The End of an Era

I knew this morning that I was going to write about the end of an era in our family's life, so I typed "camping" into this blog's search box. This picture came up:

Please, go back and read the post associated with that picture of the five adorable moppets shown above. It explained better than I have room to do here how I feel about the vacations we've taken over the years.

Husband and I were always strongly in favor of family vacations, but we had children rather than hefty bank accounts so there were no trips to Disney World for us--we camped. And beginning on Boy#1's second birthday (when Boy#2 was four months old), our camper always was a pop-up trailer.

First we borrowed my parents' little pop-up, and made The Trip From Hell, a 16-day, 12-state ordeal during one of the hottest, dryest summers in United States history. Despite this trip (during which I recall sobbing gratefully when Husband suggested we spend the final night in a hotel) a few years later we bought a second-hand trailer that was heavy and clunky but slept all six of us.

And 18 years ago, we bought the trailer you see above.

It felt as if we'd moved from the Motel 6 to the Waldorf Astoria. Air conditioning. A curtained-off toilet and shower*. Queen-sized beds. Hot water. An outdoor faucet for clean-up after outdoor days.

I loved this trailer. As you read back through this blog you'll find entries about a trip to Colorado in the summer and a long weekend at a Kansas lake in the fall. You'll hear me talk about the year we visited every site documented in the Little House books, and another year when we drove to all of the historic forts in Kansas. I hope I properly documented how much I loved waking up in the night and hearing a gentle wind just outside the screen next to my face, and stretching just a little to see the stars, and sitting in a camp chair under pine trees as I read my book.

But empty nesting meant we took the trailer out less and less frequently, and not at all in the past two years. Trips to see Boys living in four different states took priority over de-winterizing and re-winterizing for the odd weekend we might be able to use it. And frankly, we could afford the cost of non-camping vacations more easily than we could during those full-house years so we began to rely on hotels and AirBnB. It made no sense to let the camper sit idle and deteriorate through inactivity.

So last Saturday we got the trailer out of storage and cranked it up. I took pictures and posted them on the Facebook page of a local bluegrass festival, and less than 24 hours later the trailer was no longer ours.

We're glad it sold quickly, to Small Town friends who will use it often and lovingly. But it's a bittersweet moment, a full stop ending to an activity we love. It is a sign that we are getting older: Camping is often physically difficult, and the distance to the bathhouse seemed to stretch every year.

In many ways, though, it's like mourning the end of having toddlers in the house. I only remember how much I loved their sweet-smelling heads and tender hugs. I forget the emotional constancy and sheer never-ending work mothering toddlers requires.

I remember the excitement of getting on the road but I forget the undercurrent of tension that accompanied every single second of pulling a trailer up a mountain and wondering if all the hitches and tires and cooling systems would bear up under the load. I remember the playing-house feeling of cooking on the camp stove but I forget how often I tamped down worry when we pulled into a campground where signs warned that bears could be lurking between my children and the bathhouses. I remember reading aloud to the Boys after they were tucked into bed but I forget that I constantly walked the line between letting the Boys explore and play, and keeping them safe from campfires and critters.

And that's okay.  It's fine that I forget the downside of camping and only the parts I loved. I hope I do that with all my memories.

It's the end of an era, and that era was wonderful.

*None of us ever used that toilet or shower, because the entire world is a toilet when you're a boy, and if you think I was going to entrust my privacy to a tiny curtain separating me from the sleeping child 18 inches away then you do not know me well at all.