For the past two years, we’ve gone camping about five times.
Five isn’t a big number but it’s certainly relative.
Packing for five (there’s that number) people in the family, kids 5 to .83 years old, is a lot.
Getting there and unpacking once we’re home are hard, but it’s incredibly worth it for core-memory stuff for the kids, our family, and our friends.
Our friends and our ~15 kids aged 12 to 6 months shared meals, floated down the river, helped parent each others kids, told absurd and hilarious stories around the campfire after the kids went down, and greatly enriched our lives by making this great big effort.
The core memory experience of childhood, I think, is built over time through experiences that have a simple recipe. They are not overly complicated, though they may have complexity.
And I feel as if I’m latently measuring myself against whether I’ve made real efforts to build this core memory with them, especially in ways that can’t necessarily be bought.
Camping, especially with other friends and their kids, is a good measure stick of parenting because it’s really quite a lot of effort, not much relaxing, lots of sand/dirt/mud in the tent and on every piece of clothing, a decent amount with arguing with the kids because they’re hungry and dehydrated and very tired from all the playing, affords a low desire to clean up and unpack when you get home, and what is parenting other than experiencing all of this, in all the many ways, and deciding to do it again because it’s about their growth and experience and not about you?
Something like that.
Lots of words to say: camping with the kids is hard and fun and I want to keep doing more of it.