My husband and I were both raised in the city setting. I grew up in a bustling city of Taipei, and my husband came from a village in Taishan – nonetheless, it is still a big city according to him. We both had the mentality of a city slicker, and I had always preferred a pool to the sandy beach. A pool is man-made and clean, and a beach is natural and messy. I didn’t like the feeling of having sand in my feet and in my hair.
I remember going camping with my family as a toddler every summer in Taiwan. My father would pitch our tent anywhere along the stream. There were no regulations. A shovel was handed to me whenever I asked to go potty.
In the first year of my marriage, I read a book titled “Wild at Heart” by John Eldredge. I was immediately drawn to the idea of adventures and the great outdoors. John Eldredge wrote,
“Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man…In the heart of every man is a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.”
I told myself – if I ever have a boy, we will take him camping and hiking in the mountains, and we are going to make a man out of him.
It would take us eight years before we were ready for our first adventure. We waited until the time when our third and last child was able to sleep consistently through the night. Though we loved the idea of camping, we were entirely clueless about it. It’s easy to follow others when we only have to worry about carrying a sleeping bag and a toothbrush; it’s a vastly different story when we have to take our whole family and lead the way. Thanks to the internet – I googled and read the blogs about camping…but it was information overload. It took hours of research just to buy our first tent from Amazon. I should have just ordered the best-seller.
I was a fool to pick Fire Island as a destination for our very first camping trip. The island is not accessible by car. (I guess I was too eager for a real adventure.) We loaded all of our belongings onto a beach wagon and took a ferry across the bay. It turned out to be a suicide mission as we quickly became live baits to a swarm of ravenous, giant mosquitos. Seriously, who needs a Guantanamo Bay when you have Fire Island? Just keep the prisoners in one of these campsites, and they will confess everything! We hid inside the tent the whole time we were there. My husband got dozens of mosquito bites on his back through his shirt while setting up the tent on his own. He was that dashing, macho man to his wife and a selfless, heroic father to his children.
We learned our lesson. The following year we picked a campground that is fully accessible by car. In fact, we could sleep in the car if we wanted to. It rained hard the first day. We scrambled to set up the tent in the rain only to break one of the poles. We ended up with a wet, lopsided tent and an awkwardly improvised rain fly. I spent the first night mopping up the water that seeped through the edges of the tent. We endured a terrifying night of strong wind, downpour, lightning, and thunder. Not able to sleep, I prayed and pleaded with God for this frightful storm to pass. It was during that night I understood the following verses,
“When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” (Exodus 20:18-19)
The sound of thunder was deafening in the mountain. It was so menacingly loud that the only impulse is to run as far away as possible.
After the daybreak, we walked to the camp office to get some Wi-Fi. We found out the camp clerk was told by the ranger the night before to stay home, and they were debating whether to get all the campers into a shelter. Apparently, no one came. I wondered if they had at least prayed for our safety!
With two years of bad camping experiences under our belt, we were ready to take our friends with us. As if God knew we needed help, we met a couple who are experienced campers. For two summers in a row, we took other families to go camping with us.
We just came back from a camping trip in Taconic State Park. This year we had four families that were camping for the first time. When I saw them break out brand-new tents and equipment from cardboard boxes, I was both thrilled and amazed. They were truly adventurous and brave. We had to practice setting up our tent in our backyard, yet we would still forget how to do it every time.
The children squealed with delight when they saw these cardboard boxes. They were tired of looking for twigs to burn in the fire pit. Seeing the cardboard boxes was like hitting the jackpot. They could burn the entire cardboard! When was the last time the kids got so excited over cardboard boxes?
One of the campers was not thrilled to be there. His wife probably threatened him or gave him some ultimatum to go. “I don’t need this,” he said to me soon after he arrived, “I need a job, and I have a baby on the way. I really don’t need this!” He shook his head. He just had a job interview in the city earlier that day. “No, you need this!” I replied, “We all need to live a little! We all need a good distraction!”
I was talking to myself. Only a few days ago, we were weighed down by a heavy burden. We had to fight against the tendency to be self-obsessed by setting out on an adventure while taking people with us.
Indeed, it was a good distraction. I felt like I had traveled to another planet and back. There was no shortage of social interactions and activities to occupy our minds. The burden we once bore seemed like a distant memory. The camping trip was a perfect reset to start our week anew.
If it’s up to my son, he’d tell you camping is not his thing. He prefers the indoors, and he’s the type of boy that would tell a cashier in a supermarket that he can’t wait for the school to start. This whole camping-in-the wilderness-thing started with him years ago when we wanted to raise a boy that loves a great adventure, but it’s our younger daughter that fell in love with nature. Therefore, it was music to my ear when my son said to me just yesterday, “Mom, I enjoyed camping.”
We still have big-city friends that would politely turn down our invitation to go camping. I am going to stand on a soapbox and say, “For a small fee, you get to have a good distraction. And for at least forty-eight hours, you can be guilt-free knowing your kids are not staring at a screen.” Instead, they will gaze at the stars, be mesmerized by the fire, and learn to fall asleep anywhere on earth.
I love the last picture!
Yeah, we loved the feeling of it so much that we took so many shots!