Breaking tradition to embrace nature

I broke tradition this year.
For as long as I can remember, I have always put up the Christmas tree on the weekend following Thanksgiving Day.
Alas, my poor tree remains confined in its box, stuffed way back in the attic. It waits, however, for a good reason. Instead of decorating for Christmas, we went camping at Brazos Bend State Park.
My two youngest sons are in Cub Scout Pack 1000 and my wife is the Cubmaster. She planned an exciting and fun weekend for the members of the pack, which helped us escape the madness of the malls and department stores for three days and two nights. The first night the temperature dipped to 29 degrees.
As someone who grew up camping in much colder temperatures in Colorado, that wasn’t a big deal. But I have to confess that I’ve acclimated better than I thought to the South Texas climate and I was surprised at how cold I felt.
Going to bed, I made a complete change into clean clothes and nestled into my trusty old mummy bag. As soon as it warmed up inside, I slept well until sometime around 3 or 4 a.m. when I had to roll over because of a pain in my hip. That’s when I made two unsettling discoveries. First, the pain came from sleeping on the hard ground. My air mattress had deflated. Second, when I rolled over, my backside pushed open the zipper of my sleeping bag in the middle.
So I sat up and began softly murmuring to myself as I wore my fingers raw trying to fix the zipper. After a few minutes I discovered a third unsettling thing. My bladder was darn near the bursting point. That added an element of urgency to my zipper repair job.
When I finally got it fixed, I got up and tip-toed through the maze of sleeping bags to the door. As I slipped on my shoes, I tripped and fell on my oldest son’s legs. By then everyone was grumbling and trying to get back to sleep as I anxiously whispered “sorry” several times. I was finally able to emerge into a beautiful moonlit night and answer nature’s call.
Returning to the tent and once again stumbling over my kids, I got back into bed and slept well the rest of the night. Come morning I was sitting around the campfire flipping pancakes. Being the most experienced camper in the group, it kinda fell on me to be the Lord of the Fire Pit and the Grillmaster. I thoroughly enjoy both jobs, but the hardest part was keeping a bunch of boys – especially my own – from throwing things in the fire.
Throughout the day we did all kinds of fun things like going on a nature hike, visiting the nature center, going to the observatory, fishing, and other such things. We were joined by members of Pack 201, which our pack helped start this fall. It was nice to make new friends and enjoy a gorgeous day outdoors in the park.
I think the hardest part about camping was breaking camp and parting ways. I just didn’t want that experience to end. I was vividly reminded of my childhood dream of growing up to be a forest ranger. All the rangers in the park seemed to love what they were doing. I used to be most comfortable outdoors as a boy. I liked traipsing through the creeks and ponds, catching frogs and fish and, in my teens, hunting for fowl and small game.
There is a passion that this weekend rekindled in my bones that made me long to return to the adventurous ways of my youth. I know that I can’t live vicariously through my children, but I can expose them to the things I enjoyed at their age and see if any of them take an interest. Based on what I saw this weekend, that shouldn’t be much of a problem.
I honestly feel they would get more out of life by camping, hunting, fishing, riding bikes, skipping stones across the water, catching critters, and hiking in the woods than they will watching TV or playing video games. Who knows, maybe we’ll start some new family traditions.
In the meantime, we may have missed the date, but there is still the tradition of the Christmas tree to tend to. I sure am looking forward to a great Christmas season.
P.S. Happy 8th birthday to my son, Colton.