My Experience with Camping

      Camping is a word that stirs up mixed emotions for me. I love the idea of it! But I haven't quite mastered the execution of it.

      I grew up in the beautiful Missouri countryside, in the hills that parallel the Mississippi River. My family's property has a native prairie bursting with wildflowers, woods with a bubbling creek, and a tear-shaped pond with a large dike. Not far away, from Oak Ridge Cemetery, one can get a scenic view of the area. The rolling hills are lush in summer and colorful in the fall. Mist often blankets the area under the pale moonlight of the humid nighttime.

     I love the outdoors.

     But when it comes to camping, my experience has been tumultuous. The first time my wife and I went camping together, we went to Caprock Canyon State Park. It was going pretty well, up until the last night. A massive Texas thunderstorm blew in.

     One of our friends that came with us had only brought a camping hammock to sleep in. As the storm front blew in and the wind started to roar, I could just picture that hammock going in circles and wrapping him up like a burrito. I told him to come inside our pop-up tent.

     What I didn't know about our friend was that he struggled with anxiety and one of the things that triggered it was lightning. We ended up running to our cars because the storm got so bad. Right after we got inside, lightning exploded in front of us. Next to us, our friend's car started flashing its lights and I thought I heard its horn blaring through the thunder. It wasn't until later that I realized our friend was having a panic attack in his car and was trying to get our attention.

     It was quite the experience.

     This last time we went camping was just a few days ago. We left Tuesday morning with some of our teammates for the Northwest Mission. We stayed two nights, leaving on Thursday morning. Camping itself was a lot of fun! It did rain on us the first day, and our tents leaked unexpectedly, but it wasn't bad. And because it happened during the daytime, we were able to get everything dried out before bed.

      It was the drive back on Thursday that threatened to sour our trip. We rode with two of our teammates in their truck, which ended up overheating on us. We had to pull over three different times to tinker with things. To make matters more frustrating we were only about an hour from home. What should have been a simple hour and forty minute drive turned into a six hour crawl. In the end, we left the truck on the parking lot of a Baptist church building (we called to get their permission) and had to get picked up - luggage, dogs, weary attitudes and all - by a friend from back home.

     In the moment, those camping trips were stressful, exhausting, and frustrating. But despite those emotions, we also knew that they would make memories we could look back on with our friends, talk about, and laugh over.

     Camping stirs up mixed emotions for me because I've grown suspicious of what will happen. It's not the same way of enjoying the outdoors as actually living in the countryside. Each time we've ended up leaving the experience wet, hot, stressed, tired, and bitten up by bugs. But in each difficulty that arose, we've grown closer to friends and deepened relationships. I learned about our friend's anxiety and grew closer to him because of it. I helped tinker with an overheated car engine (something I know nothing about) and watched my teammate show incredible patience and perseverance in a situation that might cause others to curse. My respect for him only deepened.

     Next time we have an opportunity to camp with friends, I'm going to leap at the chance. Howbeit it guardedly.