Family Camping, 1975

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” 
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Picture this: you and your family load all your camping gear onto a motorboat that belongs to family friends. These family friends have invited you to go camping on a small island off the coast of Maine, and once you’re all loaded, your friends motor out to the island and drop you and your family off for a week. By yourselves. With no water, electricity, or facilities. Just you, your family, and nature. Thank God my mom brought a first aid kit and a trowel! This was one of two epic family camping trips we went on in 1975, and was the pinnacle of “roughing it.” And although I’ve always remembered this trip from the vantage point of a kid, lately I’ve been thinking about it from the perspective of my parents.

So now imagine that you’re a parent responsible for the care and well-being of three little humans, whose outdoor skills and common sense are impaired at best and non-existent at worst. Imagine that your spouse is fun-loving and adventurous, but minimally attuned to the potential for danger that exists in the world. And you thought your family friends’ invitation to camp on their island meant that they would be camping with you. But instead, something came up last-minute and they’ve dropped you off and sailed away and are not seen again until the week is up. So your precious camping vacation starts off as “Gilligan’s Island,” but rapidly threatens to devolve into “Lord of the Flies.” These were the kinds of experiences that ultimately found their way into family legend. But I really don’t recall ever seeing these family friends again after this trip.

Now this was not our first rodeo, as far as tent camping was concerned. On our first trip, in 1970, my parents were busy putting my 3-year-old brother and 1-year-old sister to bed in the tent for the first time when I decided to teach myself how to whittle. What I learned right away was actually how NOT to whittle, as I promptly sliced my left index finger to the bone, leaving my poor parents to deliberate over whether this necessitated a trip to the ER in town to get stitches or whether we could handle this on our own. Since I could still bend my finger, and the state forest was closing its gates in an hour, they decided to tough it out overnight. And really, I was fine, with a half-inch scar on my non-dominant hand that I still wear proudly to this day. And none of our subsequent camping trips were this eventful, possibly thanks to the fact that my mother always brought a first aid kit and my father learned not to leave his pocket knife lying around unattended.

Still, any time we went camping something always went awry. Usually it involved the weather. It could be sunny and hot for weeks all summer, without a cloud in the sky. But the week we had planned to go camping was invariably cold and rainy. And tents back then—at least the tents that we could afford—were made of canvas. Ours was brand new from K-Mart, as were our sleeping bags. It slept five and weighed about 30 lbs dry, but of course it was only dry the first time we set it up. We tried everything we could think of to keep the tent from filling up with water: a tarp spread out underneath, a tarp cleverly rigged over the top, a trench that we dug around the tent for runoff, and a special seam sealer from L.L. Bean that we had to order by mail. None of these measures worked. One time, my mom ingeniously wrapped Hefty bags around the ends of each of our sleeping bags. But no matter what, we awoke encased in cold, wet bedding. We became intimately familiar with campground laundromats and clotheslines and could instantly spot the two trees at any campsite that could be used for drying out our gear. But that only worked on days when it didn’t rain. Far too often, we had to just “grin and bear it” in our damp sleeping bags, until our faces froze that way, or until we just gave up and went home early.

On the island trip, the weather wasn’t too terrible and our gear dried out during the day. Which was fortunate because we were stranded. But entertainment was sparse. You could hike over to the other side of the island, where a sand bar would appear at low tide and you could find some cool shells. Or you could sit around the ever-smoldering campfire and listen to my dad pick out songs on his guitar to which he knew about half the words. My dad loved to play the guitar and sing, and had a vast repertoire of folk songs from the 50’s and 60’s. But he also liked to challenge himself by learning new songs off the radio. So he’d sit there with his transistor, strumming the chords to “Please Mr. Please” over and over, despite not knowing much of the song beyond “don’t play B-17.” My brother and I would fill in where we could, but no one actually knew the whole thing. And none of us ever wanted to hear that song again, if you know what I mean. My sister was more inventive, as she would make up her own songs, complete with dance moves, and could entertain herself and the rest of us for hours with original hits like “Uh Oh, I’m Late for Work,” “It’s Summer Vacation at the Hotel/Motel,” or “We Know Where You’re Going,” which someone would invariably sing when one of us headed off to the latrine we’d dug with the trowel about 20 yards away from our campsite.

One time, toward the end of the week, my dad took us clamming down on the beach we’d washed up on. By this point we were almost out of food, because we hadn’t realized we’d be left alone this long. And we’d already resorted to collecting rainwater to use for drinking and boiling whatever food we had in sea water. So, of necessity, this was my siblings’ and my introduction to “steam-ahs.” My dad showed us how to look for little holes in the wet sand, which was how the clams got air. Once you see the hole, you dig down a little and retrieve your clam. And amazingly, we dug up enough clams to make dinner for five. So between the steamers my mom boiled up and some wild blueberries we found on the other side of the island, we managed to stave off hunger in high style!

These days, Rob and I like to watch TV shows like “Naked and Afraid” or “Running Wild with Bear Grylls.” Maybe we’re hard-wired or just plain traumatized from all our “character-building” camping trips (Rob’s family’s trips were amazingly similar to ours!), but we love to file away tips on how to start a fire using a zip-lock baggie filled with urine or how to make and use a fish trap. And every once in a while, this kind of knowledge comes in handy. But over time, even our families-of-origin began to move away from the survival-style camping trips we went on when we were little. Both our families eventually purchased pop-up campers. Ours was second- or third-hand and had such an odor of mildew about it that my mother forbade me from ever sleeping in it, thanks to my allergies. I was a teenager by then and pretty much over the whole thing anyway. So I slept in the car, with the doors locked—not for safety, but to prevent any refugee siblings from joining me. But tent camping became way more enjoyable in adulthood, thanks to the advent of high-tech camping gear and beer. And I was fortunate enough to find a guy who loves to camp as much as I do, and who has learned not to question my insistence on bringing necessities such as bear spray, a first aid kit, a whisk broom, and a trowel, no matter where we’re headed.

But time mellows all our memories, and these days I’m grateful for the experience of being a helpless child trapped in a rugged, outdoorsy New England family that loved to camp. In fact, if it weren’t for tent camping, we often wouldn’t have been able to afford to go on vacation at all. And all that “roughing it” really did help us develop resilience, resourcefulness, and a love of simplicity. So much so that the first time Rob and I camped in our Airstream, I really missed the feeling of sleeping in a tent on the ground. I just didn’t miss getting wet! I empathize with today’s parents trying to pry their kids away from technology to spend some family time in the great outdoors. Growing up in the 70’s, we were used to being bored and entertaining ourselves, and being out in nature 24/7 was just a different way of being fully present. But even a child of the 70’s can get addicted to modern technology, and today I find that when I am able to spend some extended time away from cell phones, email, TV, and other distractions, the benefits are far greater than I could have imagined.