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| The kids explore Peninsula State Park just after sunset |
What a beautiful spot! And everything mostly went well -- our drive went smoothly and wasn't too, too long -- we managed to set up our campsite even without the help of the man who inspired us to become campers...
But there were also challenges. The first morning, my daughter was pretty quiet and didn't want much to do with her brother, which is always tough for him. He and I were talking about it, and I told him not to let it bring him down, which fired up this number inside my head:
Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Find someone who's turning
And you will come around.
Which got me thinking just how apropos that song was for me, and for us: The hole left by the missed person on our camping trip was enormous. We all felt it, and we talked about it, and dealt with it in different ways throughout our time away. I started by texting frequent updates, but when a couple went unreturned, I decided that wasn't the way to go. We made a video for him. We ate bacon and egg sandwiches in his honor (soooo yummy!) cooked on the Coleman stove he gave us...
And tried not to let it bring us down. But, its magnitude on the scale of castles burning, at least for yours truly, that's easier said than done.
Lucky for us, there were lots of fun things to do there. We hiked on the beautiful Eagle Trail, rented stand-up paddleboards at Nicolet Bay Beach (and just about got blown to a point beyond where we were supposed to be and from which it was nearly impossible to get back), rode our bikes, did an exercise course, had a campfire, read books in the tent, had good long sleeps all snuggled up together, and enjoyed mostly beautiful weather.
Until our last day, when it rained. And rained. And rained. But we enjoyed that too. Mostly.
I went for a run in the rain in the morning, which felt absolutely amazing. I felt something shift for me during that run: I'm gonna stop working so hard, even just inside my own head, on a way to get him back.
When I got back to the campsite, the kids were hungry and it seemed the rain was taking a break so I started cooking our breakfast -- only to have it start raining again midway through the cooking process. And yeah, because it was our last day, we also had to pack things up wet, which was pretty gross. But we got it done, and my daughter was a big help.
On our way out of the park, we decided to hit the Nature Center, which we had seen but hadn't been to yet, and then after that, I asked if they were ready to head home. My son said he'd really like to do one more hike, this time on The Lone Pine Trail. He assured us it was short, and although my daughter protested because of the rain, she went along with it. (After my magical run, I was pretty psyched about returning to the beautiful, sodden, empty forest.)
So off we went. And in the space of that hike, we hit highs and lows that I assured the kids are bound to come with every adventure and indeed, pretty much every day of our lives here at Earth school in one form or another. We went from bounding happily through the forest to getting lost and stressed and cold and soaking wet, wondering how and when we'd ever make it back to our car. But we made it:
Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.
We came around.
Note to Neil, who is ever so cute in the video linked above, filmed in the year I was born: methinks sometimes the someone I need to find turning is me, yes?
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