Just a quick thought on camping… My husband, my children and I are going camping tomorrow. Just a quick two nighter up the coast a bit. I have prepared our meals and carefully vacuum sealed them to keep the goods in and the bads out. I have packed enough clothes to survive weather in either direction (not that we have so much “weather” here in SoCal) and be comfy around the evening fire. I have loaded the car with wood, tent, ez-up, pillows blankets, air mattress, chairs, table, stove etc. all of this…. To “rough” it.

Why do we do this? We gather up everything we need to be civilized, cram it and our families into our hybrid to go sleep in nature. There must be some deep and primal need to get away from our ceilings (but not too far!), to get away from the traffic (we’ll be a short walk from PCH), to take our families and sleep in the woods, damn it!

Skip to the end… We’ll drag ourselves back into town Sunday needing a vacation from our weekend. We’ll be exhausted and dirty, we’ll curse the gear as we unload the car and swear that it’s not worth the fuss and we aren’t going again… But we will and it WILL be worth it. In every memory and in every future campfire story, we will take pieces from each trip and smoosh them together like the gooey goodness of a roasted marshmallow.