Camping with the Kids
by J. Daniel Janzen
If the effect of camping is to make ordinary life seem incredibly comfortable and convenient by comparison, camping with kids makes regular camping seem like a spa treatment.
You're thinking about it from day one, along with car trips, ball games, roller coasters and the like. Aglow with new parenthood, a family of your own at long last, you compile a highlight reel of idealized memories from your own childhood and project them into the future, your wife and you now appearing as Mommy and Daddy, your kids playing you. You'll tutor your son in the ways of nature and life, and one of these days give him a sip of your beer on the side. (In the not-so-distant future, this fatherly reverie will make for an idealized memory of its own: "Those early days were so magical; I'd hold him sleeping in my arms, thinking about all the great times we'd have together." Sure, but there was plenty of poop, crying and swearing, too.)
By the time a couple contemplates actually taking a trip like this, it's been years since they've camped — since before the kids were born, clearly — and the digging out of old gear, with its whiff of wood smoke and desert dust, brings back memories of another kind: long afternoon hours downing tall boys in folding chairs, spiritual hikes in the wilderness, long meals around a roaring campfire, hushed mornings around a smaller fire with coffee and hot breakfast in the cool air. It was great, all right — now get over it. You knew the deal when you saw the second pink line.
Leave the WhisperLite stove in the basement. This trip is all about the big old green Coleman two-burner — propane, not white gas, no pumping necessary. In the old days, it was an extravagance to spring for the double-thick Thermarest pad, a whole inch of space-age foam between you and the playa hardpan. Today's aging camper floats into early middle age on a battery-operated inflatable mattress fit for a queen. There are no alpinists to impress here in car camping country. The only thing you're out to prove is that you can take one or more young children outdoors for a few nights and bring the same number home on Sunday.
Many parents limit the expedition to the nuclear family, and this is certainly the simplest course, with fewer moving parts; it also offers more intense family togetherness. For others, the addition of a second family promises to double the fun, as well as providing a little relief over the course of a long weekend with just the kids, no TV, naps unlikely, bedtimes too frightening to contemplate. More adults in the conversation, in those rare moments when conversation is possible (don't even think about chilled evenings around the fire pit; by the time the kids get to sleep, you'll be brooding about the five a.m. wake-up call from every goddamn woodland creature in New York State, small children included). And then there's the guilty pleasure of silently judging someone else's parenting technique, even as you know your own losing-it voice travels just as easily through tent nylon.
It will take twice to five times as long to prepare, pack and travel to the campsite. Eat on the way.
Every aspect of the weekend is boldly circumscribed, from site selection (not too near bodies of water, cacti, cliffs or young singles playing cards and drinking from go-cups under one of those pavilion roof things without a care in the world) to recreational activities (there is no need to bring a fishing pole). Menus will be driven by expediency, with a premium on speed and toddler-friendly protein. Hiking is out of the question. The tranquility of your woodland meditation will be marred by the awareness that your campsite is the least childproof environment outside a meth lab.
Of course, it's not only the children who are in constant peril. Every day of a parent's life is rich in irony, but camping is surely the Super Bowl of shortsighted gaffes and avoidable tragedies. Immediately after delivering the weekend's most strenuously scolded lecture on being safe, Dad takes a John Ritter pratfall at once comical (feet in the air, ass in the millstream) and costly to property (broken camera) and person (middling injury that will make the rest of the trip immeasurably less manageable). The swanky new tent turns out to terrify one of the kids. Proximity to the bathroom had seemed like an advantage, but clouds of tiny hovering bugs thought the same thing.
At some point, childhood memories of a different tenor begin to surface: a campsite abandoned to a swarm of mosquitoes, the musty smell of canvas leaking in the rain, a bloodstained scramble to the emergency room.
The trip was supposed to be about answering the angelic questions of a child: who plants wildflowers? What are the tree frogs talking about? How many stars are there? But one's own questions prove more pertinent: why didn't we wait until the kids were a little older? How are we ever going to get them to sleep? What ever possessed us to think this was a good idea? What's that formula for counting out the distance of a lightning strike?
Answers are slow to come, but they arrive at last, late at night, riding out a thunderstorm in the window-fogged car, watching the best fire of the weekend die a slow death, the kids finally asleep in their car seats, the tent glowing seductively just a dozen yards away with its snug sleeping bags and magazines. Well, at least the kids don't seem to mind the bugs that much, once they're Deet'd up. And they've had a lot of fun at the pond, shallow and waveless with long-tailed amphibians scampering on the sandy bottom. And the campsite is a source of constant novelty and stimulation for them — in fact, what makes it so much work for the parents is the need to constantly check their exuberance, to limit how deeply they can explore the surrounding woods or how high they can climb on the rocks. That's a nice problem to have, better than not being able to find their favorite Upside Down Show on the TiVo.
It's not about the work and expense of putting together an expedition fit to invade Mexico for a two-night trip upstate. It's not about the transcendent experience you did or didn't have out there in the woods initiating your kids into the wonders of nature, or communing with the Great Spirit about the progress you're making on your novel. Wounds will heal, showers will be taken, memories will endure (one can only hope). Camping has been accomplished and the torch has been passed.
E-mail J. Daniel Janzen at jdaniel at flakmag dot com.
