The Annual Camping Episode

Posted September 07, 2007

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^{Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.}

You know that feeling you had, watching Gilligan's Island as a kid? You imagined yourself in their situation, banging two rocks together for years, unable to generate a single spark or egg noodle or even the crudest roll of Scotch tape, and there they were with their tiki lights and swim-up bar, their umbrella drinks and palm-roasted halibut?

That's what camping is like. Here you are, feeling pretty pleased with yourself to have gotten the tent and bedding into the car, to have remembered the paper towels and even such niceties as a tablecloth and corkscrew, and then you drive up and other people's sites are like Versailles with the topiaries and koi ponds. They've strung up striped canopies and American flags and Tibetan prayer flags, and they're roasting Portobello mushrooms atop their portable stainless-steel Viking stoves, steaming milk in their solar-powered cappuccino makers. We look at them with an even mix of envy and pity. "That's so not what camping is all about," I say, uncertainly, to our friend Jonathan, and he says, "Do you think they're having their bills forwarded?" and points to the tiny, decorative mailbox that our neighbors have erected at the entry to their site. But the kids hear us. "Can we write them a letter?" Ben and his friend Ava want to know, and sure, that would be great, and so they do. They write painstaking notes (Sinseerly, your naybor, Ben), bike them over, and flip the little mail arm. And then they wait. They check the box every hour or so, surreptitiously, for days until finally, anticlimactically, someone says gruffly to them, "Did you kids write those notes? Thanks."

And I mention this now to suggest that you never know what it's going to be about a trip, do you? What peculiar thing your kids will love or latch onto or remember for the rest of their lives. On this trip, for instance, Ben and Ava begged and begged, after hearing me mention it to the other grown-ups and so, finally, I relented and walked them up to see it: the two piles of waxy red barf on the shortcut path to the bathroom. "Is that it?" they wanted to know, and yes, that was it, and so they were happily revolted.

Maybe we're no different, really. I'm not saying I would have chosen to have our mattress deflate? But, oddly, that will be one of the fondest memories of the trip: the slow hiss of air as we descended nightly groundwards, the children falling on top of us as the sides rose up and toppled them. "I think I figured it out," Michael said every morning, then busied himself cheerfully with bike-patch kits and duct tape. "I think I really got it this time." And every night it was the same: one hour of optimistic loft, and then the hissing, giggling, hip-aching descent while we listened to the small animals bustle around our campfire and dishes, chewing on bits of striped bass and pickled green beans. I am still covered in bruises.

Of course, it was not all cheerful misadventure. For instance, I could barely speak to Michael after he rode Birdy off into the sunset, and the tagalong bike -- which he had not properly bolted -- detached and sent her tumbling backwards to the ground. Or to Ben after he pulled his burning stick out of the fire, panicked, and swung it mere millimeters from Ava's flammable hair. I would have chosen to spend less time in the reeking, spidery, cement bathroom, where the kids grunted and groaned for afflicted, constipated hours. ("That's funny," Birdy said. "My poop smells like lobster. And I don't even like lobster! But I sure do like the smell of that poop.") I would have chosen to act more like a camp counselor than a prison guard while the children painted rocks to resemble turtles and slugs ("Wait wait wait! That's the kind of paint that stains! Ugh. Here's a paper towel.") But then again, I wouldn't have chosen to see a snapping turtle while we were skinny dipping in the pond, and it still makes me smile to think of our screaming, flailing return to the shore. "We heard you scream, and were going to come and make sure you were okay," Jonathan said to Ava's mom, Nicole, "but then we heard Catherine laughing, so we figured it was fine." Laughing is going to kill me one of these days, and I have mixed feelings about that.

But most of the pleasure of camping is perfectly predictable: the twinkle of stars through the trees; Joni Mitchell by the campfire (I mean singing "The Circle Game," not that she joined us at our site); bacon crackling over the fire; piney-clean air and plenty of it; and long days at the beach, the kids sandy and dripping sea water, wrapped in towels and hunched over their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soaking up warmth and friendship, and blissfully unaware that we're sitting right behind them, the parents, moody with love and with our weird preemptive nostalgia, committing to memory the sight of their small shoulders, the way the salty down is drying in the sun.

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The Annual Camping Episode

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by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

The Annual Camping Episode

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