As the title suggests, we are just back from a few days of camping. I was wary before we set off, D- having made clear that he did not like camping last summer by endless tantrums and general naughtiness. I had found this quite worrying as I had envisioned my life with a child as being generally, if not literally, one big camping adventure. I decided to try again this year, decreasing our stay outdoors from a heady eight days (last year) to two nights in a private campground.
The website showed a play-ground and a man-made lake, and mini-golf, and horse shoe games. The reality was slightly different: the lake was almost empty and the water stagnant, the mini golf consisted of a field with some numbered flags, and there was not a horseshoe to be found. D- loved the water slide, zipping from the top into my arms but on the seventh or eight go around, I slapped a horse-fly on my arm at the wrong time and he bashed into my head. A nose bleed for D-, a fat lip for me and the bug got away.
It got better from there. We met our friends. We found the perfect place on the river to swim, a little slip of sand stretched like a hand into the clear brown water. We relaxed and let the city leave our bones.
The first night, snug in our tent, I heard a crunching sound that I could not identify. I looked out into the night with my flashlight expecting to see the reflective eyes of a small animal but saw only the remains of our fire. Was it the last popping and fizzes of the embers? I went to sleep.
The next night, same thing: crunch, munch, scritch, scratch. I envisioned birds in the trees above, feasting on berries, or squirrels searching for nuts. I stepped out of the tent and the sound stopped. The moon was bright on the grass. D- turned in his sleep and sighed. There was nothing to see.
On the third day, we started to pack up our camping gear, slow to leave nature for the city. I pulled the fly from the tent and discovered what all the scratching had been about. Hundreds and hundreds of earwigs had climbed up the tent poles to nestle in the nylon tunnels made for holding up the tent. I hate earwigs. D- and I had great fun beating the tent with a stick, making the earwigs twirl and fly into the grass.
I love summer.
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