once upon a time....

I took my family on a camping trip

    We didn't have a lot of extra cash when the kids were little.  (Part of that is because we were married at age 13....or so it seems.)
     So vacations were nothing extravagant.
     We bought a Vermont Castings wood burning stove.  Hand crafted in Vermont, these were premium wood stoves back in the 70s and 80s.
      Every year the company sponsored an owners' picnic, and one year we went.
      We had two tents....and yes, I was nervous....with Jackie and one child in a tent and me and the other child in the second tent.  These were two person tents, which at the time made sense but I have no idea why.  We alternated kids so they would survive the trip.
       I made reservations at a campground in the White Mountains, near the picnic site.  There was no electricity, no planned activities, no pool....but there were flush toilets and showers in the community bathroom.
     It was beautiful.  Quiet, clear, remote.  I loved it.
     After we set up the tents, we got ready to cook supper.  There was a fire pit and I had brought a little grill and pans.  We had ham steak and potatoes, cooked on an open fire, in the middle of a wilderness.  What could go wrong?
    Plenty.
    I got the fire going a little late.  It was dark by the time we started cooking.  Everyone was hungry.  No one could see their food.
    Our site was under some huge trees and we moved the picnic table to find rootless spots for the tents.
    Jackie  cooked, served the dinner, the girls were all at the table...Jackie on one end, and me on the other.
    Problem one, I had moved the picnic table over a root.
    Remember teeter-totters?  You sit down on one end and the other flies up? Well, I sat down.
    Jackie's ham steak became air born and landed on the table, which might not have been the cleanest.
    Her drink went also.  Peas were rolling all over the place.
    When the dust settled, she just sat there quietly, picking up what dinner she could find and mopping up the beverage,  and uttered those words:  "I am never going camping again.  I hate this."
     Dinner done, they looked at me and said, "What next?"
     I told them we sit around the fire, talk, tell stories and jokes, watch the stars, stare at the flames.
     A chorus of, "I'm going to bed." echoed back.
     Julia had a routine about going to bed.  She would take the flashlight and go in the tent.  Then she would scan every seam and every inch, making sure there were no bugs, especially spiders.  This often took her 10 or 15 minutes.
     So I sat at the table, watching her flashlight make its rounds.
     A fellow camper, a man from Boston whose wife and kids had also gone to bed, came over to chat.  We sat outside and watched a meteor shower, and in the clear night it was brilliant.
      Little did I know that would be the best night of camping on that trip.