Great Lakes Living

I have good memories of camping as a kid. The first memories are of a trip with my Mom, and my brother Kyle. Mom took us (Dad doesn’t camp) to Wheatley Provincial Park in Ontario, which is not too far from our family home in Maidstone, Ontario.

We spent two nights in Wheatley, and my memories of it are warm and exciting. My brother was chased by a swarm of wasps when he opened up the electrical hook-up. We drove through a blustering wind and rainstorm on our last day searching for my life preserver vest, which had flown off the top of the car. The first evening I learned that raccoons have deft little paws with perfect little claws that would unlatch an old-school cooler to get to the chocolatey-marshmallow bars Grandma had sent along. And I remember feeling so safe in this wild wilderness, so close to my Mom. Sleeping under the stars, protected by our tent.

This past summer Zach and I took our friends’ children for their first camping adventure. Liam is 7 and Vivienne is 4. They ate marshmallows burned over a fired, tucked in next to each other under a tent waking up sweat-drenched in their sleeping bags, and curbed around forest trails while I incessantly worried them with “Poison ivy!” But, they had no bothers rather they seemed in a constant state of curiosity. Laughing, discovering. Throughout the trip I thought often of my mind forming memories when I was so little, and I knew their minds were in this same place of culling together and conserving experiences – a wild world of wonder, with safety as close as a hand held walking to the beach or a kiss goodnight.

Site 945 at the Pinery in Grand Bend was our choice for this trip, and it was the perfect choice. I learned from my brother that you can look up campsites on each provincial park’s website, assess the photos of each site, and cross-compare your needs to the site’s offerings. I hadn’t realized in the past that price was a factor – I used to think it was simply luck if you ended up shaded and cool, or sweltering under direct sunlight. We were tucked under trees, with pleasant privacy from our neighbors, and plenty of space to set up camp.

With the beach only a short walk up and over the nearby sand dunes, we spent the larger part of our mornings and afternoons floating on Lake Huron. Breakfast was cereal, and we would graze on granola bars, berries, and tortillas with salsa at the beach.

The first evening Z cooked up his famous campfire pizzas, and the next evening the kids ate hot dogs sent up by my parents, alongside grilled veggies picked up en route at Juicy Fruit Orchards.

Late evenings we popped popcorn in our new campfire popcorn maker, a wedding gift.

Fishing was a huge highlight for the kids. We had bought Liam a fishing rod for his birthday this year, while Viv’s dad picked her up a glow-in-the-dark superhero rod shortly before the trip. We would spend the hours after dinner until the sun went down settled into our own little clearing between trees on the riverbank. We caught two. (“Yey Vivi!”) Liam has a surgical eye when removing fish from hooks, and Viv carried the persistence that seems only reserved for small children who can cast and reel, cast and reel with the possibility of a catch far from sight.

The feeling of the sun setting, the crackling of a fire, midnight runs to go pee in the trees!, bellies aching from marshmallow sugar, ears perking up at the sounds of paws crunching through the forest bed, and the low hum of crickets and cicadas. Camping. Waking up and knowing there really isn’t anything of importance that you have to do that day, and each hour can endlessly, seamlessly and comfortably flow into the next.

Vivienne and Liam’s older sister Esme is looking forward to glamping some year soon – she isn’t necessarily convinced by what she describes as “Doing what you would do at home, but just in an uncomfortable setting.” I understand her scrutiny, so I will take her someday to share a king size bed, under a strong and structured canopy tent, because I still want her to feel what I have felt – a connection to the sound of the wind, the brightness of the stars, and the smell of the earth that you sit and sleep on through the day and throughout the night. We experience nature differently when we are camping than we do when we are at home – it slows us down. And if we are ready for our minds to be quieted a bit, camping will do that for us.

With the possibility of rain, as dark clouds began to roll in on departure day, Z and I dismantled the tents while Liam and Viv stayed tucked under shelter playing cards, eating cereal and drinking juice. Packed into the Caravan, smelling, sure, we made our way to the highway home. The kids slept nearly the whole ride back, their little minds surely dreaming of those memories made.