My husband is a cool dude. A real man's man. He and I fell in love over camping. Five years ago I allowed him, a virtual stranger, to take me three hours away to explore the woods and all that they contain. We had a real adventure, climbing steep, slippery rocks and ducking behind drippy waterfalls. We fell in love. And we have taken as many opportunities to keep exploring as possible. For holidays I usually buy him camping gear. Anything outdoorsy. He loves to read his man magazines and tell me about the extraordinary adventures other people are having every day. We dream about exploring out West, going to hike Italian mountains, and learning to kayak our way through rivers and oceans.
We first took our daughter camping when she was six months old. It was freezing, and she was a trooper. We couldn't feel our toes, but she was snuggled perfectly between us and slept like, well, a baby. I nursed her to sleep by the fire, tucked her into a blankie nirvana in the tent, spent some great fireside time with my guy, and then we crept in beside our baby and fell asleep. Bliss.
Last summer we were braver. I was eight months pregnant with Ty and we decided to go on a camping trip before the wild days of newborns were upon us again. Marc had dreamed of going to Lake Jocassee since we met, and we were starting to think we would never actually make good of our big adventure. But man did we ever.
[I feel the need to briefly mention something that made me, in fact, very unhappy: We first attempted this trip sans Olivia, thinking "Oh, mama. A grown-up camping trip sound f-u-n." But on the way, after sending her off to Nana's, paying to board our dog, and packing for a camping trip, some schmo stole my purse out of our car at a PEACH STAND. So, feeling pregnant-pissed and a little uneasy that my keys were out there in the abyss, we ditched the trip and went home.]
BUT--- what a cool thing that we did again with our little girl in tow. We had the adventure we were craving. We loaded all of our belongings into a canoe (the most precious being a two-year-old in a teeny two-year-old sized life vest) and made our way across the giant lake with our tent, food, and equipment. The site was up a steep hill on the side of an inlet on an island. Primitive camping at its finest. We roasted hotdogs, made smores, went on adventure walks to explore the shore, rowed around in the canoe in search of waterfalls, swam with O in the incredibly clear and unnervingly NOT disgusting lake water, invented a delightful camp game called "A-hole" (O didn't play), ditched camp food and rowed over to a diner for omelets, and star gazed to our hearts content.
I have to recommend primitive camping on an island to anyone. Old, young. Very pregnant, very not. If there's a will...
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