“Dad, can we go camping?” asked my eight-year-old daughter. Her mother had recently dropped her off for and extended weekend. She had some time off from school for spring break. “I’ve never been camping before. Not really, just in the backyard.” she said. It was April in Michigan. It wasn’t the greatest time to camp, but the weather had warmed up and Michigan had thawed from the winter.
“Yeah, we can probably do that.” To be honest, I was excited to go camping with her. A trip to Yonkers was made to get supplies. The campsite was booked. My grandfather drove the two of to the State Park campground, with plans to pick us up at the end of the week. It was too early in the season, so we had the entire campground to ourselves.
As I set up camp, my daughter took pictures of our campground: an odd angle over some rocks or a stick, or a picture of a tree. Once the tent was up, it was time to make dinner. We had some Mountain House freeze-dried meals and regular hot dogs. Beef stew, chicken fajitas… do we not have silverware? I double-checked through our supplies. So we have three utility knives and zero spoons and zero forks. Hot dogs it is.
That night, I tried my hand at whittling some spoons. This caught my daughter’s interest. “Dad, could you make some chopsticks too?”
Judas Priest, it’s cold. I turned in my sleeping bad, trying to close the gap around my neck to keep the cold air out. I hope that she’s warm enough. My daughter had burrowed inside her sleeping bags. Her pajamas were not the warmest of options, but she had her Little Mermaid bag inside of another bag we borrowed from my neighbor. The sleeping bag next to me moved and her face emerged, taking a deep breath. “Are you cold baby?”
“No,” she said. “Too warm.”
Seriously? “Do you want me to take your other sleeping bag?”
“Yeah.” I felt fabric around my feet move as she pulled the sleeping bag up from the bottom of her cocoon.
I took the child’s sleeping bag and pulled it into my own supposedly ten-degree bag, wrapping it around me. Thank God. The warmth returned and we were both able to sleep.
The next morning, I started the fire and breakfast. The freeze-dried bags of food were simple enough: heat water, add, stir. The scrambled eggs and bacon had the texture of grits. I looked at my daughter, scooping the watery eggs with the whittled spoon I had made.
I finished breakfast and opened the Palm Pilot. The GPS indicated that there was a diner within five miles of the state park campground. Maybe we’ll hike up there for lunch and look at the Hardy Dam along the way.
I washed our dished in the lake after breakfast. She was playing with her camera. I wondered how they would turn out, given the angles she held the yellow plastic camera. That, and she kept fiddling with the back panel that would expose the roll of film. She found a skeleton of a fish and took pictures of it…and the bird tracks, and the trees, and the man-made lake that was formed by the dam.
We packed up our camp and started our hike. The walk to the dam wasn’t too long. She took pictures of both sides: one side that held back the water, forming a lake, and the other side that was a small creek, almost dried-up.
We walked a little farther. The bag of camping gear I was carrying was getting heavy and I had to pee. We stopped at a gas station. “We don’t have a public restroom,” the attendant said. She leaned to the side, looking at my daughter. “Does she need to use the bathroom?”
“Do you need to go potty, sweetie?” I asked my daughter.
She shook her head. “No.”
A little way up the road, I stepped into the woods to relieve myself. We continued up the road to the diner, “Life’s Kitchen.”
It was nice to sit down. Our camping gear was heavy. It was nice to enjoy the creature comforts of hot food, a warm restaurant, and an indoor public bathroom. After lunch, we shouldered our bags and set off again.
About a mile down the road, a van honked and slowed down next to us. “Do you two want a ride?” I recognized the woman diver as our waitress from the diner. I accepted. My own feet were killing me. My daughter didn’t seem too tired, but was starting to slow down.
That night, back at the campsite, I called my grandfather. A storm would be rolling in, so we would have to cut our camping adventure short and have him pick us up in the morning.
My thoughts:
This was really difficult to write. This is (loosely) based on a camping trip with my father from seventeen years ago. I was little and have fragmented memories of what I do remember. I also had a lot of questions when I started writing this piece from my father’s point of view. At eight, there were a lot of things I didn’t know about, like booking the campground and the conversations between my dad and my great-grandfather. Or any advice with his neighbors might have given us for camping in April in Michigan. I called my father to try and gain some of this perspective, but as a writing exercise, I didn’t want too many details. I wanted to use some of my own creativity to fabricate the in between moments or lack of details, as well as what my father’s perspective would have been at the time.
This is one of my favorite memories and I still have the wooden spoon he made. However, as far as a camping trip goes, it wasn’t the most ideal situation. As a child, none of that really mattered. I decided to write this story from and adult’s perspective since I thought it would be more interesting from a perspective where the weather and temperature and lack of spoons were more important. Even though I am not a parent myself, I hope this writing practice illustrated the role of parent, taking care of their child, even if the circumstances are not perfect.
