Camping & Contemplating

Camping on Memorial Day weekend, an annual tradition, greets the summer nicely.

Especially as it dovetails and overlaps the end of the school year.

With camping you get the opposite of "The Perfect Storm;" you get a collision which ultimately results in calm.  Exhaustion meets with a slower pace, and the removal of the home energy-zappers of laundry, yard work, home tidying, dishes, and couch potato-ing mindlessly in front of the TV or some other mindless piece of electronics.

Instead, you can "couch potato" on a foldable chair, breathing fresh air, feeling the warmth of the sun through dappled vivid green leaves, do nothing, and call it "camping." You get to sit back and watch a li'l wildlife--some romping chipmunks, newby baby scampering squirrels, nectar-sipping butterflies as they glide from flower to flower, and birds you might just be able to match up in that bird watching book.

Opportunities for fireside chats with the group are married with opportunities to escape in solitude.  Time for hiking, canoeing, and Maryland Park Questing segue nicely in between nap times as the energy ebbs and flows. Loving how my kids always get an opportunity to try something new...and to feel safe in the cabin [even if we're a cabin or two (or a community fire) down the way].  Time.  Ahh.  Time to laugh with friends.  Time to sleep when tired.
Time for growth in the stillness and in the remoteness of the woods. 

“Change is often rejuvenating, invigoration, fun... and necessary.”

~ Lynn Povich

Looking back on my camping weekend, it was most certainly needed. I personally was coming off a week of extreme activity paired with an odd tummy bug, so I was not up to par.  Yet interestingly, that actually served as a double blessing of relaxation.  Sleep and "just being" called louder than homework. There are still report cards to write, final tests to score, but they'll still be there on the flip side. The time away in the wilderness (even if it is only "cabin camping," with our group camp cooks, and "partial unplugging" from the world all still count for the "weekend wilderness") might just be what this girl needed.

“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.”  ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe