Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Another Camping Trip

There’s nothing like sitting around the campfire while capturing your thoughts on your laptop. Camping in the 21st century is quite a bit different than it used to be. Next thing you know, not only will the State Parks provide water and electric at every capsite, they’ll add Wi-Fi as well. Things will never be the same – except that kids will still be kids. Our kids just love camping in the woods. There’s something about the freedom to explore all the God has created without any pressing timetable or agenda. Freedom to run and the freedom to sit and stare at a fire for hours is freedom for our soul.

It’s been a fun weekend. A little warmer than expected, but that’s Florida in December. While most of the country is ending their camping season, we are just starting ours. The migratory birds are taking up residence and the bugs are starting to hibernate. I can’t say we accomplished much this weekend, but that is what camping is about. We sketched the flowers and trees, dipped our fishing poles in the water and got lost in the woods. We headed straight out the back of our campsite, picked up a service road and followed the blazes on the trees for awhile. We saw a group of deers, including several fawns, and even found a baby ring neck snake. We turned around after a while, followed the blazes back to where we turn into our campsite, and it wasn’t there! We tried to find it, followed all the little foot paths, went in every possible direction, and couldn’t find it. What to do now? We hadn’t had breakfast yet, and everyone was beginning to whine, especially the adults who hadn’t had their coffee yet. We finally found another service road, and as my husband said, “If we just stay on this, it will lead us to another road, eventually.” It’s the eventually that always gets me. Eventually – that could mean minutes, or hours, or days. I wasn’t going to last very long without my cup of decaf. Luckily, it only took us a couple of minutes until we picked up the main camping loop road. Thank goodness! Within 30 minutes we back at our campsite, stuffed full of breakfast. Near tragedy was averted – thanks to a level headed husband, who got us lost in the first place, and well placed service roads.

Right now, we’re watching the turkeys come running into our campsite. We’re feeding them the leftover corn from last night’s corn on the cob. I think they rather prefer the junk food most people feed them to the corn we’re feeding them. Just like most of us, their taste buds have grown accustomed to salt, sugar and food additives. Not exactly the way God prepared it, but the way we’ve adulterated it. They’ve left our corn, looking for greener pastures. Just like us, they are ruled by their tastebuds. However, before they die of heart disease or cancer, they’ll probably end up on some hunter’s table.

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