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QuickTake:
We never knew that learning to deal with small annoying glitches during family camping trips would prepare us well for one very big crisis that hit us at home.
I didn’t realize, back then, that camping was not only a fun diversion for the family but also a great way to prepare for catastrophe.
When our six kids were young, we camped every summer at Clear Lake in the Cascades, Beverly Beach on the Oregon Coast, and other places. Some years we slept in tents; other times in a pop-up tent trailer that expanded like a balloon to five times its size to accommodate all eight of us; and later in yurts. Camping involved cheerful scenes of hiking, blowing soap bubbles into the fire and watching them rise fifty feet in the air, and kids leaving trails of pretzel crumbs to attract squirrels. It also involved wet, sandy clothes and shoes everywhere, noisy games late at night, rain, arguments, and the unique challenges of living away from home for a few days, with limited resources.
We learned to do without, make do, and ask the neighbors in the next tent over for matches. We learned to regroup, evaluate, brainstorm ideas, and try something else when we forgot salt or soap or bike helmets or tent-trailer keys, or we ran out of eggs for breakfast, or clean clothes, of if the teens were bored, or someone got sand in their eyes or skinned an elbow. These are useful skills not only for camping but for every day — especially so, it turned out, in a sudden disaster.
When my husband, Paul, fell at our seed warehouse on July 7, 2020, he broke his skull, five vertebrae, multiple ribs and both wrists. He suffered brain and spinal cord injuries and severe lacerations on his head.
Our first question, of course, was, “Will he survive?” When the answer was a tentative “yes,” the next questions were, “What now?” and “Will life ever be normal again?”
Thanks to COVID and circumstances, our kids were all living at home or within reach. After his week in the hospital, rather than sending their dad to a rehab center, where no visitors were allowed, they insisted on bringing him home to recover.
Paul and I came home in an ambulance, and his sons carried him into the house, where they had prepared a hospital bed in the living room. In the next weeks, every bit of our creativity, cooperation and resourcefulness was called on as the kids and I worked rotating shifts to care for him.
With both arms and hands wrapped in huge casts, how would he call for help at night? The kids wheeled the bed over to the piano so Paul could pound on the keys with his foot. Problem solved. Soon after, they bought a baby monitor.
Our son Matt installed a hand-held shower nozzle, and another son, Steven, and I gave Paul his first shower. He had to be trussed up in casts and a back brace even for showers, and we soaked not only Paul but ourselves and the entire bathroom, using at least eight towels to mop up.
We used the same group resourcefulness to make drink containers that Paul could reach on his own, hang mirrors so he could watch the activity around him, and carry him outside to see the comet Neowise in the night sky.
Five years later, Paul has multiple scars and a paralyzed arm, but he lives a normal, active life. The kids and I share a deep bond from accomplishing something brutally hard that called on all of our cooperation and resources.
It was a family culture that created this resilience, but it seems like camping together practiced and reinforced it like nothing else.
Paul and I answered the question, “Will life ever be normal again?” by going camping in our favorite yurt at South Beach State Park on Memorial Day. Unlike the other yurts on that loop, the Lewis and Clark is up a hillside, hidden behind rhododendrons, and reached by a path like a long hallway between tall bushes.
We hauled not only jackets and water and food up that path, but also a huge rolling suitcase stuffed with a queen-size memory foam pad to spread on that green vinyl mattress, a necessity at our age.
Despite his paralyzed arm, Paul insisted on carrying the largest and heaviest items.
The last five years have required every ounce of our determination and resourcefulness and adaptability.
Camping again had seemed impossible, and yet, here we were, watching the morning dawn through the large skylight in the center of the yurt, listening to birds and hearing the dim roar of the ocean.
How far we’ve come, I thought, gratefully. How much we’ve been given, and what possibilities are still ahead.
