Keigley CAMPaign: Oconee State Park

Last weekend was our camping weekend.  Oconee State Park.

It was a good weekend.

And I plan to go backwards in time and recap each state park visit.  Eventually.

But I jotted down this during our weekend as we were hanging out and enjoying the incredibly perfect weather.

________________

8:17 p.m.

Otto is resting in the hammock.

Riley’s reading by flashlight in the tent.

I’m writing this, eating raisins, staring at the fire.

Kevin is leading the others on a dark Frog Hunt.

Listening, shining the light.

Two kids are already holding amphibians in their increasingly filthy hands.  (Nails embedded with dark dirt that has at least twelve more hours to live on my children.)

Earlier today we played Lava – all of us leaping from tree stump to tree branch to avoid the burning earth of our imaginations.

And that is really why we’re doing this.

We could play Lava at home.

There are woods behind our back door.

We could catch frogs at home.

And sometimes the kids do.

But mostly,

and especially as a group,

we don’t.

We forget.  We get busy.  We get distracted.

I don’t usually leave the laundry to jump on logs with my second grader.

When my daughter carries a frog into the living room I usually spin her around and direct her back out of our house with nary a word of appreciation for the toady toad’s girth and warts.

I let the mundane be my focus.

And at home I forget the magic of frogs and twilight.

The mystery of the woods .

The simplicity of board games played in the afternoon on a picnic table.

But this separation from our house and our chores and our tall grass that still needs mowing

helps us to see more clearly.

The firelight makes it all beautiful.

Poignant.

Frozen.  (Ironically.)

At the campsite we spend an hour making and eating scrambled eggs.

Nothing happens in a hurry.

It is slow slow slow.

It’s here that I realize that Piper Finn is getting more freckles across the miniature bridge of her nose and that she reminds me of my momma.

I like tossing the cell phone for a weekend.

Twitter, facebook, instagram, e-mail, blog.

It all vanishes.

And  I miss it not at all.

I don’t want to sleep in a tent the rest of my days.

I don’t delight in doing dishes outside regularly.

Showers feel great and I like them daily.

But once a month?

Oh sweet once-a-month.

That is good,

Camping is good.

It’s slow and it’s on purpose.

It requires something of us as a family.

Tent-raising.  Fire building.  Fire sustaining.  Hiking.  Exploring.

It’s communal.

It’s shared.

It is what we are doing now.

And it’s threading its way into our conversations and our stories

and I hope

into out memories

and into the stories our children will tell their children.

And I think it makes us all like each other a little more,

supplies us all with a couple more “remember whens”.

And since every single second of this life is pure gift,

I’m all for anything that preserves it, pickles it, seasons it with love and the strong smell of camp smoke.

Books read by flashlight and sleeping sideways in a tent with your entire snoozing family.

It is what we have to offer right now.

It’s what we’ll give

and it’s what we’ll take.

Amen.