Happy Campers
In spite of the bugs, poison ivy, rain, and general mayhem, nothing beats camping with kids
Nerys Parry

Summer. To me, the season conjures up all the tastes, sights and sounds of camping. It’s paddling in a canoe across a still lake as dragonflies flitter past. It’s the taste of marshmallows cooked over an open fire. It’s the cacophony of insects and the laughter of children. It’s the feel of lake-bottom mud squishing between toes and the smell of last night’s campfire in my child’s fleece.

My summer season officially begins when some girlfriends and I, a loose collective known as Women Of The Forest (WOTF), head out for our annual camping weekend at a provincial park. We spend the next two days drinking wine out of tin cups, cooking gourmet food over a fire, singing camp songs under a tarp, hiking through the woods and taking cool morning swims.

Now that many of us have children, a new collective has spawned, affectionately known as Kids of the Forest (KOTF). On weekend trips with the KOTF, the itinerary is similar – hikes, canoeing, and swims – but instead of wine, the tin cups are full of orange juice and there’s a little less brie and a lot more fruit roll-ups.

But more than the menu changes.

It is only when the kids are with us that I can see the fairies hiding under mushrooms and the gold in an ordinary rock. Mica becomes a pirate’s lost treasure, and the flash of a firefly, an angel’s eye glinting goodnight in the dark.

“As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconsciously to the soughing of the trees,” writes Valerie Andrews, in A Passion For This Earth.

To camp with children is to relive this experience.

When my husband and I first brought our son, Cohen, and our daughter, Sian, to Fitzroy Provincial Park on the Ottawa River, we worried about how to entertain them. But as soon as we arrived, they discovered snail shells to collect, sand to turn into castles, buttercups to rub under their chins to see ‘who likes butter’, bark to peel in a hunt for silverfish, rocks to skip, and sunsets to watch. If anything, the children entertained us.

But while there is undoubtedly magic in the woods, there are also bears and bugs and the general mayhem that comes when camping with kids. Often the great Canadian camping experience results in necks swollen up by black fly bites, sand-filled sandwiches, sunburns and canoes tipping over, all culminating with the vow to “Never Do It Again.”

And yet, we continue to do it year after year, not because we’ve found some way to control the disasters or to beat the bugs, but because we’ve found nothing to beat camping.

If you’ve never gone camping with kids before, the best place to start may be your own backyard. While hardly the ‘Outback’, it’s still an adventure for a seven-year-old. The unanimously-declared best birthday party I ever gave my daughter was when I pitched a tent on our lot, pretended the pool was a beach and the BBQ a fire, and let Sian and her friends stay up past 11 p.m. telling spooky stories while holding flashlights under their faces. Every time a confused moth batted against the tent, the neighbourhood was filled with delighted squeals.

The great thing about backyard camping is that you get the chance to try out the equipment and see how your children handle peeing on the rose bush before hitting the woods. Also, if it starts to rain, or the kids are frightened by the “bears” rustling in nearby garbage cans, home is only a short dash away across the lawn.

If you and the kids are ready to venture further than the back yard, you can try car camping at a local provincial or private park. Car camping lets you drive your car right up to the site and gives you access to washrooms and water pumps. It offers other advantages too. For instance, if you brought the tortilla chips but forgot the salsa, you can always pop into a nearby town and keep everyone happy. Or if the rain starts pouring down in the middle of the night and you wake to find yourself afloat in your own tent, you can high-tail it back to civilization in a hurry.

For your first few trips, choose a camping location close to home. That way, if the weather turns bad and your three-year-old’s lips are blue from the cold, you can get into your van and drive back home. In time, your camping trips can be further afield. Eventually, you can even try ‘backwoods camping’ and show your children what the outdoors sounds like without the background hum of traffic and what the night sky looks like undimmed by light pollution.

If you’d love to try camping, but the only camping equipment you own is a styrofoam cooler and you can’t tell a tent pole from a tadpole, take heart. Before you spend hundreds of dollars on tents, polarized sunglasses and -40 degree rated sleeping bags, you can try camping with a group. Volunteering with the local beaver or brownie troop can give you access to camping equipment and help both you and your child learn how to feel comfortable and safe in the woods. Good friends – preferably those with extra equipment and children close to your own child’s age – are also a great resource. That’s what makes our Kids of the Forest weekends such a blast. We split the food, the gear and the Friday-night packing frustration. There’s nothing left to do but have fun.

Being together and having fun is what camping with kids is all about. Most of us don’t camp just to ‘get back to nature’, but also to get back together – as friends and as families.

Camping with kids, says friend and fellow camper Dana Avery, is about “family time. No TV. Just campfires, canoe rides, dinner together, playing catch and playing board games. Having both your parents around for the whole weekend – how great is that?”

Whether your campsite is two steps from your patio or a two-day hike into Frontenac Park, as long as there are marshmallows to roast and ghost stories to tell, there are memories to be made.

Go on. Light the fire. Get dirty. That’s what summer’s for.

Nerys Parry is a freelance writer and mother of two.

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