It’s the same song I sing to myself every time we go camping: “It’s a lot of damn work, but soooo worth it,” as we schlep all our necessities from the car into our weekend home of pine needles and dirt. (Necessities, as in bacon, beer and books. Everything else I can live without).
The clouds roll in, swirl around, drop a casual little spray of rain, and we say appreciatively, “nice clouds,” while pulling on all our layers, never ones to disparage the bringers of moisture to the Southwest. We’re here with friends, and in the absence of the usual indoor trappings of childhood, the kids explore each other’s tents and snacks with the enthusiasm of Lewis and Clark approaching the Pacific Ocean.
We’ve been coming to this same spot for four years now, and in that way that looking back at your children’s lives is like one of those time-lapse movies, from these particular ponderosa pines, on this particular weekend, I can see it all perfectly. In the first frame, everyone’s in diapers and mashing dirt into each others hair while getting ravaged by biting insects. In the next frame, we set off for a hike, one kid in the backpack and the other rambling around our legs; two hours later, we circle back, having covered .00012 miles. And now, there’s this: One child is chopping potatoes with a knife and the other is helping to set up the tent.
Which is to say, it’s almost easy these days, taking the kids to the woods for two nights. And as much as the mopingly nostalgic part of me misses Rose’s full-moon belly and Col’s squeaky voice, (OK, squeakier voice), there are these new, bright selves coming into focus.
These selves who are like the ESPN stars of imaginative sports. “OK, lets say we’re horses and we’re walking down the trail watching out for mountain lions.” They skip and whinny happily while I lay back in the grass, amazed at our continual good fortune.
(Which is another song I sing to myself: “It’s OK that my babies are growing up because everything’s getting easier”).
And really, now that we’re not trying to enforce nap time in a sauna of a tent, or coach anyone through squatting and pooping in the woods, camping has become a bit of a leisure sport. I read the last half of one book and the first half of another. We take walks, chop wood, sing off-tune rounds of “Yellow Submarine” and drink wine out of plastic cups. Dan and Col go off on a bow-shoot like two buds, and later I overhear Dan say to Col, “That’s a coyote bullet if I ever saw one. Probably from some sheepherder protecting his flock.” Col perks up, storing this information in the mental file “This is the Education I Want.”
By the end, so much falls away: our civilized notions of cleanliness; the rationing of firewood and watermelon; the separateness of families. The kids are dusted in dirt like small powdered doughnuts, I wake up to robins singing and Rosie’s bright face, and I know we’ll be back next spring, one year older.
Reach Rachel Turiel at sanjuandrive@frontier.net.Visit her blog, 6512 and growing, on raising children, chickens and other messy, rewarding endeavors at 6,512 feet.
