Every family should do it!

    I used to love this activity before I had children.  I used to do it several times a year and once took a two week car trip while doing it.  A few months after my first child was born, I tried it but found camping exhausting and hardly fun any more.  Just work with small dabs of reward.
    Since then, 17 years have passed and I still relish nature, but mainly through means other than roughing it, mostly through day hikes and returning to sleep at home or on a bed in Curry Village in Yosemite National Park, or a more luxurious accomodation. In fact, I've gone camping with my kids fewer times than I have fingers on one hand.
    But we did it -- we camped these last three days and it was a totally different experience from when I had with me a baby, toddler or an elementary school child, or even from just a year ago. 
    Having three teens with me, ages 15, 16, and 18 made all the difference.  That the 15 year old was a considerate, hardworking Boy Scout influenced the dynamics I believe. Last year a boy scout came along with my oldest, Jenny, Collin and I to Sequoia National Park, but he was Jenny's boyfriend.  Asking Jen's boyfriend to help, rather than waiting for him to volunteer, would have totally embarrassed Jenny.
    A cousin is a different matter.  I had no qualms - and he had no problems - with me asking his involvement in the tasks. I wish you all such a cousin. Perhaps I could hire him out?
    And camping does require so many little tasks - but when five adults are doing them, the spread of work allows just a much thinner layer to fall on each. But other factors entered in also.
    Probably the wisest thing I did was to not work when others weren't into working yet.  Instead of making a martyr of myself, I opened a book. 
    Or, when clean up time came, I retreated to the small tent Collin and I shared and started deflating therma-rests and rolling up sleeping bags and squishing my gear into my duffel bag.  When I came out, without my request, my daughters and Keith had put away 70% o the kitchen and food stuff. 
    If I'd been there, they would have gotten in my way, not done things the way I would have like and they would have soon left me to do things in my own obsessive way. 
    Besides learning a couple of important lessons here about what's required to keep myself from doing more than my share, I've also seen how camping presses us into each other in very good ways.  Without e-mails and instant messaging and cell phone service, we talked to each other.  We played old fashioned games and told stories and laughed a lot.  Collin, Keith and I also slept a lot. It was all good, very good.
    How soon should a family with young children brave camping?  If you can do it with another family, it helps a lot.  Or with grandparents to entertain the kids or lend a hand with cooking, camping is more enjoyable.  Singles - consider helping out a family by going camping with them!
     Parents, please don't give up camping when your kids become busy teenagers with other exciting stuff to do. Don't let those other things crowd out the simple joys of sitting by a fire, roasting marshmellows and gazing up at tall trees. You need it much more then than when they were young. We need the perspective.  We need to be pushed into each other.