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. 

Sweet Summer

Summer is my favorite season. I say that about every season in its prime, so don’t mind me in a few months, when the leaves are ablaze in the colors of autumn and the air is perfectly crisp and I claim fall is my favorite, or when winter arrives all white and frosty and magical and I announce it is my preferred season, then months later embrace the reawakening of spring as the best. Right now, my love affair is with summer.

At some point, several years into adulthood, it struck me that although I no longer had that last-day-of school excitement, with summer’s carefree days stretching infinitely into the hazy heat of the season, I still thrilled at the arrival of summer. So ingrained was that feeling of summer freedom that I felt it as the days lengthened and warmed as clearly as I had as a kid, even though my schedule of work and responsibility was the same now in July as it was in November or March.

Maybe that lingering sense of summer freedom is because I have always lived in places where summer – with its warmth and color and long days – is fleeting. Or maybe it’s that I have so many good memories of the season from my childhood – hiking with my family, lazy afternoons of reading in the backyard hammock, time in the garden with my mother, catching fireflies just after dusk, sparklers on the 4^th of July by the backyard campfire, countless hours spent kicking a soccer ball, and one epic cross-country journey with my parents and brothers and a pop-up camper. 

Whatever the reason, now that I have kids who fully embrace the joys of summer – kids old enough to put on their own sunscreen and carry their own backpacks, but still a few years away from summer jobs and the dreaded teenage years of being too hip to hang with Mom – summer has regained that sense of freedom and insouciance.

Here are some of the things I love about summer:

·         Jumping into cool water on a hot day.

·         Reading by the big window in our living room – or on the front porch – after the kids are tucked in, as twilight slowly engulfs the mountains, passing through an impossible array of subtle hues on its way to full dark.

·         The smell of roses: heady and heavenly.

·         The sparkle of a thousand fireflies twinkling across the field, as close to magic as anything I’ve seen.

·         Family soccer games in the front yard.

·         Watching my children fall into books and get lost there for chunks of time – bed time, after breakfast time, by the pool or river time.

·         Clean sheets dried on the clothesline and smelling of sunshine.

·         Color. So much color.

·         Flowers picked from the field and the garden and placed in a simple glass jar on the dining room table.

·         Birdsong, even the annoyingly redundant call of the catbird at dawn.

·         Vegetables gathered from the garden: the succulent result of the tilling and planting and weeding and watering.

·         Trips to the ocean.

·         Bike rides through the woods.

·         Outings with friends and our combined gaggle of children.

·         (Mostly) unrushed mornings – and not having to pack lunches every single day.

·         Thunder echoing through the mountains and the cooling rain which often follows.

·         The games my children imagine together, whether they are pretending to be wild animals (sometimes not much of a stretch) or building a fort in the woods by the river.

·         Running in the quiet and relative coolness of early morning.

·         Fresh, wild berries, found unexpectedly and consumed on the spot – or gathered purposefully and tucked into the freezer for less bountiful days to come.

·         Flip-flops. Or, even better, going barefoot.

·         Campfires and s’mores and late-night laughter.

·         Standing atop a tall mountain with my children, who are still discovering how much they can do, how far they can climb – and who still want me along for the adventure.

There are hitches in all this summer freedom, of course. Often the garden goes unweeded, becoming jungle-like while we are off hiking and splashing in the river. All those house projects I swore I’d tackle this season get pushed, once again, to next season’s to-do list. And my work hours are severely diminished in these weeks when the kids are with me nearly all the time.

When I ask my children, though, what they love most about summer, all three place “spending more time with my family” at the top of the list. Perhaps this will not always be their favorite part of summer; certainly they will outgrow this self-sufficient-yet-still-ingenuous phase, as they have outgrown other childhood phases.

So I am taking advantage of these days when they want to do things, go places, explore and adventure together. Someday, I hope, when they have moved beyond the enchanting freedom of their childhood summers, they will still thrill at the season’s arrival, still embrace the simple joys of summer, still remember all the sweet summer fun we had together. 

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 July 22, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

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.

A gaggle of cousins

My three young children, a posse on their own, happily expanded their whirlwind to include their California cousins last week for several days of mountain scrambling, river splashing, family dinners, and endless giggling.

Checking out the catch of the day.

The suburbs of Sacramento are a far cry from the country lanes and cool rivers of Franconia, New Hampshire, and the planned slate of White Mountain activities was filled to overflowing before the plane touched down in the Granite State.

In the four summers that my brother, a New Englander both by upbringing and at heart, has been returning “home” with his son, they have developed a few must-do items that are repeated each visit, along with a few new adventures every year.

The week in New Hampshire is a chance for my brother to give his son – and now his two vivacious step-daughters – a glimpse into his own boyhood summers. It is a chance for the kids – all aged 10 and under – to form bonds and explore new things.

The visitors get a taste of mountain living, being able to wander far and wide without the constant buzz of traffic, exploring dense forest right beyond the backyard, watching fireflies and stars in a night sky not obscured by city lights. The kids who live here year-round are inspired to go to some of the places that draw tourists here, but that we don’t think to visit because they’re simply part of the local landscape.

During past summers, we’ve ridden the tramway at Cannon Mountain (normally a winter activity for us, but just as spectacular in the summer), watched the bears perform at Clark’s TradingPost, joined the throngs of small kids and their families at Santa’s Village, and browsed the world’s longest candy counter at Chutters.

This year, as always, we began the week with the short trek to the top of Mount Baldy in Franconia Notch. This is my nephew’s favorite, and we don’t do anything else until we’ve scrambled over the boulders of Baldy to reach the breezy top and check out the view of Lafayette and the Peabody Slopes at Cannon.

From there, we moved on to more fun – and kept right on moving the entire week. We slid down the chutes at Slippery Rock, paddled the waters of Long Pond and Coffin Pond in canoes and kayaks, splashed happily in chilly Echo Lake, and squeezed through tunnels and caves at Lost River.

The kids hunted crayfish, dug in the sand, and watched a bear wander slowly across a ski trail high above the beach at Echo. At Long Pond, a lone loon braved the noisy bunch, floating near the canoe and then diving underwater to reappear in a new place, and every rock turned in the outlet stream revealed a salamander. At Coffin Pond we watched a heron fly over us and a painted turtle slip from a log into the water as we glided near.

Even at home, there was nary a dull moment. Soccer in the yard, searching for toads and inchworms in Nana’s gardens, finding green sticks with Poppy for roasting marshmallows, swinging on the old Peabody chairlift hanging behind the house, impromptu dance parties around the fire pit with Aunt Laura, and back-to-back-to-back evenings of gobbling up s’mores and watching fireflies.

It was everything summer should be, squeezed into a mere six days. As the cousins headed back to the other side of the country this week, we were all sad to say goodbye. Their visit left us a bit tired and filled with happy memories – and a list of things to do next summer. Let the countdown to next year’s cousin reunion begin!