april renee russell

This is the story of my first overnight camping trip alone with my children – the good, the bad and the ugly.

“I want to go home,” my son wailed into the night. I hoped the other campers couldn’t hear.

Outside, a chorus of cicadas chirped in the darkness as head lamps flickered in distant tents. My 2-year-old snuggled deeper into my shoulder while his 8-year-old sister squirmed her sleeping bag into knots on the other side of our tent. My five-year old sat bolt upright in the middle of it all, begging me to pack it all up and leave.

It was my first night alone in a tent with my children.

In fact, it was my first time ever car-camping. I’ve backpacked several times, but never with my children and always with my more-experienced husband. I still hike and camp with him whenever we’re able to align time-off and childcare, but until now our children were all too small to take along on three-day backpacking trips.

This year, I decided to stop waiting for my husband and instead take all three kids camping by myself. A few years ago, I realized I was wasting a lot of time feeling sorry for myself when I could be adventuring with my children. I started taking day trips and training my children for bigger adventures when they were older.

Now here I was, doing the thing I had talked about doing for so long.

I was in a tent in the Lake Ouachita State Park campground, surrounded by my three overtired, homesick children in a 2-person backpacking tent among a pile of sleeping bags and blankets. Things were not going well.

That first night, I spent most of my time soothing restless children back to sleep, seeking out tiny corners for my own body, and trying to tune out the raucus forest noises so I could sleep. At one point, I had to chase off raccoons who made off with our bread and marshmallows after I made the rookie mistake of leaving our kitchen bin outside our car.

No one slept much.

I did not sleep more than two hours altogether, and we were all four groggy and irritable by morning.

We ate pancakes and eggs cooked on the camp stove I bought for just this purpose. I downed a cup of coffee in the hammock while I thought about the night before. We were booked for two nights, but I wondered if I ought to pack it up and head home after one.

Was anyone even having fun?

We were meeting friends to swim at the lake, so I gave myself until after lunch to decide. I found myself saying, “One more hour…” for the rest of the day until we were back home at the camp site that afternoon.

“Do you want to stay another night?” I asked my children.

“Yes!” they replied. I shrugged. Either way, we had to eat dinner.

“I’ll cook and make a decision while I clean up,” I told myself.

We ate boxed macaroni and cheese with stir-fried squash and hot dogs. Then my older two ran off with Jack, a 9-year-old boy from a neighboring tent whom they had befriended the day before. As I washed our dishes and tidied up, my children played with Jack in the woods nearby.

While I rocked my youngest in the hammock after sunset, the three older children ran from tent to tent playing hide-and-seek and cops-and-robbers with headlamps in the darkness. Before long, my mind was made up; it was too late to go home.

We would tough it out for another night.

This time, I put more thought into how everyone was arranged in the tent. I talked them through their homesickness instead of getting frustrated. I told them a story of a boy who went on a quest for a magical green firefly while giant real ones flashed outside the tent. I put in earplugs to tune out the cicadas and made sure there was somewhere for me to lie down once the kids were asleep. I made sure al the food was safely put away in the van.

• 

• 

This time, I slept.

At one point, my 2-year-crawled over to me to snuggle. Later, I woke briefly to see him wrapped in his sister’s arms. My son was sprawled at my feet, obviously glad to have the extra space.

I watched the stars move slowly above the pine trees silhouetted against the sky until I drifted off the sleep again. The next thing I knew, I was waking up to grey morning light as my children breathed deeply around me. I lay listening to the lazy morning crickets, basking in the satisfaction of a goal attained.

My youngest woke as I set up the stove, and I held him as I waited for my coffee to brew. While the older two slept, I took him on a short hike in the woods that encircled the campground. On the trail, we met a doe with her two fawns, out for breakfast. They looked at us, chewing leaves, before they walked off indifferently into the trees.

After breakfast, the kids played with Jack one more time while I cleaned and packed up our gear. We went back to the lake for one last swim before heading home.

• 

• 

We did what we set out to do.

Now we are planning our next trip, and I am taking mental notes of all the things I want to change and remember for next time. I’m glad we stuck it out.

After that first night, I wanted to throw in the towel. Was all this even worth it? I wondered. But the second night was so much better because of what I learned during the first, and so it will be with further adventures. This wouldn’t be our last.

As far as this trip – my first of many overnight camping trips I hope to take with my children – even the hardest moments are softened in my memory.

As it became more and more obvious during the first night that I was not going to sleep, I resigned myself to listening to the sounds of the night. I was rewarded with a symphony, one I likely could have set my watch by.

The sounds of the night shifted along with the hours.

I picked out individual cicadas trilling among the trees. Raccoons bickered in the trees nearby, and the fireflies glittered through the air around me. Soon the insects quieted and made way for the more somber tree frogs, until they too were silent. In the stillness, coyotes cried out across the lake. A buck let out a guttural appeal to any does within earshot. An owl called a sober note. As night faded into dawn, the crickets began their gentle music.

I heard it all, alone under the stars with my children.

Are you interested in some of the gear I take along on trips with my children? Find some of my favorites on my “Hiking with Littles” list on Amazon.

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By the way, we didn’t get here overnight. It took years of training and practice before I felt ready to camp with my children by myself. In my next post, I’ll share more about the journey that brought me to this point and how a friend helped me get there.

Until then, what do you dream of doing with your kids?

Last week I hit a major milestone in my writing journey: I finished writing a short story.

No, really. I have proof.

It’s called “Decay,” and I wrote it as part of the 2020 Summer Writing Contest at The Write Practice. You can read it at Short Fiction Break.

It follows a woman – a mother of three young sons – as she finds herself isolated in a precarious situation: lost and injured in the woods.

And if you like it – which I hope you do – you can even vote for it as your favorite to win the Reader’s Choice Award.

So what?

I realized a single story is nothing to write home about, especially considering the volume of short stories written by such prolific authors as Stephen King (more than 200) and Ray Bradbury (600!), but it is a start.

Writing comes in fits and spurts for me these days, due mostly to the fact that my days are filled to the brim with the needs of my children. With little boys around, who has time to write, let alone think? It is all too easy to put off writing until that ever-evasive More Time comes along one of these days.

But the words of E.B. White ring through my mind so often:

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to write will die without putting a word on paper.

E. B. White

So I did it.

I signed up at the very last minute for the 2020 Summer Writing Contest from The Write Practice, with just a week before the submission deadline. I knew I had my work cut out for me. I wasn’t even sure I had any ideas good enough to flesh out into a full story.

Somehow I managed to get a story drafted and submitted to the online writer’s workshop – a requirement for all entrants – before the deadline. (And when I say “somehow,” I mean through the generous aid of television, snacks and free use of the backyard water hose).

Once in the workshop, my story was available for other contestants to read and critique, and I was expected to do the same for other writers in exchange for their commentary. These critiques ended up being an incredible help to me as I worked through the editing stage of my story, and I ended up making major changes to both plot and story structure as a result.

But it wasn’t all critical.

I also got some major morale boosts from a few readers:

Wow, these were the exact reactions I was hoping for! I tried not to let the praise go to my head. But a writer isn’t a writer without a touch of narcissim, and I must admit it felt good to know my story resonated with at least a few readers.

When I finally submitted my story for judging, I was content with the final product. But more than that, I felt accomplished. I was able to achieve a goal, albeit a small one, that I set for myself several years ago: to write and publish fiction stories.

Fiction is intimidating.

Writing fiction is very new to me. My training and experience as a writer are deeply rooted in non-fiction editorial writing, mostly for newspapers and magazines. Fiction is well outside of my comfort zone, or so I thought.

But what I’ve discovered, is that both non-fiction and fiction writing meet the desire I have to tell stories. The biggest difference between the two, so far, is that with my previous non-fiction writing I was telling someone else’s story; fiction writing feels much more vulnerable. Though the characters and events are made-up, the writing itself is raw and real.

Fiction feels more personal.

My story – “Decay” – though not autobiographical in any way, was inspired by certain experiences in my own life. I channeled some of my own past emotional struggles as I wrote the earliest drafts of this story, and in that sense it is quite personal.

Which is why sharing my first finished piece of fiction is a challenging and emotional experience for me.

The doubts are swirling: “Is it any good?” “Will anyone like it?” “Does it make any sense?” Needless to say, the imposter syndrome is having a field day in my mind these days.

But none of that matters.

I would like to say how much I would love for you to read my story. But that isn’t quite right. I do not love the idea of my story being “out there,” susceptible to the honest opinions of anyone who might come along and read it. The thought of anyone reading my words and reacting to them in a negative way is gut-wrenching, to be honest.

But the thought of never having that happen is worse. If writing is important to me as a means of human connection – and it is – I must do the hard part of letting others see my work.

So while I am afraid of this first difficult step of putting work out there, I recognize that the leap of faith is required if I want to move forward as a writer.

I would very much not love for you to read my story, but I still want you to do it anyway.

Visit Short Fiction Break to read my story now.