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.
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?