Camping, one year later

This weekend my wife dragged me back to the great outdoors.

Our kids and some friends and their kids came, too, but they all came happily. I’m the only one of us who finds such excursions excruciating (as previously alluded to).

We arrived on Friday afternoon. Others set up tents as I watched helplessly, having no relevant skills or intuition about how to erect a 3D structure from 2D components.

On Saturday morning, I awoke from a horrible night’s sleep wanting to make hot chocolate and/or a fire, but I couldn’t find the lighter and I had no backup plan. For me, that’s camping in a nutshell: tasks that would be routine at home become difficult to impossible. By 9:30am, I was already in need of a nap.

The rest of the day proceeded with the usual indignities of parenting mixed with general camping craziness. When not wondering where my 6-year-old and 8-year-old had gone, I found them far too present as they kicked and screamed at me for enforcing bare-minimum standards of politeness.

Amidst all of that, the camp showers were a little miracle. The boys entered them angry and came out calmer as well as cleaner.

On Sunday morning, after a day and a half of this immersive and often-unpleasant curriculum, it was time for my camping final exam. I awoke at 5:30 and once again tried to make hot chocolate and a fire.

With the lighter in hand this time, heating the water on the gas grill was easy enough, even for me.

As for the fire, I had, with the plodding pace of a dull student, gradually been absorbing details over the weekend as to how to light the firestarter (in multiple spots along the paper wrapping) and how to arrange the pieces of wood (in a little pile around and above the firestarter, but with sufficient gaps for airflow in and out).

While everyone else slept, I gave it my best shot. The lighter wasn’t lighting! Argh! OK, there it went. Now the firestarter wasn’t catching. Trying again…Nope. Trying again…Nope. Trying again…. On the fourth try I achieved ignition.

I sat back in my chair and watched the flames soar with satisfaction. And also with gratitude that it wasn’t raining. That would have defeated me for sure.