Camping is Camping

Give me a tent, a tarp, and a box of bungee cords.

Five sisters and me in a pyramid gone awry near the beach on our camping trip.

Last month, I went on a camping trip with my large, not-very-quiet, and absolutely wonderful family. 

And no, I don’t mean fake camping in a gigantic RV or fifth wheel. I mean that I actually went camping, in a literal, honest-to-goodness tent. 

Yes, I said a tent. Only one tent. A tent that accommodated my ten-person family for three cold, windy November nights. It was crazy. And it was so much fun. 

My mom had picked the “perfect” little campsite less than a mile from the beach and it took us nearly six hours to get there from our house. By the time we got there, it was dark and my sisters claimed that they were  dying of starvation because they hadn’t had supper yet (of course I am a perfect child and none of the hangriness that emanated from around me came from me at all). 

My dad laid down the stern but practical law: Supper would not be served until we finished setting up the tent. When contested on this point, he stood firm. Hungry pleas would not persuade him. Logical arguments would not dissuade him. Nothing would cause him to change his mind. 

It’s funny how your dad can seem to you like a loveable goof ball one moment and a dictatorial tyrant the next. 

Anyway, do you have any idea how difficult it is to set up a tent in the dark? Let me paint you a picture. 

First, you turn the car’s headlights on and point them to the optimal spot where the tent will hypothetically be sitting if you can ever get it set up. 

Second, you appoint one of the girls (who are all just standing around and doing nothing) to be the phone-flashlight-holder. That person’s sole job is to follow you around with the flashlight and shine it on whatever you happen to be working on at the moment. 

Side note: As a very experienced and professional flashlight holder, I would like to announce that flashlight-holding is one of the most needed and most boring jobs in the world. I stand and I hold the light and I stand and I hold the light and I stand….All the while, I’m doing my job wonderfully of course. But It usually feels like I am doing a whole lot of nothing. At some point during this flashlight-holding process, I usually quit paying attention and the light begins to point in the absolute wrong direction…

Then, you pull out the ginormous (well, at least ginormous in my family’s case) tent and lay it out so that the door is facing the right way, etc. You open the bag of tent poles and next comes the arduous process of putting together and sorting. You pull each pole out and wonder, “Is this a long tent pole or a short one?” You measure it against the other tent poles and throw it on its respective pile. But the pole you declared as “shorter” suddenly looks “longer” than any of the other poles in the pile and you pick it up and think and rethink and overthink and well…you get the idea. 

When all the poles are neatly sorted, you begin the process of tent-raising. For this to succeed, you must accurately put all the correct-sized poles in all the correct-sized tent flaps. Lastly comes the process of anchoring the tent to the ground so that it doesn’t fly away…with you in it. 

In my family’s case, this whole setting-up-of-the-tent process went (surprisingly!) smoothly. 

Finally my dad stood up and looked up at his tent, satisfied, breathing a sigh of relief. He said something like, “Well, that went well. Now all we have to do is put the rain flap over top.”

He trudged over to the trailer and searched around inside for the rain covering that is supposed to be fixed over the top of the tent. That way, if heavy rain comes, the tent will stand and the people inside will not be soaked to their sinews. 

”Uh oh,” my dad said, re-emerging from trailer with nothing at all in his hands, “I think I left the rain flap at home.”

After this embarrassing admission, exclamations and ejaculations poured forth: 

“Are you sure you left it?” 

“Oh no!” 

“Well I guess we can pray it doesn’t rain.”

“Okay, great, so can we eat now?”

Now, before you get the idea that a rain flap is “no big deal,” let me assure you that it most definitely is. 

Imagine a family of ten, nice and warm in their dry tent, but without a rain flap. When the rain (or the dew) comes, it drips down the walls. It puddles in pools of water on the floor. You wake up soaked. Your little sister suddenly begins to cry because she is cold and wet. Your other sister begins to cry because she got her new pajama pants from TJ Maxx all wet and dirty. And your other sister starts crying because this is undoubtedly the worst camping experience that she has have ever had in her life (Yeah, I know, I have a lot of sisters). Okay, now stop imagining. It is really getting too horrible to continue. 

In order to avoid this hypothetically rainy and awful situation, my dad came up with an idea. He magically produced a gigantic tarp to cover the huge tent and a box of bungee cords to secure it down. It would keep the rain off of us if the rain came. 

Well, most of us anyway. Hopefully. 

With that little problem solved, we went on to devour my dad’s homemade chili and then to enjoy the rest of the night. 

The days flew by. We played games as a family. We sat on the beach as the sun set. We shivered at night as the wind blew the tent above us so hard that it flapped loudly and woke us from sound sleep. Our shoulders and backs ached from sleeping on the hard ground. Our parents told us stories of the past as we snuggled into our blankets wearing several heavy layers of warm clothes. We washed dishes in the water from a spigot that soaked anyone who got close to it. My dad cooked taco salad and pancakes and sausage egg bake and a multitude of other tasty, camp-ish things. 

And then came the last morning. We were suddenly done. The camping trip was over just like that. We packed up and left (our next-door, RV-toting neighbors were most likely glad to be rid of us). 

So what is my point in telling you all of this?

Quite simply, camping is camping. That’s just what camping is. 

Sometimes you forget the rain flap and have to make do with what you have. Sometimes you end up doing things that you don’t plan on–like snuggling down into blankets trying to get warm and escape the cold air that surrounds you. Sometimes you don’t get to eat when you want to eat because you are busy setting up a tent in the dark of night. 

And that’s okay. When you are camping, you learn to roll with the punches. You learn to endure the hardships and trials, the spray of water from the spigot, the extra layers of clothing, the fact that water takes so long to heat up and the bathroom is far away. 

Could you stay in your climate controlled home and reject any semblance of a life subject to the elements: a cold that numbs, a wind that howls, rain that drips into your bed?

Yes. Yes, you could. 

But I certainly don’t want to. 

Because that would mean I would also miss the sunsets on the beach, the lovely feel of wind tugging at my hair, the warmth of hot food traveling into my hungry stomach. 

I might even miss the ache in my shoulders and back from sleeping on the hard ground. I would miss dancing to avoid the spraying water spigot while I wash the dishes. I would miss walking the long walk to the bathroom under a blanket of stars. 

Camping–real camping–is not always “fun.” But it is a way of taking a break from our instant-gratification sort of lives and learning to live on the edge of the wild. 

I’m not saying that you have to absolutely love camping or that you can’t enjoy the comforts of home. But perhaps you could develop some sort of passion, method, or motivation that would encourage you to embrace a golden sunrise, twinkling stars at night, or even a tiny ant strutting up a blade of grass. 

How can you best motivate yourself to enjoy the creation around you as a reflection of the great Creator who spoke it into existence?

Camping (tent camping), serves as one of my motivations. 

I’ll let those campsite neighbors keep their rich, comforts-of-home-laden RVs. 

Give me a tent, a tarp, and a box of bungee cords.