As I stood in a hot shower last night, letting the high pressure water jettison away the layers of grime and Deet I had acquired while
camping in the Black River State Forest, I was really grateful for many things. Camping has always been something I enjoy -I remember to add it in almost all of my social media “about me” sections. When I was a kid we hardly ever camped, in fact I cannot remember camping with my parents before I became an adult. I suppose girl scout camp is the only exception.
The forest has always had a special attraction for me, but as a young person without kids I guess I had a lot less concern for creature comforts. I never used to be the type of person who’d let an obstacle get in the way of what I really want. Both of my sons went camping with me before they were 3 months old, and both of them have gone camping nearly every summer of their lives. Of course when I camped with them as infants we had the added security of a pop-up camper with a queen sized bed, air conditioning and a refrigerator. Anything less would have been irresponsible with such small babies. Some might say it was irresponsible anyway, but I’ve done enough camping as an adult now that I knew I could keep them safe, hale and hearty in the wilderness as long as I could keep their bottles coming and be safe from extreme temperatures.
Somehow, after this trip, I’m aware of a really serious change in myself. Camping has always felt to me like an escape from regular life and a reunion with nature. It’s a spiritual retreat for me just to be in the woods and sit around a fire at night, knowing that my family is safe around me. But this year I just couldn’t relax.
Just like Sebastian, Charlie has inherited my sensitivity to bug bites. Three years ago in Indiana Sebastian got so many mosquito bites in such a short period that his eye swelled shut. It looked horrible! The camp doc at the time gave him some children’s benedryl and advised me to keep him from getting more bites as best I could. This year we brought 40% Sportsman’s DEET just in case the organic BugBand (geraniol -works great in liquid form!) wipes didn’t cut it. They didn’t.
Charlie’s eye swelled up on the second day (not quite as badly as Sebastian’s) and we ended up giving him children’s benedryl and smearing the DEET onto him by hand. The poor kid scratched his bites raw and asked to go home every day. Seeing my youngest son in so much discomfort had me really wanting to leave early. When Sebastian was getting eaten alive by bugs he never asked once to go home -but we were at a pagan camping festival and he was surrounded by magical energies and other kids he had made friends with.
This trip was far different than a festival and, despite the beauty of the natural landscape and the company of seldom seen friends, I really couldn’t stop worrying about the kids. Saturday was 93 degrees and we ended up taking a trip into town to escape the heat of the day. We ate at McDonald’s (like Christmas in July!) and took the kids into Black River Falls to look for kitschy gift stores. By the time we got back the weather radio was reporting increasing chances of rain and thunderstorms and the clear blue sky was not quite as blue through the treetops.
The group decided that it would be easier to pack up and leave immediately than to wait out what looked to potentially be 12 hours of rain and then pack up wet tents and equipment. Honestly, I was surprised at my own relief when faced with the chance to go home. Watching my children run through the woods and worrying about every little cut, the exposure, the distance to medical care or shelter… it completely took the relaxation out of camping. Hell, even the hard work required to construct a shelter, prepare the fire and cook daily meals can be therapeutic when you’re able to do it and settle in for the night without worrying that the kids are too cold or damp or may be having sinus problems.
I guess I’ve realized that all these years of telling myself (and everyone else) that I could do anything -camp with a toddler as a single mother, drive 7 hours to camp on a mountainesque Indiana hilltop with both kids and without my husband to help, take our children together into the wilderness without electricity or running water nearby- has not made me any happier. We did have enjoyable moments while we had all our adventures, but they are snapshots in a longer series of stressed-out summers. I wonder now if I could have spared myself all the stress and worry and constant paranoid supervision and just allowed myself to believe that I could do any of it. I suppose not. Sometimes in life we do things to prove to ourselves that we can.
From now on, I know that I’m capable of camping with the kids and keeping them safe and healthy. Maybe next time I can do it without them. I love my kids and I love taking them on adventures, giving them experiences that they’ll remember and hopefully learn from. I guess I just love the woods, too, and I’m getting too old to challenge myself constantly when what I really need is to recharge myself and enjoy nature. Next time, I want to camp sans the children. I think then I’ll call it a vacation.
I had another interesting set of dreams last night. At one point I was out to dinner with the kids and a friend’s husband and child. We were waiting for our significant others to arrive, I believe, only in the dream their child was nearly bald. Next the dream shifted and all of us were swimming in a lake somewhere. I saw Charlie jumping off the end of a pier into the murky water and panicked, swimming over to save him. Before I could get there, however, he surfaced and began floating on his back like a pro -spurting water out of his mouth in a fountain up in the air. Next I was in a car with two of my friends (who get along fairly well these days, but aren’t really close with each other) and we were all in the front seat together. I think we were all going to a movie. Somehow they both ended up climbing onto my lap, and it was really difficult to see and drive safely. I slid the seat backward to make more room and the girl who was on the lap of the girl who was on my lap exhaled with relief, because the steering wheel had been digging into her stomach.
