The profound beauty of simplicity

We've been away a couple of weeks at Priest Lake camping in our favorite next-best-thing-to-a-cabin site. 

Competition is fierce — reserving is six months out and you'd better hit it on the split second. Success means the site is “ours” in the heart of winter, with half the year to anticipate. Then, just like that, it has happened, and it's over. 

I don't know how, but between overnighters, day visitors and a quartet of quick drop-ins, we managed to host 32 people in two weeks, but we did. And still with time to enjoy the spacious, private camp and its bordering beach. I hit the sand most mornings to watch and wonder at the sun rising above the mountains across the lake. I called it from “glow to gleam to glory.” I prize it as at home we get only sunsets. 

There was just one stormy day — delete the “m” and you've got story. Our 11-year-old grand (working his way to six feet already) and our 13-year-old grand were with us the first week. They wanted to play in those big ocean-like waves the wind had kicked up. While I sat hunched on a log needing three layers, they rolled and splashed and bounced in the surf — a couple of heads bobbing out there. 

The only problem, in all the action my best pair of goggles the teen had pushed up worked their way from her hair without her knowing. We searched the beach; we scanned the water; nothing. I did my best not to sound accusing. No mini-attacks like, “Why weren't you paying better attention? Why didn't you just keep them on? I trusted you to take care of them.” 

The next morning two kids walked into our sturdy “old girl” RV wearing big grins and holding up a set of periwinkle goggles. They'd found them washed up on the beach. I have no idea how such a flimsy thing ever made it out of the lake and in a place where it could be rediscovered. The grands said they had prayed. Do you think Grandma thought of such a thing? I was too intent on hiding my dismay. 

Camping can bring out the best — and the worst — situated as we are with a bunch of strangers for neighbors. The people with the yappy dog who didn't seem to mind the little darlin's voice at 6 a.m. were not on my list of favorites. I was up, but now so was the whole campground. In fact, I walked past their site later to see the date they were leaving and had to restrain a fist pump when I saw it was the next day.  

Then there was the couple next door from Oregon. She had grown up in the same town where Terry and I had spent a year over five decades ago. “I remember that great restaurant, the Coffee Grinder,” I reminisced. “My brother worked there,” she replied. Shared history has the power to make instant connections. 

I got an unexpected camping gift. I've always liked to skip rocks, and our beach had some great skippers. Teaching the grands I said, “Just a thin slice.” It was a joke among us, when I'd stayed at their house and had “just a thin slice” of leftover birthday cake — and then I had another “thin slice” and another. 

We'd brought our Minnesota daughter from the airport to camp over the Labor Day weekend. She was on the beach with me early one morning. After she returned home, a photo I didn't know she'd taken appeared on her social media. She had written, “I love this woman. She's 72 years old, skipping rocks at dawn — just because. I'm in awe of how intricate and complex our world is, but there is also a profound beauty in simplicity.” 

I will always camp.