We wake to the sound of stellar jays cawing from the treetops high above, a pleasant enough screech—if a tad early—at 7:00am. The kids wake, surprised momentarily to find themselves in sleeping bags, and then snap to with alarming speed: we’re camping! Not a moment to be missed! Get up! Get up! Get up!
Crawling from my bag, back pretzeled and mouth furry, I crawl to my feet with all the grace of a newborn giraffe. Plant a foot; splay hands; plant the other (cue soundtrack of woman giving birth); rise. Unzipping the tent I fumble around for some kind of footwear, and stagger into the glory that is campsite number eleven, Hendy Woods, Philo, California.
I am—somewhat famously—NOT a morning person, and I have—somewhat foolishly—agreed to preceed my husband by a full day. Gathering the gear (4 hours), driving to the site (2.5 hours), and setting up the tent and campsite on my own (3 hours, forty-three curses) left me precious little patience for the trial of morning campfire, breakfast, and the complicated task that is coffee. As
I wobble off to the loo on my bike, I experience a refreshed gratitude for the swank indoor plumbing stationed so near my sleeping quarters in regular life. Ditto clean feet.
Pundits say that camping bonds families together, that a willingness to camp can actually be used to predict familial solidarity or its lack. Something about the all-for-one/one-for-allness of making a go of things with little more than rudimentary shelter and marshmallows on sticks makes people feel closer, they say. And I buy this, at least until my children somehow spill huge quantites of chocolate milk all over our bedding and clothes on the second afternoon, triggering from me the Lord Voldemort snarl that makes them both cry.
Ah, well. So goes family life. We gather around the fire later that night, counting countless stars until our eyes droop and our yawns grow huge. Then we crawl into out milk-sweetened beds and dream.
