Camping With Ted Williams
This morning I am feeling the ache of wanting to be with family, to connect. When I studied these feelings for a minute I realize it is the weather. This morning is chilly, with a very light cloud cover, but even with the clouds it promises to be the 2nd warm day we’ve had in months, yesterday being the 1st.
Something about the sky, the chill, the clouds, the wafting smell of bacon, takes me back to childhood, camping at Lake McClure. I remember waking inside the tent, the chill in the air, needing to pee, hating to go to the bathrooms alone, desperately searching out my flip flops, as one didn’t enter those bathrooms without foot protection, trying hard to be quiet…don’t wake everyone. Once the morning chill wore off, watch out! Each day was a scorcher. Shoes were now necessary to prevent 3rd degree burns on the bottom of our feet. The only relief was the water and that’s where we stayed. Whether swimming or out in the beautiful speckled colored boats, water was heaven.
I’m not sure why we went to that particular lake. It wasn’t the closest, the biggest, the most beautiful. Conjure the barren red rock from Utah, low lying shrubs, and you wouldn’t be too far off. We met extended family and friends there. Wonderful people that brought with them feelings of belonging. Betty and Harold, two of the nicest people to grace this planet, aunts and uncles, cousins. There were always others. Memories of my handsome father pumping the stove and the lanterns to get them to light are vivid. God, my mother must have worked so hard, camping with 6 kids.
I don’t remember if all 8 of us slept in one tent or if mom and dad had they’re own but I do remember it being a bit one like this (tan colored, I think).
We lost all that when dad left. Gone were the power boats, the motorcycles, the family summer vacations. They wouldn’t come back again until one of my older sisters had her own family and bought a boat. She recreated that for her family and sometimes took us along.
The love of camping has not stayed with me. I have no desire to pitch a tent, no aspirations of “roughing it” in the wild, but wanting the connection, in the way we connected then, still lingers, still tugs at my heart.
Did you camp? Do you still?
We never, ever went camping when I was a kid. My father said he'd had more than enough "roughing it" when marching through Europe in WW2 and had no interest in doing it "for fun." As an adult, I have no draw towards camping either. My idea of a good time away from home is staying in a 5-star hotel and spa.
ReplyDeleteCamping to me is a hotel without room service. I have camped as a kid. I camped when I first met my husband because he begged me to go. Not my thing!! I did enjoy the RV. I loved sitting around the campfire. I enjoyed the lake. I do not enjoy sleeping on the ground or using nature as a bathroom. Nope.
ReplyDeleteWe never went camping when I was a kid. Never pitched a tent or had a sleeping bag. In August 1969, we borrowed sleeping bags from the neighbors in our NJ suburb and drove to Woodstock for the concert. We were not ready in any way for "camping" there. That was my first camping experience!
ReplyDeleteI used to camp with an aunt, uncle, and cousin when I was a kid. They had a Skamper. I enjoyed it. Bill and our daughter used to go tent camping every summer when we lived in Oregon and when we first moved To Alaska. Bill and I tent camped with the dogs and cat on our move from Alaska back to Oregon. Then came the big camping trip for the three of us--99 days across the northern US as we went from Oregon to Niagara Falls (NY), where we got an apt for the winter. Then it was on to Maine in the spring where we adopted a cat (Huggie) from the local animal shelter and tent camped again for a few months until we got jobs and then an apartment.
ReplyDeleteI was so surprised at how much I loved it. I missed it in some ways when we went back to living inside and I still have happy memories of that time in my life!
I never went camping in my life until I was in my 30s. I like it, but then again, we always stay in nice state parks, with bathroom facilities nearby, and I have to have an air mattress. No sleeping on the hard ground for me! And not too much roughing it, either. :)
ReplyDeleteWe didn’t do any camping but I would have loved it. My husband is not a camper and we didn’t go camping with our daughter but we had a travel trailer for a few years before she was born.
ReplyDeleteYour childhood memories of camping sound lovely. I can understand a lack of interest now though.
I've never been camping. It's not really my thing but I would like to experience at least once in my life.
ReplyDelete