Ancient camping gear - new memories
Our newly-single daughter got the bright idea that she wanted her children to experience camping. She wanted them to learn how to improvise, laugh at themselves, enjoy getting a little bit dirty, cook over charcoal, build gooey s’mores in the dark and sleep on an air mattress. She seemed to think us old folks should grab our lifetime Parks Pass and join the adventure. Despite our misgivings about our ancient camping gear, we made plans for a one-night outing.
Spring is a wondrous time to camp at Great Sand Dunes National Park. The runoff from nearby mountains forms a shallow creek where wading in the ankle-deep unexpectedly warm water is pure silly joy. We weren’t able to reserve a campground at any of the areas near the dunes and the water, but we got a campsite just outside the Park. Nice pavilions were scattered around, convenient to restroom facilities and water – this would do nicely.
As we neared our destination the wind was making itself most unwelcome: constant, swirling, whistling, at times raging and almost tornadic. Thinking it would surely die down we commenced setting up camp. It had been years since we had camped so it was a little testy trying to remember what connected to what. All the while hair was slapping at our faces as the kids chased hats and other wind-driven flying objects around. The supporting tent poles went easily into the sandy ground. We didn’t know of any special method to secure the poles in the “beachy” soil. It was an ancient tent, not of the best quality even when new. It smelled musty and had a few questionable stains,. Ours was not a particularly glamorous campsite, but we weren’t there to impress anyone with fancy equipment.
We put sleeping bags and personal paraphernalia in the tent in haste and headed to the dunes to have fun wading and frolicking in the warm water. Chilly and windy, but still fun, the kids ran up the dunes and rolled down laughing and enjoying the distinctly unique playground. We all took turns holding our arms out to see if we could withstand the raging gusts of wind without moving. Great waves and foamy swells overtook the gentle flowing waterway. Misting water and blowing sand made you feel like you were in an oddly misplaced tsunami. We all laughed at how we couldn’t separate matted strands of hair with our fingers. “Ha. Ha.” What an adventure. “Isn’t this fun?”
As dusk approached we headed toward our camp. Our foremost thought was to hope the infernal blowing wind would die down by dark. As we approached our little campground roadway we could see a real problem. The great canvas monster lay in a crumpled heap. The maneuvers required to get our pathetic tent back to a useable shelter required all of us: pushing, snapping, chasing, and muttering. Anxiety to get inside and grab those warmer clothes drove us.
We heard some young boys walking by sarcastically say, “Nice tent.”
With nice tent standing and supported we turned to dinner - in desperation we put our portable grill on the ground and the five of us huddled close shielding it from the swirling wind. Alas we got got a tiny flame. We held our collective breaths and slapped burgers on the grate, We plunked the burger patties on buns and ate under the table, passing a bag of potato chips.
We crawled in early and prayed the tent would hold up against the constant thwacking and rippling. We played word games for a while until slumber found us. The eerie whistling wind continued through the night
With dawn came a calm, windless, warm and sunny morning as if the whole day before had not happened. We had all slept better than we ever thought we would and found our senses of humor about the whole event.
“See, I told you camping is fun…” our daughter laughed.
The kids mimicked the two boys from the night before, “n – ice tent!!!!” they kept saying and invoked exaggerated eye rolls.
We gobbled down breakfast while laughing at our wind-blown disheveled selves.
After packing our gear into the vehicles, only the tent remained in a bundle on the ground. As our young family members sat on a bench my husband and I winked at each other. We each took an end of the tent bundle and walked toward our vehicle, then made a quick turn and marched down the road, opened the lid and ceremoniously tossed the whole thing into the dumpster. Some thirty years and many memories later, the poor old thing was right where it belonged.