Going concerns: Family camping

I'm not a great camper. But I am a good camper. And I hope that for my family of fledgling nature lovers, that's good enough.

I remember suggesting to Adam, in the depths of a winter's day last year, that we should go camping in the summer. It's the kind of proposal you make when grimy winter landscape has been too much with you, and the thought of jamming one more child into one more snowsuit is an excruciating concept. Still, I harboured the idea in the back of my brain for months, even as the winter grime melted and the snowsuits fell away. At last, I made it known to the family that I intended to see this particular wild imagining through. And we packed up the minivan.

Experience camping
We didn't go far: only two and a half hours outside of the city. The experience was the point, I told them. Not the destination. But the experience could almost immediately have benefited from a built-in DVD player and more snacks. Our van was built on the cusp of the day when DVD players became standard equipment, back when people were getting creative with bungee-corded TV-VCR combinations on the middle console. But we had nothing but a communal Magna Doodle with a scratch down the middle that wouldn't erase.

Just the same, we ventured forth, me folding and unfolding the map so much that the creases wore into tears, Adam steering us into every Tim Horton's drive through along the trucking routes of southern Ontario. Our four kids, for their part, were alternately breathless with excitement at the idea of the camping adventure that lay ahead, and breathless with despair at some presumed injustice dealt them by the guy sitting in the next seat over. "I wish we had a DVD player," a back-seat voice occasionally moaned.

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