Easter Camping

I went camping with James, Ben and Will on Vancouver Island during a long weekend in March several years ago. Chester, our dog, came as well. I made it simple. We brought a 6 man tent, air mattresses, 4 sleeping bags, a cooler with essentials in it, a bag of extra clothing and James' skateboard and helmet. Of one-hundred campsites only two tents were pitched. The rest were all big motor homes and trailer campers.

It was cool at night and very damp. With 4 of us and the dog in the tent we breathed out a surprising amount of moisture that condensed on the inside walls of the tent and ran down in droplets to absorb into the outside of our sleeping bags. It was cool and a bit uncomfortable at first but we had all that we needed.

I have seldom heard so much activity as what surrounded us during those Easter nights. Not scary, but active and full of unthinking life. First were the frogs. A single frog began from the center of the marsh behind us. He set the rhythm and then the rest entered as an untimed and untamed chorus. Not with the purpose of harmony and without regard to melody but rather with the purpose, of being noticed as an individual - one among a crowd and worthy of mating. That night, the forest yielded several wonderful unrestrained frog choruses of great significance. I am sure they were of great significance - because the hundreds and hundreds of frogs that lost their breath to song were completely unmindful (or unsympathetic) toward the many of us that had paid our own money for a quiet, private, natural campsite at this peaceful place. The frog that initiated the 7 minute chant ended it alone. After 5 minutes another single voice drew the others into the agreement of song for about 7 minutes again before ending it alone. I thought that it was much like our life, this song.

At 2 in the morning sea lions barked their way through the darkness from some distance down the beach below a full moon that seemed to tangle in the trees at the same place each night. That was my cue to rouse all the boys wobbly from their sleep - to go outside and pee respectfully into the wilderness – just to make sure that they made it through the rest of the long springtime night in a dry sleeping bag. Chester seemed to understand us better for this night time ritual and joined us in it. We slept well after the sea lions were quiet.

The last night we camped there, a great horned owl perched overhead and called. I could see the owl clearly in my imagination silhouetted against the full moon - comfortable in his element and unneedy on this bright and easy hunting night. A coyote howled and then later, at 4:30 a solitary but definitive rooster rang into the night. One call, then another, perfect without practice. The night was given back to us again in silence.

We were aware of all that went on around us those nights; yet felt rested each morning. I asked the boys and they said they had fun over those 4 days. Even the Easter bunny that seemed to live in the grassy meadow at the margin of the park stuck his head up as we roasted marshmallows over a morning fire with laughter above the excitement of children’s voices.