Happy Campers

So I took Little and Mini to a Cub Scout family camping weekend, while Girly, Tiny, and Baby stayed home with Jen (I've noticed almost all mom-bloggers give pseudonyms to their kids, while dad-bloggers are more liberal about their children's real names. Seeing as the reason I'm blogging is because of the lack of dad-blogs--see my first post--I'll go the way of the moms here...mother knows best). It was the first time any of the kids have gone camping. Jen went with me once when we were dating, only to be surprised when we actually slept in tents and nobody was bringing a camper to sleep in.

Jen and the great outdoors don't always get along, which is fine as it does take some getting used to. As a girl, she'd go camping with her grandparents, who owned an RV, so some of the creature comforts of home were also camping creature comforts. As a boy, I'd always gone camping in tents, sometimes to places that had no amenities.

On those trips we made fun of my uncle who had to bring porta-potties, the training kind, for his kids, as his wife, who didn't go camping, refused to have her kids go in the woods to go in the woods. We eventually graduated to a campground that had running water and toilets and even electricity at certain sites. But we still had tents, so when the family camping trip arrived, I was looking forward to the tent life, as it had been years, probably since that trip Jen and I went on, since I'd been camping.

Anyway, the boys loved it! After a ridiculously sweaty set-up--the lack of humidity in Colorado versus the ever-present humidity in Illinois stands as the biggest distinction--the campground was ready for the weekend. Once the fire got going, the following conversation happened every five minutes: "Is it time for s'mores?" "Not until the sun goes down." Multiply that by about 11 kids and you can understand why we started s'mores a bit early. After some treats and conversation, it was bed time all around, as the day ahead was busy and supposed to be hot. Besides missing my amazing wife and other three kids, I was very happy to be in a tent. The boys actually treated each other better in those 2 days than I'd seen in a long time. Throughout the next day and night, Little interacted with the other boys without having to be first all the time, which is a big departure for him; Mini just did his best to keep up and he didn't cry when he was left behind by the bigger boys; he continued to go along. It was awesome not to hear fighting or whining or crying every few minutes, and besides the occasional tripping over tent ropes or tree roots or falling off picnic tables or large logs, all the boys amused themselves without needing a parent's care or permission or attention.

The best thing about the trip, besides the food, which is always a camping gem, was getting to know the families. When there isn't a TV or computer or game system or anything of the like to steal our attention, good old conversation is all that's left (or something like geocaching or letter boxing, which are things people do because nature itself is too boring). My favorite aspect of camping is simply sitting back, relaxin' and talkin', with no agenda or plan to follow. Only camping do I feel this at ease with doing nothing; everywhere else, I can always think of something I should be doing, but when camping, there is nothing else that should be done. Sure there are many projects at home that could be done in addition to the rigors of daily existence, but nothing so pressing it had to be done right now, and if something became pressing, the car was close enough. I think this is why I have so many fond camping memories from when I was younger: it's when I really got to know my family, not for who they were in regard to their responsibilities, but for the stories they told and how they reacted to each other. Life makes us do some of the oddest things in the name of societal expectations. For a couple days it was nice to get away from all that and simply focus on people; I hope my boys grow to cherish the moments when nothing is the most important thing to be doing.