Kids Change Everything

Chapter 8 of my work-in-progress camping memoir

Photo by Serhii Yevdokymov from Canva Pro

I started working on a camping memoir five years ago but abandoned it after a year of detailed work because the time just wasn’t right. Now I am ready to get back to the work I started and turn it into a true memoir of the first 21 years of marriage and parenting. If you want to get regular updates on this project, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

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We started out as tent campers. I believed we were always going to be tent campers. Sure, over the years we bought a lot of equipment that made tent camping and travel easier (my personal favorite being our outdoor kitchen and sink with “running” water when we used a foot pump), but when it came down to it, we had embraced tent camping. We had tents to keep us cooler in the summer and heavy sleeping bags to keep us warmer in the early spring and late fall. I loved waking up to the sound of birds stiring with the sunrise and the rumble of thunder in the distance when rain threatened to derail our weekend plans. Our lives were better because we camped. Tent camping was relatively cheap and had allowed us to explore places that were otherwise outside of our budget. 

Over the years, whether we were alone or with friends, we would gather under our screen tent or sit on top of our air mattress and sleeping bags during all kinds of weather and make fun of people who used anything but tents. After all, if you were sleeping in something with hard sides, were you really camping?

Then we had kids.

I had spent years watching families wrangle their little ones on weekend adventures, setting up safe areas for wandering toddlers while inserting tent poles and hammering stakes with a speed and agility that only another parent could truly appreciate. These super parents made camping with small children look so easy, even the smallest walkers able to load up tents with gear and participate in family activities. We had purchased our upgraded tent with plans for adding a pack-and-play to Sierra’s crate, certain that with the addition of human children, we would continue as if nothing about our lives had changed.

Except, everyone who has had children knows that children change everything. The life that you thought you would have gets turned upside down. And while those changes can bring us great joy and fulfillment, we parents often have to accept that the lives we have dreamed of will most likely need an adjustment.

Our dream of adding to our family would have to wait, however. Jeff and I tried for nearly two years before we finally sought the help of a fertility specialist. By the time we discovered we were pregnant with our first child, we had completed our eighth summer camping in the great outdoors with a short weekend camping trip to Wisconsin so that we could bike the Sparta-Elroy bike trail.

It was a camping trip that made us look like amateurs, and it would be one of the last times we ever camped in a tent.

We decided well into the summer that we needed this weekend trip. We had been working with our fertility specialist for a few months and we were certain that we would be pregnant soon. We weren’t able to find a camping spot in a local state park, but we found a private campground close enough to the bike trail to accommodate our needs. I made the reservations for three nights, hopeful that the three-day romantic weekend would be our last getaway as a childless couple before we were able to announce to the world that we were going to be parents.

We arrived at the campground in time to set up our tent before nightfall, but something wasn’t right about the site; it was right across the narrow road from a bog and was buggier than we would have liked, especially for daylight hours. We were experienced tent campers by this point. We had been to several state parks in Indiana and Michigan and we had tent camped to Yellowstone National Park and back. We knew a good site when we saw it.

We also knew a bad site when we saw it.

By nightfall, we found ourselves running from our truck to our tent to avoid being carried off by a swarm of mosquitoes, but we settled in for the night and hoped for better in the morning.

The next morning, my period started. What was supposed to be our last trip as a childless couple was now just a regular, non-celebratory camping trip.

Crushed, I told Jeff the news as we prepared to leave for a day of biking. Determined to distract both of us from another month of disappointment, he rushed me into the truck so we could get on our way. We spent the day riding our bikes up and down the Elroy-Sparta trail, although neither of us remembers exactly how far we went on our adventure. All we remember is that we were out of shape and had no business doing the trail, but we did it anyway and admittedly had fun while doing it, finding the necessary distraction from the morning’s disappointment. But then we had to return to our tent. Usually heading back to our tent meant that we were returning to our home away from home. This time, we dreaded what we would discover when we got back to our site.

It was dusk when we returned to our tent. In the headlights we could see the swarm of mosquitoes guarding the entrance to our tent. When we finally settled in for the night, we had a decision to make. We had never cut a camping trip short. We had suffered through rain, cold, and uncomfortable heat, because once we staked our tent down, we were committed for the time we had paid for. And mosquitoes? They are an unfortunate reality of camping in most places in the United States. There really isn’t any escaping them. But this wasn’t a typical annoyance. This was a mosquito army ready to attack without hesitation.

This time we were done. 

The next morning, we went to the office and told them that we were leaving a day early. Still on a very tight financial budget, we asked if we could have our money back for the last night, especially since we were leaving early because of the campsite conditions. After a short period of arguing with the manager about why we should be reimbursed for our unused night, he finally gave an exasperated sigh and said, “Well, some people just aren’t cut out for camping.”

Excuse me? We weren’t cut out for camping? We had survived a premarital bout of altitude sickness and still kept camping. We had travelled from Indiana to Yellowstone National Park with the bare minimum of our camping supplies, setting up our tent and taking it down every day, sometimes in the dark with just a single propane lantern throwing shadowed light on our progress. And we did the whole trip in eight days. We had chased off hungry raccoons and thwarted them from taking our food out of our storage locker. We had survived a thunderstorm on the sandy shores of Lake Michigan and kept camping even though water had gotten through the floor of our tent, leaving puddles at our feet as we climbed out of our bed. 

We could handle a couple mosquitoes, thank you. We just didn’t think it was necessary for us to tolerate hoards of them.

We didn’t know it at the time, but we would only use that tent one more time as a family.