of whipped sugar and kosher gelatin.

 

Camping is unwinding and unwiring. There s something distinctly different about being able to live and marvel at Nature throughout the day versus goes for a nature walk for an hour or two. I feel like my mind body spirit resets and is in better alignment.  Waking up early to have an instant cup of coffee and look out at a pond fifty feet from you is sustenance for all the other seasons slept indoors. I like to store my visions of the Oriole resting on a tree limb, the turtles sliding into the water by lily flowers and pads and the pine needle ground dappled with sunlight. This becomes a version of Shangri-La that I can recall when the stress normal life returns. When I feel my job becomes too overwhelming I often pause to remember blueberry pancakes cooking in an iron skillet in the woods and my perspective shifts to understand life runs in seasons.

Not everything goes smoothly when camping- hail can hit on the first day of summer, I may forget to pack my bathing suit, or an army of ants might eat the blueberry coffee cake (all which has happened), but with my kids looking to see how to handle situations, I laugh and get creative because I refuse to go home early. I want my children to see they can experience a partnership with Nature.  Finally after the childhood camping fiasco, I have mastered camping enough to have reached atonement, transformation, and fulfillment. So today happiness is a car packed for camping knowing on the road back, I will come back full of wonder and equanimity.