CAMPING

   When I was growing up, we didn't really camp. I envied those kids who parents packed their station wagons full of camp gear each year to go have fun in nature. I don't know if it was because I watched too many fun camping movies in the eighties or that my friends really seemed to look forward to their camping trips, but it seemed like something all families should try.

My little morning sprite.

Isla loves balancing on things.

   I've always needed to be close to nature as much as possible, so when I became a teenager my friends and I started camping each summer on one of their dad's large forested properties. All we took with us was enough dried food to last a night, some water and our sleeping bags. We had no tents and barely any other gear. It was quite a hike to our spot by the creek, the nights were always very cold and the ground was hard, and yet I always looked forward to next year. Maybe it was the solidarity of a group of good friends roughing it together, or falling asleep under the stars to the sound of rushing water or the fact that I was finally camping, but whatever it was, I loved it!

   Now, many years later, I've become like the parents of my childhood friends and am stuffing our SUV full of gear and going family camping together. Although we have a tent and some gear, it's still roughing it enough that we feel the fresh air keenly and the trees all around us, and we begin to forget TV, cell phones and the like. We become very present and in the moment because camping somehow becomes your whole world when you're doing it and everything else seems to disappear. The kids run around barefoot and wild, playing games in the giant old stumps and as parents we give them as much freedom as we can. I believe that all kids need some of this wild freedom for their young souls to grow happily. It counteracts some of the "don't do that", "stop it", "no, don't touch that" that inundates them at home on a daily basis, and instead allows them to just be.
    We've been going with our parent group for a couple of years now and it was so wonderful to bond with the other parents whom we love so dearly, while watching our kids play the way kids do who have known each other their whole lives. The whole experience was beautiful.
  I hope that if our kids have families when they're all grown up that they'll want to load up their futuristic, solar cars with camping gear and take their kids out into the woods to camp, too.
   

The forest floor was moss-covered and magical. It was 

like the Night Garden set, but for real.

The Lost Boys.

Three little sleeping beauties.

The Dads trying their hand at log rolling after I tried to do it. ( I used to do it every summer for years in our local lake.)