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A camping adventure
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___ My mother, a child of the Depression, would have said we looked like "The Grapes of Wrath."
___That’s a common saying in our family that applies anytime you look like you’re an Okie heading out in search of survival with everything you own piled in or strapped to your dust-blown car.
___That’s exactly how we looke
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MARK WINGFIELD
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d as we headed out for our first-ever family campout on a recent Friday afternoon. We were only going to be gone one night, but it looked like we were moving out of state. Our humble station wagon was stuffed stem to stern with all the camping gear, food and modern luxuries we thought we needed to survive the wilderness.
___ In fairness, I have to add that most of our neighbors who were going on this bi-annual campout looked as bad or worse than us as they trekked the short distance from North Dallas to Bonham State Park near Sherman. The only difference was that most of them had even bigger vehicles than ours, which means they had even more stuff stuffed in for the haul.
___ I decided right away that camping for one night, even for one weekend, really is inefficient. It takes just as much stuff to camp for one night as to camp for a week, which means the longer you camp, the more you amortize the pain of preparation.
___ It was all worth it, though, because everyone had a great time.
___ From one perspective, we could have achieved the same effect by all pitching tents in our front yards, since most of us on the campout live on contiguous lots year-round. But there’s just some special effect that comes from heading out of town and pitching a tent on rock-hard ground and then trying to sleep through the night.
___ The sound effects are better too. Did you know that some roosters actually crow way before the crack of dawn? I’m guessing the roosters that woke us around 4 or 5 in the morning were confused by Daylight Savings Time.
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__We did have a great time. I hadn’t been camping since college, so lying on that hard ground (even with a pad under the sleeping bag) was a bit of a shock to this middle-aged body. Funny how I didn’t remember that part.
___ Being novices, and not sure if we were going to be ableto hack the semi-annual trek our neighbors
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ALISON WINGFIELD
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take every year, we purchased an inexpensive four-person tent. The box should have said four-child tent. We were snug as bugs. If you didn’t want to move, that was fine.
___ What we didn’t realize was the campsite we were on had a slight incline. By the time morning came (by the roosters’ accounts), we all had slid down into two-thirds of this already-small tent. Poor Luke was up against the side of the tent, with the rest of us pushed up against him.
___ Since we had six campsites all in a row, all of us spent the first (very early) part of the morning grazing at each others’ breakfast tables. It’s great camping with friends because if you forget something or don’t like what you have, someone else is bound to have what you need or want.
___ When the boys had to hit the showers (yes, they had showers, so, no, we weren’t exactly roughing it) at 9:30 in the morning because they were so stiff with mud they couldn’t move, you know a good time was had by all.
___ Camping helped renew my appreciation of God’s creation. When you live in a big city, it is easy to forget how beautiful the sky is at sunrise (which I don’t usually choose to be up in time to see), sunset and at night with all those stars that you’ve always known are out there.
___ It was worth the stiff back to be able to see the Scripture come to life: "The heavens declare the glory of God."
He Said/She Said is a new regular feature of the Baptist Standard's on-line edition. Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard. Alison Wingfield is a freelance writer. The Wingfields moved to Texas in January from Louisville, Ky., where Mark had been editor of the Western Recorder, in which this column appeared weekly. |
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