pull up a chair

having explained my way through airport security not long ago, whispering in the armed guard’s ear, gesturing oddly toward the long blue stick the 5-year-old was boldly flailing, trying to persuade the nice man that the light saber would really not cause a problem, not unless it was absconded there at the so-called security checkpoint, i was not at all surprised when my virgin camper informed me he was taking the saber to the woods.
of course he was, i thought to self. he’d heard word of bears and wolves, and would not be left unarmed.
what i did not know was that the jedi camper had tucked his make-believe jedi robe into the backpack. and within minutes of pulling into slot 12, at the wooded loop of camping plots, off went the shorts, the shirt; out came the robe.
while i was busy muttering about the tent poles, and which was which, and, oh, look out for ticks there in the underbrush that seems to be poking through the northwest corner of our tent, the little jedi tapped me on the shoulder to ask me this important question: “when you wear a robe, do you take off your boxers?”
egad. he was going to get us chased from these here woods. just two plots over there was a chap, a bearded chap, who looked like he might wrestle bears for entertainment. i was not so sure he’d take a liking to a stick-legged little boy prancing in his ruby-colored chinese robe, with golden-threaded dragon on the back. even if it was a big bad bear he, too, was aiming to take on.
i swallowed hard, i did, i did.
but i said calmly, “why no, you keep your boxers on, my fierce defender.”
presto change-o, i am happy to report, he pranced in robe with red boxers.
and, then, before i could even whisper, “force be with you,” or whatever it is a jedi mama would be inclined to say, he had grabbed the sabers from the wagon.
off he went, so thoroughly equipped to slice and dice the fears that come with all that’s unexplored. how very wise, the instincts of a little boy not to leave himself unarmed when it comes to fending off his worries, even if it’s a glowing plastic stick that carries all the super-powers.
indeed, without so much as a flinch, he and his accomplice, a jedi partner sans the robe, stalked the perimeter of the slice of woods that was ours for the night.
“no bears,” he came back to report, while i kept muttering to the tent.
he stayed in jedi garb right through the chopping of the logs and the igniting of the flames.
then, when just enough mosquitoes had nipped his naked little legs, he turned in his robe, at last, for shorts less likely to get us tossed from those there parts.
and so it went, the early chapters of my little camper’s first dark night in the big, big woods.
the sabers and the robe, as long as they were on the scene, did seem to work. we never heard so much as a single growl.
but then, after s’mores and sitting on a dock, after taking in the bullfrogs’ foghorns and slapping at the swarms of ‘squitoes, when we slithered in our not-so-wobbly tent, and the flashlights did at last go off, there spouted from the jedi camper the deepest, tenderest tears i believe i’ve heard in years and years.
“i’m homesick for my room,” he blurted out, there in the blackest blackness of a woodsy night without a single beam of moon, thanks to fat ol’ clouds that blocked out all of heaven’s light.
this time the saber, lying still, lying darkly, just beside his sleeping bag, could not fend off the scary things that seem to loom when you are planted there at the edge of the woods for the very first time.
all around, there were night sounds. and, truth be told, the ground beneath our backs was rather hard and oh-so-lumpy. the little warrior’s papa, his nearly every night’s bedtime cuddler, was miles and miles away. from a 5-year-old’s perspective, there was every reason to be sick for home.
so we did the best we could, the little one’s big strong brother and i. we started telling stories all about the room he missed. we sketched it out in vivid detail, from the night light to the window prism to the books that line the shelves.
we tried, in every way we could, to make his room come back to life, there in the creepy-crawly darkness of the hardly-sleeping woods.
big brother on one side, mama on the other, we lulled him, finally, into sleep. he slept at last like a little log. while i kept watch the whole night long. i would not let my jedi camper fret the night away.
and besides, the tree root beneath my back made for nasty sleeping anyway.
not long after walking in the door, now back at home sweet home, i bent and kissed that little camper. asked him if after all maybe it was a little bit of fun, fending bears away from s’mores.
“well,” he said, sounding very brave, “i really wanted to shoot more bows and arrows.”
so fierce, the little camper, as long as the lights are on. and the room he calls his own is just a quick dash up the stairs.

my goodness, sorry we’re so late in checking in here. had to check for ticks, shake out the tent, and on the way home we stopped for peaches and farm-ripe tomatoes. just thought you might like a simple little tale of how a boy takes on the woods. do you get scared when you go out sleeping beneath the trees? what soothes you when you feel sick for home?

p.s. next time you take to the woods, be sure to bring along your very own woodsman. that’s big david up there, once upon a boy scout. he had us fully stocked for every campfire a jedi and his mama could ever ever want. why, there were flames for melting marshmallows and flames for heating up old coffee in the morn. twas heavenly, his lovely wife’s bright bold idea, to take a jedi camping. next year, two nights. and of course, twice as many sabers.

perhaps it was a fevered dream. certainly, some screw was loose. had to be. i signed up, yes i did, to go into the woods tonight. alone. with my boys.
praise the heavens and hallelujah, the one, the man-child, is taller, by a yard, i think, than his ever-shrinking mama. it will be his job to scare the bears.
oh, i forgot. there are no bears in northern illinois. at least not outside of zoos. and we will not be camping in a zoo. so i should strike bear fears from my list.
my list is long enough.
let’s see. there would be the rocks i am worrying about. the rocks i’m sure we will pitch the tent right over, and i will discover said rocks, wedged beneath my shoulder blades, the very instant i lie down. when all is dark except the stars and there won’t be a chance of re-pitching the tent without rustling like a blessed fool and waking half the campground.
oh, yes, i should mention, this is camping lite.
this is camping in a spot that’s basically been cleared for moi and whatever amenities i lug along. this is camping with a little map and reservation ticket that tells you just where to pull in your car, and all those city-slicker essential camping extras. (did someone mention a blow-up tub for taking woodsy baths?)
oh, no, this is not the way my mountain-lion little brother camps, where he hikes a few days into some primal forest and gently, without disturbing so much as a blade of grass (oh, wait, there is no grass in forest deep; see how deep my woodsy know-how isn’t), he settles in for days of living off the land.
nope, i would be the wimpy camper sister.
while i’ve never forgotten the thicket of shining stars, stars planted like wild daisies in a meadow, that you can only see from there along the banks of a rushing river where a nighttime campfire is burning down to its final red-glow embers. and while i’ve never forgotten pulling back the dewy tent flap in the dawn, breathing in that softest morning air. or tasting an egg cooked atop an upturned coffee can that you and your 9-year-old friends are pretending is a campstove there in the wilds of your backyard, i cannot say i’ve gone rushing to the woods so very much these last few quarter-centuries.
in fact, i have been racking my ever-shrinking brain and the last campfire i recall just might have been way, way back with a euell-gibbons-wanna-be college friend who had me plucking berries off of bushes and making foil wraps of roots that had been growing deep beneath the forest.
so just what was the cockamamie notion that had me nodding when, mere weeks ago, my friend with 6- and 3-year-old called to see if i would join her in the woods tonight?
egad. she’d said something about sitting ’round the campfire, how delightful it would be, and that i do believe was where i caved. i pictured stars above. golden marshmallows on long sticks.
i blocked out, apparently, the sounds of children crying because their gooey, charred-black puff had just fallen in the flames. i blocked out the fact that somewhere between pulling in the car slot and slipping sleepy self and children in that fully erected tent, there was the little matter of getting the tent and all its poles to go along with the program. (which is why you see above the practice session we had just yesterday, shortly after unearthing that bulbous tent from the cobwebs of our blessed neighbors’ uninhabitable garage.)
silly me, i inked it in. “camp w/ boys.” tonight’s the night. the man i live with is not coming. he has scrounged up some fine excuse. says the world of newspapers cannot live without him in the morning. funny, i’ll make it back in time to get to work tomorrow. but, for his busy schedule, there is no time–nor inclination–for a night in the woods with children 3 and 5 and 6 and 14.
i cannot imagine.
ah, well. his loss.
he’ll miss the marshmallows–and all the crying. he’ll be home alone, in a real bed, with real pillows. did i mention the bed, the pillow, both, would be soft?
i, though, will march my boys into those would-be woods. i will teach the little one, at least (the big one’s done more camping in last few years than i would do if i had ten lifetimes), i will teach him the pure joy of fetching proper long-necked sticks for s’mores.
i will teach him to feel the night wrapping in around him, as the stars come on, as the nightsounds from the woods grow rather loud and easy to imagine a whole menagerie of furry things with long sharp claws.
i will teach him the fine art of finally being so tired that you drift off to sleep–despite the bumpy things lodged beneath your back, and the one darn mosquito that wriggled its way into your no-bugs-allowed tent confines.
i will teach him the taste of triumph in the morning, when you’ve made it, without the walls, the roof, the comforts that you count on, all the other nights.
i will, i hope, even teach him the satisfaction of taking down that trusty tent, packing it away for next time.
unless of course it comes crashing down in the night. unless of course it’s some woodland critter who knocks it in, trying to make a midnight snack of leftover s’mores–or us.
then i will teach him to run like a wild hen for the back seat of the car, lock the doors, and drive like a fiend home to where there might not be stars in thickets but at least there is a mattress and you can call it yours.

for those scant few of you who are not off vacationing, or procuring fireworks, welcome to july. if all goes swimmingly, we’ll be back tomorrow to let you know all about our adventures in the woods. if not, you’ll see a big black blank. and you’ll know to send out the search dogs. tell them to look for the mama with the tent draped over her head and teardrops streaming out the flap. stay tuned for more camping in the woods…