I haven’t gone camping in a tent in a long time.

I grew up camping and, for much of that time, it was in a tent. My parents would take my sister and me to the Boundary Waters between Minnesota and Canada for about a week. We’d paddle our canoes from one lake to the next. We’d listen to the loons at night. We’d build a fire. We’d eat dried food—which miraculously tasted better the farther we paddled from civilization. We’d drink water right out of the lake, before we needed expensive filters. We’d use the latrine deep in the woods. I still vividly remember the time I felt flies landing on my behind—only to look down into the latrine and see a whiskered woodchuck looking up at me!

When I was a teenager, I went camping with a group of girlfriends. We called ourselves the “Future Old Maids of America,” or FOMA for short, and had T-shirts made (None of us remained very loyal to our cause).

Much later, when I became a 50-year-old graduate student, I splurged on a nice one-person tent, a lightweight air mattress and a compact, fold-up chair (I’ve noticed that with both camping gear and lingerie, the less material there is, the more it costs). I loved camping in my tiny tent, as I drove from the Southwest to the Midwest and back, listening to coyotes and surviving the occasional thunderstorm.

So, when an opportunity to go tent camping came up, of course, I was tempted.

My first cousins on my mother’s side are having a reunion on Lake Ontario, east of Toronto. It’s quite a ways away, and my husband, Peter, and I had ruled it out because Peter has to attend an important condo board meeting that weekend.

I wasn’t going to go without Peter, but several of my cousins had decided to go without their spouses and, as I got thinking about it, I wasn’t sure how many more of these opportunities would happen in my lifetime. I am one of the youngest of my original 34 cousins on my mother’s side. Several cousins have died, and none of them live close together. So this chance to drive to Canada and see a lot of my cousins in one place seemed like it might be important.

I wrote to my Canadian cousin, “Is it too late for me to tell you I’m coming?”

“Of course not!” she said.

I called up my sister. “Do you have room for me in your car?” I asked.

“Of course!” she said.

Her husband is a pastor and does not get much vacation, but my niece and nephew will be coming. And now, so will I. We will camp all the way up and stay in tents while we are there.

So I’m digging my fancy little tent out of the closet. I’m airing out my sleeping bag. I’m checking to see if my air mattress still holds air. I’m trying to remember how to assemble my complicated little chair. I’m pulling together all the things I will need in my tiny tent at night—a flashlight, a bottle of water, a puff jacket for the cold.

It will be fun to see all my cousins. I know that.

But, right now, I am looking forward to being in my tent again—sensing the changes in the weather, hearing the animals move around at night, feeling that I am entirely outdoors, with nothing but a thin layer of polyester between my tiny tent and the great open sky.

Till next time,

Carrie

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