Trudging into the darkest areas of the most remote woods with nothing but a flashlight and a pillow used to be camping at its finest. But then everything changed.
By Jonathan Miles
Ultralight used to be my thing—hiking off into the middle of a big nowhere with as little as possible. It was like a masochistic game I played with nature— the more deprived I was, the more fun I had. That was until I started heading off into the woods with an extra 55 pounds. His name is Cass, and he’s five years old.
Five-year-olds, by nature, are maximalists. For them, the gear is half the fun of camping. A tent, rising from a crumpled mess on the ground, is an epic miracle. Ditto the inifinite unfoldings of a multitool. When a child is along, there are also certain, well, parental obligations: comfort, safety, fun. The wild solitude I used to seek, trekking miles into the woods, has been replaced with something less pure: a paid-for site at a campground.
But you won’t catch me grousing. Camping, at its heart, is a child’s game, and seeing it from a child’s eyes reconfigures, and refreshes, everything. When twilight comes—bringing with it the campfire, the stories, the charred marshmallows, the terrestrial chill—it’s just me, him, and the woods; everything else falls away. Warm inside the tent, deep in our bags, we listen to a trout stream bubbling past us, discuss what time fish go to sleep, try to call in hoot owls, and when he falls asleep, I swear it’s with a smile.
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September 13th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
nice post - your are making special memories with your son. You are both fortunate to have this experience together.
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