This time, my niece Hillary was the first to arrive at Lake Ray Roberts, and she'd staked out a site right on the water's edge. For the third year in a row, I'd reserved a primitive campsite with neither water nor electricity, and we had to carry our gear down a dirt and gravel path. As the four of us carried in the first load, Allyson and I reminisced about our first visit to this same state park two years earlier.
That time, nobody in our group had been able to arrive before dark, and all the close spots were taken. We'd had to stumble over rocky, root-tangled paths in the gathering darkness, carrying coolers, bins, and inflated air mattresses. Even the youngest campers, ranging in age from about 7 to 16, had to pack in heavy bags of supplies. According to the camp website, the walk was only a quarter of a mile, but it felt twice as long due to the darkness and our heavy loads. As the trip organizer, I was the recipient of an incessant stream of complaints, including a few accusations of violating child labor laws. In the end, though, we all agreed that our lushly wooded site was much more beautiful and relaxing than our customary RV plots had been.
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| The View from This Year's Primitive Site |
This year, the walk was perhaps the length of a city block, and there were a few small rocks, but no tree roots to trip over. Even so, we were streaming in sweat when we dropped our first loads onto the grass. The girls wanted to set up our new tent immediately, but Hillary and I dissuaded them by suggesting a swim first.
After I'd pulled on my water shoes, we stepped right into the water and waded out to shoulder depth. The water was perfect! It was cool enough to be refreshing, but not cold enough to make my teeth chatter. We splashed around for nearly an hour, exercising both our muscles and our jaws. I particularly enjoyed hearing about Hillary's college experiences and swapping nutrition ideas; both of us are mostly vegetarian these days.
Around 5, we constructed the tent in our wet bathing suits. I was a little nervous about figuring out the instructions for a new tent, but I figured it had to be a piece of cake compared to our experience last year. That time, it had been raining, and mud clogged the tips of several tent poles so that we could not insert the pins to attach them to the stakes. Allyson and I got the bright idea to tap the poles on a concrete sidewalk, which dislodged most of the mud, but also snapped the worn elastic string in one of the longest poles. After thirty minutes of fruitless fiddling, we realized there was no restringing that pole. "I don't think we'll be sleeping in a tent tonight," I said mournfully.
I frantically phoned my ex-brother-in-law Chris, who was on his way out. "Can you get a-hold of another tent? Buy one if you have to. There's no way this one's going up."
"Don't worry. I've got Duck tape," Chris replied.
"You can't put a pole together with Duck tape," I protested. "See, it's the longest pole, and it supports the center section. It has at least ten segments."
"Duck tape'll keep it together," Chris promised.
"No, I don't think so," I argued. "It isn't just a straight pole. It forms a curve. And it has to be flexible, but strong. It holds up the center section."
Chris mumbled something about his reception getting bad and repeated his direction not to worry.
While we waited, I walked around alternately wringing my hands and asking God to help us. Despite my lack of faith, He did send help... in the form of Duck tape.
Chris calmly sat in a camp chair and methodically wrapped each junction in silver tape. Five minutes later, he, Allyson, and my friend Kim inserted the poles in their slots. I held my breath and said a silent prayer while they pulled the poles into arcs. I watched, hands clasped in supplication, while they inserted the pole ends into the stake attachments.
Praise be to God (with some credit to Chris), the tent indeed went up and held sturdy through the whole weekend. It turns out you really can fix anything with Duck tape.
But I digress.... This year, no Duck tape was needed. The tent was the same brand, size, and shape, but the poles were configured differently. The center poles that crossed on top of the tent were more rigid, and they attached to vertical supports on either side. Hillary, who has amassed more camping experience in the last year than I have in 10 years, figured it all out with a little help from the directions. Kambry and Allyson hammered in the first stakes, and Hillary did most of the rest. I pounded in the last two just so I could say that I'd helped. Within 10 minutes, the tent was up. We decided to skip the rain fly and leave the top open to the air since it was well over 100 degrees (38 Celsius), with clear blue skies.
While exclaiming over the convenience of our very own water access, we splashed back into the water to cool off again. A few minutes later, my son Ethan and his girlfriend Sumer arrived, followed shortly thereafter by my friend Kim and her son Blake.
Hillary proved her camping prowess again by expertly lighting the campfire and the charcoal. While we all sat around in camp chairs chatting, she grilled burgers--eight beef and four veggie. After dinner, we roasted marshmallows for S'mores and then played Apples to Apples, a game where you try to play the card that best matches a given category. Example of the winning card when Kambry was the judge: Category-Stupid. Card-Boyfriends. Ethan and Sumer dominated the game, and Allyson held her own as well. I was proud of both of my kids, and thankful for the opportunity to spend uninterrupted time with beloved family and friends.
Our bedtime trip to the restroom was much easier and safer due to Hillary's brilliant purchase of five LED head lanterns that she'd found for only a dollar apiece. This was most fortunate because nobody else had brought a flashlight other than the ones that came on our phones. For some reason, I thought my fellow campers looked like aliens when they came back down the path, their tiny lights bobbing.
A Tent Full
Our 10-person tent was crammed full with seven people and Kim's little Maltese-poodle. Kim slept on a folding lounge chair, Hillary slept on a slim sleeping mat cushioned with a bit of air, and the rest of us slept on air mattresses. Allyson and Kambry insisted on using one of the two room dividers, which cut into the space and also hindered air flow--or would have, had they followed my instructions and left their door's outer flap unzipped. (They said they were afraid that someone would look in at them.) Kim urged me to let them have their fun; we could manage.
From the sound of muted snores all around me, everyone did manage just fine. Everyone except me. My single air mattress was mostly deflated after only four hours, and my butt was touching the floor. Plus, the air was still and HOT. Also, my stomach hurt from eating both a beef burger and a veggie burger. Somewhere around 1, I finally thought to grab both of our sleeping bags and stack them on top of the useless air mattress. At last, sleep came to me, and I slept soundly until the light and heat of the morning sun woke me around 7:30.
Meanwhile, Blake slept beautifully in the hammock he'd just bought. It must have been very comfortable and cool, because he was the last one up that morning.
As I stumbled to the bathroom, eyes barely open, I was greeted by our nearest neighbors. "Have you had your morning coffee yet?" a pleasantly accented male voice called out.
I turned toward the sound, squinting to make out a large family sitting at a picnic table. (I'd forgotten to put on my glasses.)
"Not yet," I answered in a raspy voice.
"Come by on jour way back. We'll geeve you a cup," the man said.
"That's very kind," I answered. "I'd appreciate that."
I kicked myself as I walked away, though. I've never been a coffee drinker, and all I can typically tolerate is mocha with more chocolate and cream than coffee. Would they expect me to drink the coffee right there, or could I just take it to Allyson, who already loves coffee at age 11?
I needn't have worried. On my way back, I passed the hospitable man, who was both shirtless and disconcertingly handsome, with a suave accent that reminded me of Ricardo Montalban on Fantasy Island in the 70s. "Yust go to our site," he said. "There ees a cup waiting for jew. Eet is Coh-lohmbian coffee."
"Um, thanks," I replied, studiously averting my eyes from his muscular chest and hoping my flaming cheeks just looked sunburned (which they were).
The man's wife and sister-in-law were very kind. They handed me a small Styrofoam cup of very dark coffee. "Shoo-gar?" one of them asked.
"Yes, please," I replied, taking the proffered plastic spoon and mounding it generously with brown sugar. I wasn't sure whether I'd taken a shocking amount since I never drink coffee. There didn't seem to be any milk left, so I had to drink it black.
They looked at me expectantly, so I cautiously took a tiny sip. Oh my goodness! It was delicious. It was strong and sweet. "El café es muy delicioso," I said. They laughed, but not unkindly. I'm sure my accent was terrible, and not at all charming like their English.
"So this coffee is from Colombia?" I asked. "Like, you brought it from there?"
"Jess," they replied.
"I don't usually like coffee, but this is really good."
Ricardo Montalban, who had just returned, said, "Our pastor saze that coffee ees like a message. Eet must be dee-livered dee-rectly. We like our coffee strong. None of thees water they call coffee here."
"Well, it's very good. Thank you," I said, and took my leave.
For breakfast, I heated an egg and hash brown casserole on our old camp stove. Then we all walked down one of the paved hiking trails, under a thick, green canopy of leaves most of the way. Kim had brought a fascinating contraption that we used to fill about 20 water balloons at the same time. You just hook it to the faucet, and each balloon seals itself and drops off when it's full.
The balloons must have been a little under inflated because very few of them actually broke when they hit a human target. Instead, they left little welts before bouncing off the victim and bursting at her feet. Hillary graciously contained her laughter when one of her balloons hit my chest with a resounding thwack. I smiled ruefully and enjoyed the coolness of two balloons that did break on me. For the record, we meticulously picked up all the balloon fragments so as not to kill any birds.
Around noon on Saturday, everyone but me, Allyson, and Kambry went home. We spent the afternoon at the swimming area and then swam again at our own campsite. With the temperature at 106 (41 Celsius), there wasn't much else we could do.
It's Not Camping...
Despite the heat, Allyson and Kambry wanted to start another fire. "It's not camping without a fire," Allyson said.
"Well, we can try, but remember the last time it was just you and me, Allyson? We followed all the instructions on YouTube perfectly, but we couldn't get our fire to light."
"I've started lots of fires," Kambry said confidently. "I know I can do it."
She instructed us to bring her lots of dead grass, bark, and small twigs. We brought her a few handfuls and then sat down to watch her work. Ethan had given me a crucial hint about Hillary's success the night before. He said that she blew on the fledgling fire each time it seemed like it was going to go out. So I helped Kambry blow, and that did make the tinder glow red. Several times, a flame sprang up, but each time this happened, it quickly consumed all of its fuel and died back down.
Feeling lightheaded from all of the huffing and puffing, I took a break to walk to the restroom. As I walked, I asked God to help us get the fire going. "I really want the girls to have the whole campfire experience," I said. "And we have been working so hard. Please bless us with this."
When I returned ten minutes later, the girls reported that they had already started over twice. While I watched, Kambry shoved away a charred pile of twigs and bark and brushed the ashes smooth.
"Let's just do what we did last time," Allyson suggested. "Remember? I lit a napkin on fire and roasted my marshmallow over it."
"No, let's not give up," I said. "Kambry's first fire was doing great at first. I think we just needed more fuel, or the right kind of fuel." I scratched my head for a minute. "What if we started it with a few pieces of charcoal? Would they burn long enough to catch the twigs on fire?"
"Maybe," Allyson said. She lined up four briquettes and covered them with lighter fluid, top and bottom.
Once they were burning, we stacked dry grass on top of them and added a piece of bark and a couple of very slender twigs. Like before, the flames shot up but then died down.
"We probably smothered the charcoal," Allyson surmised. "Let's just roast the marshmallows over a napkin again."
I sighed, feeling disappointed and frustrated. I whined, "I must be the unlucky piece in this puzzle. I'm NEVER able to start a fire."
"Yeah," Kambry agreed. "Usually I can start a fire right away."
Allyson dug out the marshmallow bag. "We don't need to roast them," she said. "They're already melted. It looks like marshmallow cream. Can we have some spoons?"
The two girls proceeded to make a terrible mess, but that made it all the more fun.
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| See our failed fire? |
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| Allyson, Kambry |
"Let's go take a shower," Allyson said. "Who cares about the fire. We already had our marshmallows."
I sighed heavily. "But we were so close to getting the fire lit. Maybe if we-"
"Let's take a shower," Allyson repeated.
I leaned over to examine the fire one more time. "No, wait," I said. "The big log is starting to burn."
"That's just smoke," Kambry said.
"Yes, but that smoke means there's fire. It really is burning, just slowly. We need to put some more dry grass on it and see what happens."
I nestled a piece of straw in the hollow of the now black log and blew gently. The end of the straw glowed red, and a plume of smoke arose from it. "Get some twigs," I said.
We threw on some more grass, then some bark, then some twigs. Within just a few minutes, we had a proper fire going!
I marveled at the way it really took off after we'd given up trying. It had seemed that our hard work was for nothing, but all the while, a slow fire was growing. We couldn't see it, but it was there. With just a little tending, it had grown into a blaze.
I thought about this past year of teaching. Around the middle of the second semester, I'd wanted to give up. In my hardest classes, nothing I tried seemed to make any difference. In fact, things seemed to be getting worse. I wondered if my students had learned anything at all. At that point, I kind of threw up my hands. I stopped expecting my students to live up to my initial expectations and just focused on praying more and loving them as they were. I reminded myself to look for the Good Things in each day, and I found them.
Good Things
The fact was, even though I couldn't see it, my students were learning some very important things. During teacher appreciation week, a card from a student in my hardest class moved me to tears. She thanked me for always being patient with them. "You are an amazing teacher," she wrote. "Thank you for teaching me to Speak Life and Choose Love."
A student in my best class wrote me a letter after he'd finished his exam. "Not only did you teach me about reading, but you also taught me to choose love," he said. "Thank you for teaching me that I can pray when I need help, and God will give me success. I pray God blesses your life with everything you dream of this summer." I'm not sure what he meant about teaching him to pray. I suppose I must have told his class about my own prayers when I was struggling with classroom management.
In any case, these students were listening, even when it felt like I was wasting my time and effort. When I took my hands off, God did the rest.
Once we got our campfire going, I asked the girls if they'd rather sit around it and talk like the night before, or take a shower and play cards in the tent. They opted for a shower. Kambry filled a cooking pot with lake water and cheerfully doused the fire that had taken us two hours to build.
We played a few rounds of Phase Ten before calling it a night around 11:00. I couldn't convince the girls to walk to the bathroom with me, and they were afraid to be left alone, so I talked with Allyson on the phone the whole way there and back. Truth be told, I was thankful for the sound of her voice as I walked through the dark woods.
I was amused to find Allyson listening to her bedtime nature sounds recording back in the tent. "Are you drowning out nature sounds with a nature sounds track?" I asked.
"Sort of," she admitted. "It just reminds me of sleep."
"I understand," I said, as I rubbed lavender and peppermint essential oils onto the balls of my dusty feet. "I feel the same way about my essential oils."
Nature sounds and essential oils notwithstanding, it took us a long time to fall asleep because high winds were rocking the tent. At least it wasn't hot, but the flapping of the nylon walls and the creaks of the swaying poles made us fear that the tent would collapse. I patiently explained to the girls why we needed to open all the flaps. "See how the tent barely moves when the wind blows long-ways through the open windows on both ends? If we open the flaps facing the water, the wind will blow through the middle of the tent the same way."
"But what if somebody looks in at us?" Allyson asked.
"Nobody's going to look at us," I said. "If we don't open the flaps, the tent really may fall down. The wind is getting stronger."
"Okayyy," they both relented.
Allyson clutched my hand in the darkness, and I think it was as comforting to me as it was to her. I imagined myself holding my Father's hand on my other side. Weren't we always safe with Him by our side?
Even so, I kept staring at the swaying walls and the gathering clouds, black against the gray sky, long after Allyson's hand had gone slack in mine. I prayed fervently, "Please, please don't let it rain. Oh, why didn't we put on the rain fly? No way to do it now in the dark and the wind. Please don't let it rain."
It was probably around 2 when I decided I really didn't care if those nylon walls fell on top of me or not. And if it rained, we'd get wet, and I'd have a great story to tell on my blog.
The next thing I knew, my eyes opened to a pink sky through my window. "Wow," I breathed, rubbing at goosebumps on my arms. I pulled a sleeping bag over my body and partway over my eyes, and then slept for two more hours.
At 8:30, I walked to the bathroom and stopped for another coffee with my Colombian friends. (I was unaccountably disappointed to learn that they are residents of a suburb near my own, rather than visitors from Colombia.)
To get the girls up, I deflated their air mattress with a sly grin. "Get up, get up!" I demanded. "We have to tear down this tent before it gets blazing hot at 10."
Working together, we got the big tent into the little bag on only our second try, a new record. After that, God provided us some help in the form of Colombian angels. They not only helped us carry our bins and cooler to the car, they also helped me pack my impossibly small car while Kambry and Allyson went for one last swim. Ricardo Montalban (still shirtless despite the cooler temperature) provided the brute strength, and his sister-in-law directed the operation like a skillful Tetris player.
I gave them hugs and the rest of our water bottles, which would have taken up all of the girls' leg room.
Finally, I bribed the girls away from the lake with the promise of snow cones on the way home.
All in all, it was a wonderful trip. But next year we're going back to our early May tradition, school or no school. Even if I have to grade papers by the campfire. Yes, there will be a campfire. I know we can do it.
2 comments:
Glad to read this joyful family experience. What are your summer plans?
Lots of travel. I'm off to Indiana for a family reunion in June, and then to Costa Rica in July for a Spanish immersion program.
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