What I learned about camping by Erika Masterson

The first page of this story(Above) I wrote my dream for this camping trip based on previous visits. I suppose it was my expectation for our trip. It was perfect. My husband, our 2 older kids and I have camped many times for 10 days, so I remembered how I felt. But this trip was a little different than the way my writing described. It has been about 16 years since our last serious camping trip.Let me tell you how our trip actually went. We are day 8 into our 11-day camping trip. I was awake last night and thinking about the trip. It’s actually been quite hard for me. I feel much older and not as strong and capable as younger days. I was feeling a bit let down by my own expectations of the trip. I realized that camping is actually a “fast”. We are fasting from all the luxuries of home. No kitchen, microwave, hot showers, washer/dryer or bathroom! No TV, no Facebook, or internet. Being faced with our fears of bears, spiders everywhere, bees, and biting flies. Also lack of sleep from snoring, air mattress squeaking and ambient noises of every leaf-and twig hitting the tent and some don’t need to be mentioned! My biggest thing missed is being clean. The torrential downpour saturated all our towels and made a muddy mess. I’ve often asked myself over the past 8 days, “Why are we doing this?” I feel almost like I’m purposely torturing myself! I kept asking God to give me strength to get through it. God then gave me the words, “You are fasting”. My whole mind set did a paradigm shift. I now see the benefit and importance of what we are doing. I finally understand why I desire to “rough it”. It’s a letting go of “self”. It puts me in a place of total surrender and survival. We are simply surviving. We are in every moment with the intention of survival and dependence. All the distractions are gone and we are just living “raw”. This is actually the best place to be. It’s completely backwards to logical thinking, yet completely in tune with God. I feel free somehow through the extra work of survival. I don’t think I could always live like this but it helps me to put my life into perspective. It creates a deep appreciation and gratitude for what we have. Now I want to share some other good stuff from the trip. My son caught a trophy 4.5 lb. Walleye! My husband hooked 2 smallmouth Bass at the same time! Sara and I watched and photographed whom we now call “Babbity Bumble Bee” everyday. Sara held butterflies! We named a certain spider species “the blind spider”. We took lots of naps. We played Uno. We painted, explored and took lots of photos. Sara and Drew carved sticks with their knives and swam for hours watching fish underwater. We built the most picturesque campfires. Sara and I braided each other’s hair. In the quiet of the night the lake would go from perfectly still to a soft rippling movement as if it were alive! The best things were quite simple. We developed a routine for who handled what task. We learned to work together. We actually spent everyday, all day together.... So we really did do all the things I wrote on my dream page of this trip. But so much more was gained than I expected. Fasting from all those conveniences of home has really taught me that things will still get done, just differently. It has taught me patience. It has taught me to give more of myself. It has taught me to just be still. It has taught me to rest. It has taught me to let go of expectations. It has taught me humility. The entire time, my husband had a pair of his red underwear hanging to balance the tarp over our tent! All who passed by on their boat could see if they looked hard enough! It became our camp flag. We all laughed very hard... Erika Masterson July 2019

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Devoted Magazine by Erika Masterson