July 2006

Editor's Note: Gone Camping

I agree with the writer of this issue’s story, “Take Your Kids Camping,” when he says that camping brings families closer, makes marriages stronger and forges childhood memories. Once you organize yourself to get everything ready to go (and moms, you know this mostly means us), time stands still and the pace relaxes. It doesn’t matter if the kids get dirty or if they’re adhering to a schedule. Except for basic safety, we can give up the controlling part of parenting.

We began taking our kids camping when they were babies. As soon as he could walk, my son figured out how to fall into a creek or any nearby body of water and then coat himself head to foot in sand or dirt. There’s a picture of Daddy holding him wrapped in a towel by a roaring fire to remind us of that propensity. There’s another picture of him in a bright, clean, sailboat-themed outfit dipping his toes into Lake Osoyoos, one of our favorite camping spots. It must have been taken in the first five seconds.

Many of our early trips were to Eastern Washington lakes with grandma and grandpa, aunt and uncle and cousin. On her first trip, we have a picture of our baby daughter, naked, rolling around in delight in the sand and water. Another picture triggers a hilarious family memory – the defiant cousin, ordered to rinse off in the lake, refused to do so, and was forcibly rinsed off by grandma. She marched down to the shore and shoved sand up inside her bathing suit and all over herself, glaring at the laughing adults on the beach.

You can see pure delight in our kids’ faces in all of our camping pictures – our son peeking out of a hole in a gigantic tree on the Big Four trail, our daughter being “queen of the castle” on a boulder in Squire Creek, our son minutely examining wild weed-flowers in a meadow by Blue Lake. There’s another one of our then-new dog whimpering anxiously as his people slid down the Denny Creek rock waterslide on a hot July day.

After that, the little black and white spotted dog (now 14) is in most of the camping photos. Remember how joyful she was bounding down the ocean beach? How we “persuaded” her to ride on the paddleboard with the kids? That time she actually caught a mouse in front of our eyes, right in camp? When we all made it up Mount Si, but she covered three times the distance we did, dashing back and forth?

Animals are always a highlight for kids. There was the time we caught “Urtletay” the pond turtle, all those polliwogs swarming in an inlet in Lake Conconully, the bright salamanders in Boardman Lake, the whistling marmots at Mt. Rainier.

Some of the best memories, of nighttime stars and campfires, don’t show up on film or screen. For my son, if there aren’t s’mores, it isn’t camping. Campfires always involved original stories we’d make up, taking our cues from the area and the things we’d seen, or long, rambling tales, where one person continued the plotline where the previous narrator left off.

If you want to make your own camping memories, find some close-to-home places to get started here. In our annual Summer Travel and Fun issue, you’ll also discover cool places to dig in the dirt for fossils and mineral treasures and places to explore in Kitsap County (page 20). In the calendar section, find fireworks, fairs, festivals and dragon boats to celebrate Independence Day, as well a new carousel, Wild and Wacky and Sometimes Wet Wednesdays, outdoor summer movies, a Paddle-Row Regatta, a Wolf Howl-In and much more.

Enjoy your summer.

Wenda Reed
Editor

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Northwest Parent Media
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