Salamanders, S'mores, and Seclusion

Last week was my kids’ April vacation from school. We don’t normally go far during this week when the weather here can feel like spring or winter – or both in a matter of hours. Maybe a short visit to Acadia, or a couple of days in Boston. Still, the idea of not being able to go ANYwhere this year weighed heavily on all of us.

Without the normal weekend travel to late season skiing and early season soccer this spring, without practices and playdates, without even the daily journey to and from school and the office, we’ve become used to being home. Lucky for us, home is in a really beautiful place with plenty of space for spreading out. Most of the time, we’re OK being here. But school vacation – even when school is being done from home – is supposed to offer a time to get away, even if briefly and not very far.

So, we got creative. A couple of weeks before the break, I suggested camping in the woods between our house and my in-laws’. I didn’t have a plan beyond that vague idea, and I figured one of my children, maybe two, would be excited about this to varying degrees. But all three immediately jumped on board and went into planning mode.

It was a gift to have something to think about beyond school assignments and chores, beyond missing friends and sports, beyond the news that permeates so much now and can be simultaneously frightening and utterly confusing.

A week before vacation started, we took a whole-family walk into the woods. My husband, who grew up exploring this terrain, led the kids to a spot tucked into the trees, where Bowen Brook curves around a level area perfect for pitching a tent (or two). The kids declared this the spot and set to work building a fire pit of river rocks in the sandy ground next to the brook, with just enough space for our family to sit around it.

All that week before vacation, the kids discussed what to bring with us, who would sleep in which tent, and what we would eat for dinner (hotdogs cooked on sticks over the fire, of course). We kept an eye on the long-range forecast to see which days would likely be the best for camping. What I had hoped would be a mild change of scenery for a couple of days became a happy distraction stretched over the course of a couple of weeks.

On the chosen afternoon, we headed into the woods after lunch to set up camp. The girls worked together to pitch my old backpacking tent. My son and I put up the big family tent. Sleeping pads were unfurled, sleeping bags laid out, a few extra comforts from home tossed in. We schlepped in firewood and camp chairs, along with extra layers to allay the nighttime chill. As I got the fire going, the kids set off together – first downstream, then up – to explore.

All their lives, my children have been in these woods – first carried or pulled across the snow on sleds, then toddling in rain boots and stopping to inspect every leaf and bug, now walking with the dog or riding bikes. This is not unfamiliar territory. Somehow, though, making these woods into our overnight home – rather than simply passing through – made if feel, if not unfamiliar, in some way new.

The kids played in the water, moving rocks to build canals, happily discovering salamanders in that space where water and land merge. They gathered sticks for kindling and cut beech branches for cooking hotdogs and marshmallows. They jumped across the water, climbed up and over downed trees, played and laughed together.

I have two teenagers and one not far behind. We’ve been in the same house, nearly constantly together, for seven weeks. Most of the time we are all OK, but it is certainly not always easy. I abscond to my office and work for chunks of time, all the while wondering if they are doing their schoolwork or playing a game on a screen. Visits with grandparents, all thankfully within a mile of us, include social distancing rather than the normal hugs and snacks and playing games. None of us has hung out with friends in nearly two months.

Like most everyone these days, we are all a bit more, well, sensitive than usual. Buttons are pushed, tempers flare, feelings are often easily hurt.

But for two nights in the woods, there were no squabbles. Nobody sulked up to their rooms to be alone or picked a fight out of boredom. We hung out by the fire. We ate s’mores. We played cards. We talked. And then we crawled into our tents, with a gazillion stars overhead and a burbling brook for a lullaby.

For those two nights, it felt OK to be set apart from the rest of the world, from even the rest of our small community. We were at home in the woods, in a place at once familiar and fascinating. We were mere minutes from our backyard, but it felt like the perfect getaway. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's May 7, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

So Fast Summer

August sneaks up on me every year. In June, summer stretches before me like an endless daydream of carefree days, family adventures, sunshine and warmth. Then, suddenly, it’s August, and it feels like summer is coming to a screeching halt before it’s really even begun.

This summer has seemed to pass particularly quickly. It feels a bit like one of those days where you get to the end of it, flustered and exhausted, and wonder what the heck you did all day. But once you’ve had time to sit and reflect, you realize there was a lot packed into the day – or, in this case, the season.

During the first month of summer we had a revolving cast of visiting cousins in town, which made for days – and nights – that were fun, to be sure, but also sometimes hectic and amorphous. We loved the quality cousin time, but never really got into our own summer swing of things.

For the first time since the kids were toddlers, we also didn’t take our annual week-long pilgrimage to the ocean. We’ve had lots of shorter adventures that have all been a blast, but without that week of beach time marked on the calendar, summer has seemed a little off, I guess.

And don’t even get me started on the garden. Oof. Busy June weekends, on top of some pretty miserable early summer weather, thwarted all my good intentions of getting the vegetable gardens planted early. The perennial bed is a disgraceful tangle of weeds with the occasional sturdy bloom poking through.

Still, my flower boxes are overflowing with color. And the small plots I managed to sow – late as it was – with veggie seeds are producing well, keeping us in beans and carrots, cukes and zucchini, beets and more kale than I know what to do with. It all makes me think it’s simply time to cut back on the size of both gardens for a while.

Despite missing our Cape week – and the fact that it took us to the end of July to get to our first big hike of the summer – the adventures we have had have been fabulous. We’ve gone glamping and mountain biking, camping and kayaking, climbed a few tall mountains and splashed in our favorite spots along cool rivers. I’m still holding out for a few days at the ocean – and a few more hikes, bike rides, and trips to the pool and the river.

I guess that’s the upside of August hitting so hard – realizing summer isn’t really forever, and that it’s wise to fit as much of its goodness in before the days shorten too much more, before the kids are swallowed up back into the school year, before we move on – ready or not – to the next season. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the August 9, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Back to school blues

Lined up and ready to go.

Three days after school ended in June, I could hardly wait for this day. It was a bumpy transition from organized days and end-of-school-year busyness to the laidback anarchy of summer vacation. I struggled to fit work into fleeting by-myself moments as the kids, left with free time stretching from morning into afternoon into long evening into weeks of no school – all of it spent in sometimes painfully close proximity with each other – filled a good bit of the emptiness with bickering. By the third day out of school, I was reaching my wit’s end (which, really, seems a daily occurrence for me, but this was beyond normal limits).

Then summer happened.

We adjusted to lazy mornings spent in PJs, hours each day of playing outside, a week-long visit from cousins, another week spent at the ocean, trips to the beach, hot afternoons at the pool, visits to a variety of ice cream joints, and later-than-normal bedtimes. There was still bickering, to be sure. My work and home chores to-do lists have grown long, and it will take me many days of the kids at school to catch up.

But this year was as close to summer bliss as I’ve been since I was a kid.

Alas, this morning I will drop my children off at school and come home to an empty house. I have packed favorite foods into new lunchboxes and zipped up the backpacks for the first time in two and a half months. I have started prioritizing my to-do list and hope to tackle an item or two today. But my mind will undoubtedly wander often to my children, as I wonder how their first day of the school year is going. Are they nervous? Are the other kids being nice to them? Are they being nice to the other kids? Are they happy?

The littlest one is excited to return to preschool, where she will be one of the “big kids” this year, where she knows the routine, the lay of the classroom and playground, and where she adores the only two teachers she’s known. She has been asking me every day for a week or more if she gets to go to school today, and this morning she will finally get the answer she wants.

The older two start first grade today, with a new teacher and endless new things to learn. My daughter is nervous about being in a new classroom with a new teacher and a longer day. But they’re both excited to be with their friends again and to return to art class and phys ed and music and chocolate milk at snack time. At drop off I expect to see other nervous kids, along with parents who will range from tearful (with the knowledge that this day marks one more year of the they-grow-up-so-fast movement) to giddy with joy (at having regained some freedom in their days).

We filled the last week of summer vacation with plenty of fun. We camped in the backyard. We picked as many berries – the season’s everlasting blue and the newly ripened black – as we could. We rode bikes and went swimming, roasted marshmallows and played mini-golf, visited with friends and soaked up all the sunshine and fresh air and unscheduled time we could.

                 

We’re all hoping for more summer, a few more days of hot sunshine and cool water to jump into, a few more berries picked fresh for breakfast, a few more hikes and bike rides. But it won’t be the same as summer vacation. So, it’s a good thing we filled up with the sweetness of summer while we could.

Today begins the weekday shuffle of getting everyone up and out of the house early. Soon we’ll have soccer practice and dance class and homework to add to the after-school schedule. I guess it’s fitting that this morning the sky – so bright and sunshiny yesterday – is gray and raining. It suits my back to school blues.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings from a full life. 

A Room With a View: Camping Out

The light of a waning blue moon filled the clear night sky Saturday. The air was crisp, bordering on chilly. Dusk came earlier than in mid-summer. It was a perfect night to introduce the kids to camping, and the first time I have slept outdoors in far too long.

We borrowed a nearly-new tent from friends, and I dug out my much smaller, 15-year-old backpacking tent from the days when I used to sleep outside on a somewhat regular basis. That little tent has sheltered me alone and with good friends, in deserts and forests, on bike trips and road trips and solo summer hikes where I laid awake listening to the eerily-close howl of coyotes. I’ve slept there during an April snowstorm near the Grand Canyon, at Mesa Verde and the Canyonlands, and near the Canyon DeChelly, part of the Navajo Nation.

Saturday, that tent became the “Mama and Papa Tent” in our backyard campground, as the kids claimed the newer, roomier dome as theirs. The children’s excitement was palpable, although whether for the campout or the accompanying s’mores I’m not sure.

Three small sleeping bags were tucked into the tent before lunchtime, with the added necessities of stuffed animals and blankies. After a busy afternoon away from home, the kids plowed through dinner, donned jammies, and bounced around until it was dark enough to light the fire and the tiki torches and get to business. We roasted marshmallows as an amber moon peeked over the mountains, then rose and brightened to white high above them.

Eventually, after several adjustments to the tent layout and items inside, the kids were all tucked in. From our tent 10 feet away, my husband and I listened to the chirping of crickets, the distant hum of the interstate passing through Franconia Notch, and three little voices discussing bears. (The bears have been active and regularly sighted around the yard lately, including a big one near the berry patch in the front field earlier that evening. The snapping of apple tree branches as a bear clumsily climbed for its breakfast 30 yards away from our tent would wake me early the next morning.)

We thought for sure the kids would want to retreat inside at some point that night. But after one last “I love you” across the small expanse between tents, they quieted, and they stayed quiet until morning.

As the morning sun worked through gathering clouds, the littlest kid launched into an impromptu song with no words, her tune joining the smattering of early birdsong and the distant cawing of crows. Soon her brother and sister were up, too, and as the happy chatter veered toward bickering, I headed to the kids’ tent to check on their night.

They all proudly declared that they hadn’t been scared at all to sleep in the wilds of the back yard, bears or no. As the first of that day’s many raindrops hit the tent fly, we headed in, refreshed from a night under the stars – and happy to have a dry place to cook and eat breakfast.

The kids were ready for backyard camping round two that night. Alas, the weekend had other plans for us. Sleeping bags were stuffed back into their sacks, stuffed animals placed back into their inside beds, and the tents dried out and put away. We vowed to go camping – in the backyard or further afield – more regularly. Maybe once or twice a year. Definitely more often than once in a blue moon.