Camping - Part 1

When I was ten years old, my parents borrowed my cousin’s tent trailer for a virgin voyage into the world of camping.  We were headed to a place we had heard about from them, a teacher’s camp of all places four hours away near Parry Sound, Ontario.

We loaded ourselves and everything we owned into our Silver Chevy station wagon.  The drive there was excruciating – highlighted by my parents arguing and the grave fear by all of us that the trailer that was swaying behind us was going to unhitch itself at any moment along highway 69.

At about 12am in the morning, the Bowman clan pulled into the pitch dark OTF (Ontario Teacher’s Federation) Campground. Consider for a moment the ramifications of this.  Our spirits had already been crushed by the six hour drive (recall me saying the trip only takes four hours!) and now my Dad would have to use the headlights from the station wagon to set up a trailer for the very first time. Needless to say, the arguing continued that night until we were finally able to crash in the trailer. We woke the next morning to find ourselves the lone trailer in the middle of a field.  Even at ten years old I was totally humiliated by our location. 

Twenty six years later I have only missed one summer at my beloved OTF.  I would meet one of my best childhood friends there that next summer when I was eleven.  We would stand up for each other in our weddings and when she was just thirty years old I would hear of her passing.  I would have my first alcoholic beverage on a huge rock in the woods in the middle of the night. I would make out with boys (sorry Mom) and truly come to know what summer love meant.

I try not to take it too personally when I tell people that I go camping and they respond, “You go camping???”  I don’t sleep in a tent anymore because we proudly own a tent trailer.  And when we camp it is without hydro or running water – there is a fifty year old washroom that provides those luxuries. 

Camping at OTF is a part of my soul and it has become a part of the fabric of my family - our children have never missed a summer there since they were born.  We are relishing these days when the kids run around with their friends and stay relatively out of trouble.  I don’t know what I’ll do when they want to stay out at night with their friends because I know exactly what they’ll be doing. I hope I’ll be more understanding than my mom but somehow – I doubt it.