Early on in our camping life, back when we were very young and didn’t yet know as much as we do now, some of us would argue and fume during camp-set-up time. Believe it or not, the most troubling disruptors were our parents. I understand them now better than I did then, the stress they were under: Mom trying to predict, prepare, pack and then fit everything we would need to live for three weeks in the car; Dad not really caring about maintaining her hard-won sense of order because he was still stuck in his work-mindset on his first day off after almost a year at his high-stress employment; us kids running around needing stuff and not really wanting to help; the potential threat of imminent rainfall; the many untended emotional issues; fatigue.
When my parents learned that tobacco had grounding properties, Mom and Dad began to use it as almost a ritual at the official start of every vacation. At the time, my Dad’s job was that of a clergyman and it felt to us like our family was always under scrutiny from the church leaders who expected us to be extra good. We didn’t know then that Dad and all of us had depression, but this made Dad’s job extra hard on him. I think that most of the time we did a pretty good job being good enough for them, but we knew that we weren’t all that special. Our closest friends were our closest friends because they knew it too. I felt as though the leaders of the church wouldn’t have liked to see their pastor smoking a cigar, so watching Dad light up felt particularly risky and thrilling.
The port-wine-dipped cigars were a tiny little rebellion, a little bit of claiming our lives and taking back some of the choices about our lives that, because of our church involvement, were out of our control. The cigars also brought some much-needed emotional peace. Though some people smoke once and become addicted, somehow my parents were able to only ever smoke while on holidays.
When Mom returned to the site, she glanced around with a quiet smile of anticipation on her face. It was time for their grounding ritual. She dug around in the car till she pulled out her purse, then settled herself at the dirty picnic table, the camping gear that had fallen out of the car during her search was still scattered all around her. When Dad returned to the campsite, his eyes, like magnets, immediately found his lady, and he walked over and sat close to her, watching as she rifled through the organized chaos within her purse.
Us kids wandered around the site gathering sticks, still chatting about where to set things up, and poking at the debris left in the firepit by a previous camper. Joey had already found twenty unique beer bottle caps, most of them in good condition.
Mom pulled a burgundy lighter and then a brand-new box of Old Port Wine-Dipped Cigars of her purse. She zipped the purse closed and then placed it flat on her lap. She shifted a bit towards Dad, squinting past the glare of the late morning sun and into Dad’s eyes. He gazed back at her, smiling fondly and waiting. Sam stood and watched them, having just tossed a handful of sticks in the firepit.
Mom slowly opened the pack and offered it to Dad who leaned forward and selected one fresh cigar, which he then sniffed luxuriously with a happy little smile on his face. She mirrored the smile, nodded at him, handed him the lighter, and then pulled a cigar out for herself.
By the time she closed the pack and placed it on her purse, Dad had lit his cigar and handed the lighter back to Mom. Mom lit up, then leaned back to inhale. From all over the campsite, us kids watched their faces relax when the fragrant tobacco worked its magic.
“Let the vacation begin!” She sighed happily.
After two deep puffs and a lot of coughing, they balanced their cigars on the firepit grill, and we began to create our camping home. Periodically Mom or Dad would wander back to the firepit and enjoy another puff. Sometimes I would sneak over and steal a little puff too, such a little rebel I was.
Mom had packed the car strategically over three days and had been planning this trip for months, maybe even since our camping trip last year. Little jars of stew fit here, and little boxes of cereal fit there…but when it came time to live on the campsite, these stash places were not easy enough to get at. Once at camp, Mom needed to unload everything, sort it all out, and repack it all neatly and well organized into the back of the minivan so that it was visible and easy to get at. For this reason, she was the one digging out the supplies we’d need to set up first, while the rest of us stood around waiting.
Joey helped Dad with the tarp and tents. It was easiest to hang the tarps up first, and Joey was so very good at shimmying up the trees if there was no other way to get the rope over a branch, he was a bit of a monkey. We, his younger siblings all worshipped and imitated him, but he was the prince of tarp craft, it felt like we would always be behind him in skill and experience.
Dad and Joey would hang our biggest white tarp across a line of rope, forming an upside-down V. Under that V would be our sitting picnic table, the back of the mini van, the entrances to both tents, and on one edge, the fire-pit with its semi-circle of lawn chairs. Along the centre line, we could hang drying clothes and beach towels. Smaller tarps would shelter each tent, but they would be down in the back and rise up in the front to two old tent poles Mom had saved from older tents our family had used over the years. A fourth tarp, old and tattered, would be available if required to shelter the fire pit and the firewood pile from rain. Umbrellas and rain gear would be tucked on the ground under the back of the minivan; easy to get at if we needed to run to the bathroom or go wash our hands during the rain.
If it looked like it was going to rain before we finished setting up, they would quickly set up the games tent closed, yet out of the way so that we could unpack the car into it. It wouldn’t be pegged down there, but it was handy to have a dry place to sort things out. Dad and Joey would set it up, and us younger kids would make several trips from the car to the tent to carry everything that Mom was unloading from the car to the shelter of that tent. That way if it started raining while we were setting up, only one tent will get wet, and all our stuff will still be dry and easy enough to find. Once the rain stopped, we would set up the rest of our campsite. This has happened a few times, but thankfully that day there was no sign of rain and set up would be straight forward.
As we set up, one or the other of the guys would call out from time to time to check if they were in the right spot we had chosen. “I wanted the door to face that way,” called out Mom. “Can we pull it a little closer in from the laneway?” wondered Dad. “I hope we can all still fit in one tent this year!” squealed an excited Marianne. Fitting in one tent. That was a highlight too. Piling together in one tent meant we could keep each other warmer when it got real cold right before dawn, and it meant Mom could quietly tell us stories as we fell asleep, snug in our comfy blanket piles.
Sam, at the firepit, busily unpacked, then tried to set up and balance our collection of six compactly folded camping chairs. This could be frustrating work, but Sam was a focussed child and quite good at reasoning with the mechanics of the chairs. A less obvious and less mastered skill for him was managing the unexpected tilt a chair can encounter when set up on uneven ground.
Marianne and I stationed ourselves at the open driver’s side door of the car where we inflated everything: Six air matts, the three-man dinghy which we called a yacht, and the kiddie pool. We had one electric air pump that plugged into the car but was loud, and thank goodness, we also had a people-powered pump that was tiring to use but much quieter. We switched from one pump to the other, depending on whether we needed a physical rest or some quiet.
Once the sleeping tent was set up, Sam switched tasks from adjusting the chairs to carrying the inflated air mats and sleeping bags into the tent, and once the games tent was set up, he pulled the kiddie pool and the yacht into it. “Mom, have you found the games box yet? I’d like to bring it into the games tent.” A muffled voice came from the back of the minivan, “Ya, I found it, it is stacked over there, under the back bench of the picnic table.”
When Marianne and I finished inflating everything, we put away the air pumps, pulled out the hammocks and the clothes drying line and started looking for places to tie them up. “Remember to tie them in such a way that it doesn’t damage the tree trunk!” called Mom, though her back was towards us. “We will!” I impatiently snapped back at her, “Honestly, doesn’t she think we know to protect the trees?” we grumbled at each other, never remembering that it was she who taught us to protect the trees in the first place.
Since the tents were up, Dad and Joey began to hang the smaller tarps, which would serve as tent shelters from sun and rain. Over the years, Mom had collected many tent poles from old tents for tarp craft and she stored them in an ancient canvas duffel bag which smelled a special way, like memories and must and salt. I loved the sound of the ancient metal tent poles clanging together whenever Dad and Joey searched for the best ones to use each time.
Having finished repacking the food, Mom now clipped this year’s vinyl tablecloth to the picnic tabletop, then she cut a matching tablecloth in half lengthwise, clipping half to each of the two benches. Early in our camping experience, Mom would simply wash the picnic table really well, and we’d use it bare. In the darkness of night when we would play card and dice games at the table, we would light our activities with candle sticks which would stick right to the table. When the candle burned low, we’d stick another one into its soft wax. When we broke camp, us kids would pull out our jack-knives and scrape the wax off the table. If we were careful enough, the dried wax would pop right off the table. One year, Mom found the picnic table to be impossible to clean, so she used her and Dad’s beach towels as a tablecloth. That made things a little hard for them that year. After that, she started visiting the dollar store to pick out two matching cheap vinyl tablecloths to put on the picnic table no matter what. At first, we missed the feel of the wood, but eventually we found it was easier to clean a vinyl tablecloth than weathered wood, and the wax from the candles did not need to be scraped off the table at the end of our time there, cuz the cheap tablecloths were expected to be destroyed by the time we left, and we just threw them away. The year this story takes place, our dollar store tablecloth featured a minty green background with a pattern of brightly coloured images of various studio Ghibli cartoon characters all over it.
Responsibilities were distributed in such a way that we all would finish up site-setting-up-work at around the same time. Everyone’s last task was to bring their own waterproof clothing bin and their own beach towel to the right tent. Guys used the games tent to change, and gals used the sleeping tent.