Camping with the Chintzibobs: How Spring Break Broke the Tent, Part II

On April 26th the Ohoopee published an article entitled: Camping with the Chintzibobs: How Spring Break Broke the Tent, Part I. Without further delay, we give you Part II.

The first day and night of my eldest son's first camping trip had been as close to perfect as possible. I met the dawn of the second day pleased that no one had been attacked by a wild animal and nothing had burned down.

The second day of camping ended up much like the first; we hiked, fished, shot each other with Nerf guns, and nibbled Pop Tarts (truly the modern equivalent of Lembas). As the perfect day wore on, a cloud hung over me (so to speak). Before leaving on our trip, I had carefully checked the weather and knew now that I was promised a 30% of showers overnight. Being a Chintzibobs, I didn't like those odds. For a camping Chintzibobs, a 30% chance roughly translates as, "Build an ark and stock it with two of every kind of Pop Tart."

Tragically, I elected to pluck the nose hairs of Zeus and stay another night.

After dinner we went for a round the lake walk. I was alarmed though not surprised to see clouds gathering. At the exact midpoint of our trek around the lake, rain began to fall. Fortunately, it was only a gentle Spring zephyr. We made it back to camp and hid away in the tent with some pretzels, Gold Fish, pen, and paper. The rain fell steadily but half-heartedly for an hour, grew bored of itself, and went away. We emerged from the tent, made a fire, roasted a large number of marshmallows, and chatted about word origins.

The boy is going through a phase of: why do they call it that? When I don't have an answer, he usually supplies his own answer. Example:
"Why do they call it fire?"
"I don't know son."
Thoughtful staring at the sparks and smoke rise into the sky.
"Maybe it is because the fire flies and you can roast things over it."
"Oh I see, fi=fly and re=roast. Could be."
"I think it is."

The boy grew quickly sleepy by the fire and surprised me by going off to bed by himself by about 8:00 pm. I spent the next few hours enjoying the cool night air, the starry night, and the dying fire. Growing sleepy myself, I got up to douse the sparkling embers with my son's carefully laid out fire extinguishers (he had spent much of the evening gathering things to help put out the fire: rocks, sticks soaked in water, sand, etc). With the steaming death throes of the fire swirling about me like a specter, I looked up for one last look at the stars. They were gone.

I couldn't see a single star. The clouds had gathered quickly. By the time I settled into my sleeping bag, the first rumbles of thunder could be heard echoing off of the mountains. I told myself that it was just big trucks on the road by the park entrance. The wind began to rise as flashes of lightening began illuminating the tent. The thunder grew less grumbly and more cracky as the storm crept nearer. The rain fell, the wind blew, and the thunder snapped. The first storm passed into a light drizzle by midnight, and I hoped it would be over. A quick check showed the tent to still be dry.

The next storm exploded upon me just as I was dozing off. The thunder was so loud that my son shot up out of his sleeping bag in fear. I turned on the flashlight and assured him that I was there and that it was just a little storm. He laid back down and pushed his hands into his ears without complaint. The wind buffeted each of the sides of the tent in turn. The storm took a deep breath and again led me to believe that the rain was finished.

The rain fell again, the thunder and lightening shattered the quiet darkness, and the wind blew harder that I thought possible without trees falling all around us. The rain and wind began to come in great waves. Checking the seams, I could see that the water was starting to come through the seams not by drips but by being blow sideways through the gaps formed whenever the wind stretched out the fabric of the tent.

When I saw that the water was beginning to puddle and flow on the floor of the tent, I began to prepare to evacuate. I dressed and began gathering anything that would be ruined by getting wet. In the middle of this, a powerful gust struck the front of the tent, and I heard a plastic crack and snap. Then the front wall of the tent began to rise up above my head as a new ceiling. I think I said something I have since come to regret. I threw myself against the front of the tent to bring it back to earth and told my son to put his shoes on. As calmly as I could, I told him that we going to get into the car because the water was getting into the tent. I held the tent open for him, shined the flashlight for him, and told him to run to the car and get into the back seat. He refused. He was probably right to do so. I gathered what I could, and we ran to the car together.

The clock on the car said that it was after 1am. My son attempted to get some sleep in the back seat. The storm continued to rattle the valley. I sat in the driver's seat and wondered if my son would ever trust me again. The tent was in ruins. He was stuck, slightly damp, sleeping in the crowded backseat of a car. I didn't sleep much.

The rain stopped some time after 4am. We both got up early and surveyed the damage. I saw now that the wind had snapped a fiberglass support and pulled the front-side stakes out of the ground. The tent had flipped over itself but was stopped from further destruction by the still-holding rear stakes.





I watched my son closely for signs of trauma. Surely after last night he would want to go home immediately and never go camping again. His vision of me as competent and near god-like would be shattered. As soon as breakfast was over, he wanted to go fishing. We went down to the lake and watched the sunrise. On the way back to the campsite, I reminded him that we were going home today. He looked at me and asked me when we could go camping again and if we could stay longer next time. I smiled and told him, "Soon son, soon."



Peace
..._

Camping with the Chintzibobs: How Spring Break Broke the Tent, Part I

I had to talk the boy into going camping. He was willing to go fishing, but camping was not an option for him. It was, after all, Spring Break, and I figured that he had big plans for recreating Star Wars Episode 7: The Fall of Dark Robot or perhaps laying out an epic Heroscape battle. After a day of grilling, prodding, and wheedling, I discovered that his tendency to be a homebody was not the problem. He was afraid of the campfire.

Someone, I am not naming any names or making any pointed accusations, but someone has instilled an unhealthy fear of fire in him. Once I figured that out, all I had to do was promise (despite how much it pained me) not to have a fire, and he half-heartedly agreed to go camping. Meanwhile, his younger sister spent two days alternately running around in circles repeating with glee, "I want to go camping" and wailing through tears, "I want to go camping." I left her at home though we were both broken-hearted about it.

The day before leaving, my son asked me excitedly, "Will we be able to roast marshmallows?"
I replied, "Sure son, we can even make s'mores, but we will have to make a fire if we want to do that."
He looked thoughtful for a moment and conceded, "Okay. We can have a small fire."

We arrived at our campsite at the lovely Lake Winfield Scott campground on Monday morning. It was good to be in the mountains that day as the air was warm, the sky was sunny and blue, the campground was not crowded, and my favorite campsite was empty. Two quick blows took a bit of the wind out of my sails: the boy insisted upon camping at a different campsite (one closer to some neighbors with kids his age), and I discovered that the park service had not turned on the water supply to the spigots or the bathrooms yet (not for the first time I was relieved to have left the girl at home).

The two of us spent the rest of the day and all of the next day hiking, fishing, chasing each other around the campsite with Nerf guns, munching PopTarts, guzzling IBC Cream Soda, roasting marshmallows, and making s'mores. It was a perfect day. I turned off the fire (as my son put it), and we went to sleep in the tent with sticky fingers and tired bodies.

As I lay in my sleeping bag listening to my son fall asleep in his Spiderman sleeping bag, I couldn't help but think of the many times my parents had taken the family camping. Many of my favorite memories of youth revolve around those happy times sitting around the fire at night with my family, the darkened shouts of snipe-hunting among the fallen leaves, the hissing of the lantern on a branch above a game of cards, the smell of bacon and hash browns cooking on the Coleman stove, the pops and sizzles of the logs in the fire, the odor of Off, the flapping of massive moths around the lantern, the showers of sparks rising through the glowing boughs and leaves of sheltering trees to join the stars above. Ultimately, a pop-up camper and big green Chevy van would make camping easier for us. It wasn't long before we were too grown up to camp as a family, and we kids would have to wait until we had our own kids to camp again. It was much too long before that day came for me and my boy, and I found myself missing my dad. He doesn't go camping anymore.

Camping was always an adventure for us. It invariably rained, usually violently. We would hang out our stuff to dry, pick up our storm-scattered things, and go right on camping. On one occasion, a tornado touched down across the lake from us. During another outing, I was sleeping in a little orange tent with my middle brother when he woke me up with an accusation, "Man, did you wet the bed or something?" For a terrifying moment, I thought that I had wet my sleeping bag for I was soaked, but it was the rain pouring in from every direction that was soaking us. My eldest brother and his friend abandoned their tent when they discovered that the lake was rising inside their tent. We all crowded into the camper.

Through all of these camping adventures, I never remember real fear. I do remember waking up in a tent and hearing something outside making a noise like a twelve-foot bear. My heart would start racing, and my mind would start making up violent scenarios. I would remember the story I had read in Guideposts about the guy who woke up with a rattler inside his sleeping bag. Then I would hear my father stir or he would clear his throat like only he can do, and I would instantly be reassured, "Dad's here. He knows what he is doing. Nothing bad can happen with him around. He can take care of any problem. All will be fine." Throughout my childhood, I remember instinctively feeling this sense of safety around my Dad. On long trips to Missouri, I never feared a car wreck. That green van was an armored tank when he was driving (I felt a little different when Mom was driving). I didn't think about it, and I didn't even know that I felt it until I heard a friend of mine speaking about it at his own father's funeral a couple of years ago. He described feeling about his dad exactly what I had felt about my own. I still trust Dad's judgment more than anyone else I know.

I faded off to sleep in the tent wondering if my son felt that way about me. Was he sleeping so soundly because he was counting on his Daddy to fight off the nightly terrors? Did my Dad ever have doubts like mine or did he ever fear? How could I ever live with the quiet confidence and sure competence of my Dad? I fell asleep hoping a stray ember wouldn't burn the tent down.

Peace

..._