The Family Camping Trip

Unplugged from everything electronic since Friday for the family camping trip to Bear Lake.

I enjoyed the silence...and I have stories...many stories and I reconfirmed several things: I can and have and do enjoy camping but I don't love it and it is never my first choice of how to spend vacation time...ever. But it's relatively cheap to do, and you get to be all warm and snuggly and living way too close together which helps you work on tolerance, patience, perseverance, and charity towards your fellow sibling, their spouse, or child...or maniacal dog...and those are the people you love and want to be with and does not include drunken or intrusive strangers singing Bon Jovi and Garth Brooks karaoke late into the night...though I sang along around my campfire with them...come to think of it that was actually really fun and made me laugh, but you get my meaning just the same.

When people say: we will be camping by the beach at the lake and will be swimming everyday...this actually means "you will still have to hike to pee, you will be filthy from lake silt 10 minutes after you arrive, you should have brought more than flip flops for your feet, and you will be sleeping on the ground on weeds and gopher holes in a tent and to get out you will crawl like a wounded dog on hands and knees and occasionally curse like a sailor under your breath."

I. Hate. Tent. Camping.

• But I love my family, Dutch oven cooking, campfires, pitch black skies littered with stars, laughing kiddlywinks as they relish the joy of dirt and rain and songs and fires.
• Swimming nudie-booty in the cool of the great, blue lake with no one else around...well...at least at a healthy distance with warnings shouted followed by "Are you serious?" and “Yes I’m serious.” and “No…really…are you really naked?" “YES. NAKED. SKINNY DIPPING. Now stay away or the discomfort is on you...I'm swimming free" and then laughter and “O.K.” And then that cool, clear, blue, mountain water with a lingering Spring chill sliding over your slick skin like a porpoise and you are shining like diamonds and you are alive and primitive and free. 
• Watching the skyline darken and purple, eking out every last moment in the water before massive thunderstorms that whip up whitecaps on the lake and make everyone immediately work together to get things hauled up from the lake, put away, and battened down, charges the humans down covering them in dirt, dust and rain. 
• Chortling and laughing with my mom as we share a tent and try to roll ourselves into our sleeping bags and back out again, sharing personal poetry, quotes that thrill and inspire and personal stories and tales of joy and woe, memories and musings of grandparents and ancestors, stories of silly siblings, and ponderings on nature, God, life before birth and life after death, and things that inspire, and how grand and glorious the universe is and how fantastic it is to be a human being. 
• Singing "Yes We Have No Bananas" and "Hello My Honey, Hello My Baby, Hello My Ragtime Gal" to the gleeful delight of small children, telling a roaring good tale about The Three Little Pigs and The Big Bad Wolf, and Jack and the Beanstalk during a thundering, maelstrom of a storm to wild and woolly five year-olds. 
• Blowing up SEVEN rafts and/or tubes to everyone’s delight, using a kayak for the first time powering yourself by your own effort and volition through the water, dipping the paddle in and out and in until you get the rhythm and you gain your confidence and you begin to think that maybe your next outdoor purchase should be a little watercraft. 
• Sitting in an empty campground at a vacant picnic table with my Mom and sister-in-law talking as the birds swoop and peep and the sun rises over the mountaintop, and you watch your camp slowly awaken as one little five-year old boy skinnies out of the bottom of his tent as his parents still sleep, and creeps barefooted tent to tent to see who else might be awake to play with and talk to.

These are the memories...these are the good times...these are the reasons you put up with packing a mini house in bags and crates, with the forgotten items that always get forgotten, and why you push through the occasional annoyances and obstacles like storms, rain, dust, puking children, forgotten pots, food dropped in the dirt, smoky fires, wagons that won't pull in the sand, and why you have a good attitude even with prickers in your dusty toes because you forgot your tennis shoes at home by the dresser with a fresh pair of folded socks inside of them just waiting for you...and near misses of peeing on your own pants as a grown adult woman because you hovered a little too wobbly over the latrine pit...but no worries...you made it and didn't have to cop a squat like a kitty cat in the middle of a vacant field with your pale bare bum like a little white moon in the air because you weren't sure you could duck-walk another 50 yards to the bathroom.

I am thankful for modern times--meaning plumbing and electricity and tall Queen-of-Sheba beds and soap...soap is awesome--and am not sorry I live in them. Camping is great for outdoor time and helping put some perspective on life as a whole...helps you remember where you came from and who you are. And best of all--it creates stories and memories shared of all of the drama and comedy and unexpected situations that crop up along the way.

Next stop: hotel camping...or if I find the Money Tree or The Goose Who Lays Golden Eggs...a big, fat truck and a beautiful trailer...now that's camping in style! But now I'm just dreaming...no doubt I'll be scrabbling around on the ground like a dog, climbing out of a horrible tent again, with crazy hair, a headache, and a cross legged, hopping pee-walk, sooner than I'm ever planning on or expect.

Happy camping kids...go live the dream...or something like it. :)

Sunshine and Saving a Life

I saved a little girl once.  She was drowning in a 3 foot deep section of a community pool patrolled by lifeguards and full of people.

It was an exceptionally hot summer day in Payson, Utah, sometime in the summer of 1976.  I had gone to the pool with my cousins and this place was packed.  Kids were bobbing and playing everywhere, splashing water, jumping, leaping and laughing.  Moms and big sisters were lounging on pool chairs slathered in Hawaiian Tropic or Johnson & Johnson's Baby Oil, sunglasses perched on their faces; towels were stretched out on the grass and on the concrete, little children were laying in puddles on the concrete walkway in the sun warming up and bouncing up again and they were off, launching themselves back into the pool.  Babies were napping in strollers under cover, and no doubt there were any number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and apples and oranges, with a smattering of Fritos, and swigs of 7-Up and Tab, eaten and drunk that day.

I was 6 years old, wore pig tails tied with ribbons, had pink cheeks and was having a grand and glorious time.  I loved the pool.  I loved water.  Going swimming and splashing was one of my very favorite things to do.  I was happy as a little clam.

I had just gotten in the pool, walked down the stairs and into the water and was making my way through the crowd when I spotted someone struggling in the water.  There was some awkward splashing and their face was not staying above the water, and their arms and hands were flailing for purchase to something solid and life saving.  They were just out of reach of the side of the pool, and right where it started getting gradually deeper.

I distinctly remember looking at these big, panicked, brown eyes bobbing in and out of small waves, a little pale face framed by dark hair.  I comprehended that something was wrong and that this was not o.k.  I remember the feeling and the thought of “It’s o.k. Walk to her.” And then “Put your arms out.”  And so I did these things.  I walked and I opened my arms.  

It was a little girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old, and she gripped on to me as I put my little arms around her.  She was able to pull her head out of the water then and I held her and walked back to the stairs.  I helped her out of the pool and said “Where’s your Mommy?” and she just looked big-eyed at me and shook her head.  

So, I took her by the hand and we walked in the sunshine under an azure blue sky, our little feet pattering and splashing along the warm, wet steamy concrete with its occasional cool puddles, amidst the squeals and laughter, and the sound of the diving board springs and splashes, looking for her mom.  She gripped my hand and walked close.  We wove our way through the throng of lounge chairs and she suddenly let go of my hand and ran for a woman in a black bathing suit stretched out on a lounge chair, and that was it.

The mother did not know I was there and I did not talk to her.  The little girl briefly looked at me as she ran, but did not turn back or reference me to her mother.  

And so I turned around, feeling warm and good inside, and walked back to the swimming pool, smiled and launched myself back in to the water.