The Force is Strong in This One

We usually manage two camping trips a year, taking full advantage of both weekends in Arkansas during which you will neither suffocate from heat or turn blue from the cold. There is one in October, and one in April. At no time can you rule out the possibility that you and your family will be carried off by mosquitos, but one has to live life.

Last April, we were camped out in a two bedroom condo while our new house was being made ready, so there was no need to manufacture the experience of five of us crammed into a tiny, temporary space with a minimum of cooking equipment. We even got to go caving in the understairs closet during the tornadoes. Outward Bound couldn't test your mettle like those six weeks.

But come October, I was ready to hit the wild again.

As I have mentioned before, my husband is not enamored of camping. He is forty-five years old and likes neither his mattress or his toilet pulled out from under him. Also, he complains about the effort to reward ratio involved in camping: two days of packing and unpacking, setting up and breaking down, loading and unloading; to four slices of bacon and cold, runny eggs.

It takes a strategic mix of threats, bribery, and aspersions on his manhood to get him to commit to a date. This year, I threw in a deluxe air mattress and a promise to ban the children from it, made possible by a new, three-room tent won with debit card reward points and large enough to be visible from space.

I also picked the weekend of our cub scout's pack campout so as to have the full weight of societal and patriarchal obligation behind me.

I am the Rumsfield of the domestic agenda, the Emperor Palpatine. Resistance is futile.

Mission accomplished. We camped last weekend, much to the delight of me and my two oldest sons. Patrick was a good sport. It fell to the Littlest Who to do the complaining I'd have missed otherwise. "I want to go home," he wailed every night when he and his brothers were tucked into their wing of the tent. More dramatically, "I can't feel my legs," when asked to walk more than ten feet under his own steam.

"I'm dead," he told me at one point, when I pleaded with him to pick up the pace to more than an inch a minute.

"You're not dead," I argued. "How can you still be walking?"

"I'm dead walking."

And what do you think our zombie was howling as we pulled away from the campground on Sunday?

Yeah.

If I didn't need a shower so badly, I wouldn't have wanted to go home yet either.

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Goin Up Country, Baby Don't You Wanna Go

I'm spending the weekend with a few girlfriends at a waterfront cottage. My husband likes to imagine the program looks something like this:

morning:	lingerie fashion parade
afternoon:	prancing, cavorting, frolicking
evening:	ticklefight

In fact, it looks more like this:

morning:	sleeping
afternoon:	carb loading
evening:	E! tv marathon (suggested attire: sweats; b.y.o. Cheetos)

Photos on flickr (sorry, no ticklefights).

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Wild, wild life

The sleeping bags are rolled. The provisions — carefully selected according to metabolic type — are packed. Some of us are going camping overnight with friends.

If you don't already know how excited I am, and can't guess which of us are staying behind with the cats, the rottschund, and hermit crabs, here are some campfire tales from previous outdoor adventures to fill in the backstory. (Friday night: apparently, the link is buggy...and I need a shower before I can fix it; see en plein air label below for same effect.)

Back in a few.

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Know when to hold 'em

Early this evening, we had friends over for pizza. Good friends. The kind with whom the conversation never really comes to an end; we just pick up where we last left off. It takes me by surprise sometimes, how long we've known each other. Long enough to feel like surrogate relatives to each other's children. Long enough to have celebrated plenty of good times and to have seen each other weather some not-so-good times. Long enough to expect we will all be around for more of both.

Patrick is an orphan. My surviving parent and one sibling live half a world away. In the absence of extended family, we have had to create one for ourselves. My involvement with institutional religion is in no small way a partial substitute for it. Our tribe of marrieds-with-children fills in as well. Within those broad circles, however, there are a very few, very special relationships that really feel like family. Our company tonight is one of those.

After pizza and getting caught up, I got out a board game for us to play with the kids. No one ever wants to play. Patrick groaned and protested audibly, but our guests were my prisoners. We set it up and played for as long as the kids attention spans would let us. I'm not saying it was the most exciting Friday night of my life, but we sat around the table with our kids in various configurations and had us a few laughs. It was the kind of low-fi moment that, track by track, lays down the overall temperature and tone of childhood memory. It was a good thing for us to do.

Sometimes you've got to lean on people a little. I have to be careful with this, because I have control issues, and a little can soon give way to a lot. But I remember hearing it said once that if everybody is always respecting each other's little line in the sand, nobody grows. I think knowing how far to stick your big toe over the line (and when to pull it back) is the trick both in marriage and in deep friendships.

It is no secret that my husband dislikes camping. Several weeks ago our resident cub scout had a pack camp-out on the calendar and I couldn't swing it. I mentioned it to Patrick, as in, "I don't suppose there is any way in hell....". I got the expected reaction and decided I might as well drop it then and there. Nine times out of ten this is the appropriate tack to take. Then I decided this was number ten.

I re-approached the issue a few days later. "I'm not telling you what to do," I said, "just hear me out." He wheeled himself back from his desk and looked at me with bemused wariness. I stuck my toe out, carefully, over the line.

"All I'm saying is, we only have a little window of time to make these memories. And you won't be able to go back and put them in if you have regrets about it later."

He sighed the sigh of the cornered. I retracted my toe quickly.

"Just think about it, is all. Whatever you decide, I'll be fine."

And then I really did drop it. It has taken me a long time, but I have finally started to clue into the value of just coming out and stating what you want. Sometimes, you even get it. Or at least what you need.

A couple of days after that, I was kissing them both goodbye as they pulled out of our driveway. No, Patrick did not have a wonderful, magical time. It was cold as hell and his back was out for a week. But I believe he would tell you it was worth it, and our son will never forget it.

Tonight's board game wasn't nearly as memorable. We might not remember the specifics of what we played or who won four weeks from now. But atmosphere lingers. When my little boys are men, I hope their childhood memories, however vague, will affirm that they grew up in the midst of people who loved them and each other enough to lean not just on, but sometimes against one another.

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Happy, Campers?

We are just back from a prematurely terminated camping weekend. I am disappointed we are home a day early. Considering it takes nearly a full day just to pack and unpack, an overnight expedition is hardly worth the effort. But I am not all that surprised things didn't go according to plan. The portents were ominous from the start, such as the flock of vultures who took up residence in the tree above our site as we were raising the tent and remained there with an indiscreet air of expectation for the duration of our stay. Then it began to rain first thing this morning, and didn't let up until the exact moment the bumper of our fully loaded minivan crossed the campground exit gate. Between those parenthesized dramatic devices, I was in overdrive as camp counsellor, cook, housekeeper and activities coordinator, trying to make it all work. The buzzards no doubt smelled my desperation from the get-go.

The process of roping my husband into accompanying me on a camping trip is the story of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Patrick is a self-described "beta male". By his own admission, he is perfectly content to let the alphas ride off to the battle, or hunt, or live sporting event, while he stays behind to hold down the fort and--ostensibly--to comfort the women and children. While he is in many ways a guy's guy (meat and potatoes palate, an unhealthy obsession with college football, and a near-sexual excitement over power tools), outdoorsy he is not.

(Here we see the beta male father, smoking a cigarette and directing our eager alphling in the fetching of firewood.)

I, on the other hand, love to camp. I love everything about it. The list-making (3X5 index cards do for me what the idea of a tablesaw/planer does for my husband). The site-surveying. The menu-planning. The precision-loading of the van, like life-size Tetris. I love setting up camp, making the beds, unfolding the chairs, hoisting the tarp. From the time the back door of the van opens, I am six years old and playing house, or fort. It is, as many things are with me, a Big Production (See my packing list, a few months back).

(And here we have a partial view of the campsite in all its tarpaulined splendor. Note the string of Halloween lights, my little nod to the season.)

Patrick is exhausted at first sight of the index cards. This man, who started his freelance business on a wing and a prayer a year ago and has so far kept the lights on and the kids in Land's End by the by the sweat of his brow. This man, who once spent the better part of a month on Greyhounds and chicken buses between Mexico and Newfoundland, during the worst nor'easter of the last century, just to try and save my life from me. This hard-working, undauntable, manly man would sooner eat dirt than sleep on it, under the stars, with me, his hard-won bride. Replace "stars" with rainclouds and vultures, and we cross over from "willing sacrifice" to "dark night of the soul" territory. It's a wonder I didn't find myself on a chicken bus this morning. With a note pinned to my rain poncho.

Bless him, he was a good sport, even with a full bladder and the baby kicking him repeatedly in the kidneys (and by "good sport," I mean, I do not think money needs to be set aside for extra therapy time for the children once they are old enough to seek it out. Not over this trip anyway).

I did have one trump in my hand, and that was the whiff of trout. No, I am not speaking euphemistically. I mean actual trout. I chose a campground that borders a world-famous trout river, so he was able to give his new birthday suit and rubbers a whirl. Okay, that was euphemistic. I mean the hip-waders and boots I gave him. He didn't catch much, but he looked darned spiffy. And sort of alpha.

I'd bite.



Filed under: domestic, marriage, goodtimes
Technorati Tags:
camping, beta male, outdoorsy types, list-makers, true love

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A River Runs Through Me.

While Patrick and I were busy producing an astonishing number of offspring in a stunningly short time, we let some things lapse. Like recreation. This was partially due to having used up all our time, energy, money and good looks on procreating.

But it also had to do with overspecialization. Our former recreational repertoire, based exclusively on alcohol, was ill-suited to keeping dairy products viable, let alone children.

The party had to end, and did. But we had nothing to replace it. Turns out the jovial go-along guy I married was actually an introvert once you took the drink out of his hand. For fun, he likes to sit in the dark. Myself, I am an outdoorsy, extraverted gal. I like to be outside engaged in group activities with the kids, a hundred of our closest friends, and their kids. And preferably, an interesting dress theme.

You see the dilemma.

Recently, we have really been trying to find our way to some sort of middle ground. Witness our recent camping trip. I resisted the urge to turn it into a multi-family caravan; and Patrick resisted the urge to stay at home and sleep in a real bed.

Whereas camping will always involve several weeks of advance negotiation, however, fishing is showing a great deal of promise as a potential shared passion. My paternal grandmother and father were avid fly-fishers; and I have been feeling the need to take the boys fishing for a couple of years now. Last month, I borrowed a couple of spincast rods from the local library and threw them and all three children in the van to go try our luck at one of the stocked city ponds, leaving their Dad sitting happily in the dark. A couple of hours later, I came home defeated and near tears. Trying to rig three poles and teach two kids to fish while keeping the two year old out of the pond had been a circus act. I was exhausted and frustrated, and Patrick saw that it really mattered. "We'll all go next weekend," he promised, and we did.

What happened next was he wound up catching some bass, and remembered that fishing was fun. Also, he went to the tackle store and discovered the endless array of gear to be acquired. I went online and on tivo and to the library and discovered much research and list-making to be done. We began looking longingly out the window in the mornings, just *knowing* that somewhere, fish were biting.

Sunday I caught my first fish since I was eleven years old. Back then I used to fish with worms for brook trout. That day I hooked a small one and tore it up badly trying to release it. I didn't even think about fishing again until after my Dad and Nana died. Mom sent Dad's good flyrod and reel down here last summer, and I will get serious about that when the baby gets a little older, but for now, spincasting will serve as my re-entry level.

I was really ready to catch something, too. After weeks of thinking and reading and obsessing about it, not to mention buying a LOT of gear; I hadn't had even a good nibble. I had been casting for over an hour out on the pond, and still nothing, although a bass had practically leapt into Patrick's arms his very first cast.

I was beginning to think I just didn't have it in me. So I looked around at the blue sky and the sparkling pond and the green, green trees and I took a long breath and I said a little prayer. Thank you for the beautiful day, I prayed. Thank you for my being here with the people I love best in all the world. If you want me to, please, let me catch a fish. Then a little gear somewhere in my dna chain clicked over, and I felt myself shift out of all the thinking and obsessing and information overload; and I went someplace deeper and older and fishier.

When my lure hit the water, I could feel that fish coming up on it. When it took the lure, I knew, without knowing, exactly how to play it. It was a gorgeous longear sunfish ( not the bass in the photo); and bringing it in was more thrilling than anything I've done in a long while.

I was initiated. After that, they just kept coming. After a while, I quit counting. Some largemouth bass, a lot of bluegill. We let a bunch go; and kept some nice ones for supper.

My seven year old brought in a three pound channel catfish on a bamboo cane with a bobber and shrimp and his pleasure was as pure and elemental as sun on the water.

I don't know if anyone but hunters or fishers will understand what I mean by saying how connected I felt with the fish under the pond after my brain got out of the way and my instincts kicked in. It was like I had done some kind of mind-meld with the fish, who of course, was also hunting. There aren't really words to adequately describe it, but the feeling carried into cleaning and cooking and eating the catch. Not to over-romanticize a simple day of fishing on the pond, but it was kind of sacramental, in its way.

My Dad and my grandmother Mary were both poets and both had more than a touch of the shaman about them. I always thought that fishing was something interesting they pursued tangentially to those roles; now I know it was perfectly in line with them, one fluid arc, me and my sons part of it.

filed under: goodtimes, friendsrelations, soulspirit

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A Slice of Alright

What is it about camping that makes me so goofy with happiness? Is it because I get to obsessively pore over inventory lists, itineraries, menus and maps? Is it because it makes me feel resourceful and skilled beyond words that I can percolate the perfect cup of coffee over a coleman stove? Is it because I get to eat Spam, without shame? Is it because when I sit around a campfire with my little tribe and gaze up at the stars it feels like everything is okay; that we are all together down here in our little raft, drifting safely and steadily toward home?

As my five-year old said to his older brother on the drive home, "I know the secret. Well, my heart knows it, not me."

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What it Takes:

Packing List for a Two-Night Camping Trip

Clothes Per Camper:

3 sets underwear
3 pr socks
1 long pants
2 short pants
3 t-shirts
1 fleece or hoodie
1 raincoat
1 hat
1 pr sneakers
1 pr water shoes
1 swimsuit
2 pjs
1 towel
2 washclothes
toothbrush
book
pillow

Diaper bag:
one dozen diapers
bottles/sippies
wipes

Mom’s bathhouse kit:

hairbrush and comb
toothpaste/floss
soap
shampoo
bandaids
nailbrush
nail clippers
mirror
pre treated disposable washcloths
sunscreen
bug spray
itch cream
Tylenol kids and adult
kleenex
laundry soap
deodorant
contact lense stuff & glasses
Mom’s face lotions & potions
Hair tiebacks


Pantry kit:
(refill or launder on return)

Trash bags
Ziploc bags
heavy duty foil
Paper towels
Dishclothes
Dishtowels
Dish Soap
Pot Scrubbers
salt and pepper
sugar
cornmeal/flour
cinnamon
powdered milk
coffee
tea
matches
citronella candle


Camp Kitchen:
(in Rubbermaid boxes)

tablecloth & clips
camp stove
clothesline and clothespins
cooking pots and pans
eating dishes
cutlery box
pie irons & skewers
washbasin
coffee thermos
wastewater bucket
handsoap and bungee to hang on tree
2 Coolers with perishables and beverages
Dry foods box.


Picnic Table Activity:

radio
camping diary
markers & paper
card games
suduko/crossword puzzles

Batteries & Fuel:
(re-stock)
propane for stove
self-light briquettes
newspaper
fatwood or firestarter
lighter
D batteries for lantern and airbed
A batteries for tent lamp & small flashlights
C batteries for flashlights & radio
firewood


Gear:
(to bundle in tarp)

Tent & fly
tent broom
tent lamp
lantern and flashlights
Screen House
Sleeping bags & liners
air mattress and sleep pads
comforter for under bed
comforter for over bed


Misc:

phones & camera (charge batteries)
First Aid Kit
Cds for the road
Fishing Rods & Tackle
one knapsack of chosen toys per child
swimming toys and floats
Christmas lights, extension cord if electric hookup
short-length garden hose if water hookup
heater or fan if called for

And finally:

duct tape.

filed under: goodtimes
Technorati Tags:
camping, list of things to take camping

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Gone Fishing

We are going fishing and camping, thanks to Mother's Day leverage. Two adults, three children, one tent and an airbed.

Check back after the weekend to find out if we survive.

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