Camping with Teens

Johnny Jones, September 1990

August wasn't summerlike for me: It was far too hectic and stressful. We returned from vacation, got Bryan off for his NASA trip to Johnson Space Center, I went to a two-day training conference for Prison Fellowship. The day after I got back, my sister, Jo, and her daughters came to visit - and that was only the first two weeks. Jo left on Wednesday, then on Friday we had promised to take our kids and four of their friends camping.

"Oh, no," I thought. "I don't think I can handle anything else!" In the meantime, things were not going well for school schedules, so we were checking into alternatives.

But a promise is a promise, and I'd made the one about camping at the beginning of the summer. "Pray for good weather if you really want to go," I told our kids. "Because I'm not staying in a tent in the rain."

I had just read the Newsweek special edition about teenagers, so I knew what their experts said I had to expect: "Parents may describe them as sullen and self-absorbed. They can also be secretive and rude. They hang 'Do Not Disturb' signs on their doors, make phone calls from closets and behave churlishly at the dinner table if they can bring themselves to sit there at all."

Wonderful! While both of us were stressed out, we had a high-work situation with a whole bunch of teenagers, whom the popular culture describes as slightly more fun for parents than a vacation in a viper pit. Secretly, I almost hoped for foul weather, so we would have an excuse to get out of at least one commitment.

But the day dawned sunny. By the time we got to Alley Springs campground, the six teenagers were all hungry. In fact, hunger was the most dominant complaint the entire weekend. And the kids who were supposed to be "..sullen and self-absorbed..." helped me set up and clean up lunch. With no objections. Hey, this wasn't starting off so badly.

Next, everyone wanted to have fun - as much as possible, as soon as possible. But Chip and I wanted tents pitched before we went anywhere. And we needed to inflate the tubes we brought for floating, as well as the air mattresses that would shield us from the hard ground. So we put our plastic air pump to work.

Everyone worked at unloading the gear and setting up tents, with the kids dividing the labor among themselves. By the time we changed into swimsuits, we had three tents standing with sleeping bags and duffel bags inside them. It looked downright neat! There were no shirkers: Everyone pitched in to help. Towards the end, when we were being held up by our air Wal-Mart pump, a couple of the boys resorted to blowing air mattresses up the old-fashioned way - using lots of breath. That was their idea, not ours. These kids were breaking the rules.

Still, everything was going at a breakneck pace so we could get down to the river. My back still felt like it had an extra fifty pounds between the shoulder blades.

Our idea for floating, since we had only one vehicle, was to float down the river a mile or two and then walk back up. But the kids from Eminence said we should float to Circle B. They assured us they could find us a ride back. "We know everyone in town," they guaranteed.

"How far is it?" I asked. But my question was lost. The kids were already in the water. "Probably about four miles," I answered myself.

So we started off with tubes, a plastic boat, and an air mattress. By the time we got a mile downstream, one of the tubes had developed a definite hiss, and was deflating fast. We rearranged our modes of transport to put two people on a tube that had held just one, and plunged ahead.

Where Alley Spring joined the Jacks Fork River, I started teasing the kids about getting into the cold water, and about pushing one another in. All the while, I avoided the cold water myself. Unfortunately, that attitude came to the attention of the young men, who filled our boat with spring water - then dumped it on me.

After that, I thought it was time to get going again, so Chip and I assumed our back-to-back posture on the big tube. Now the river was colder and curvier. Once, where the river makes almost an L, we got caught in the backwater. Have you ever tried to make an inner tube, with two people on it, go where you wanted? Even with one of the paddles from the boat, it wasn't easy. About that time, I thought, "I don't care. Let's just stay here." The rhythm of the river was relaxing me.

But we had to get moving: The kids were asking about supper. We were reminded of the disadvantage of tubes when even canoes seemed to whiz by, like trucks on the interstate passing a bicycle. We warned the kids behind us, "Stay in the current! You'll get stuck over here," as they rounded the bend behind us. "How much farther is it, Mom?" Amy asked. "I'm hungry."

It took six hours for the eight-mile float, with a stop for jumping from a 20 foot bluff the local kids knew. But our young friends from Eminence were right: It took only a couple of minutes to find someone with a pickup to take us to camp, where we immediately started building a fire to roast hot dogs for supper.

While the fire was warming, the kids ate a whole box of Ritz crackers. Then, after hot dogs and marshmallows in the night so dark we couldn't really tell when anything was cooked, the kids took the pillows out of the tents and onto the green for a huge pillow fight. Walkers stopped by to smile at their antics. And, after all their responsibility setting up camp and helping with meals, I realized these really were kids. It wasn't the same as camping with adult friends.

The media often speaks about teenagers almost as a new breed of monster. Wrong. These kids were responsible and friendly, and our time together was fun. Our experience was closer to what Dr. Benjamin Spock described: "Of course some fortunate parents are able to enjoy their children most of the time - even in adolescence." We do. The high energy, teasing, and giggles invigorate us.

A teen researcher said, "There's a real need for places for teenagers to go where there's a modicum (bit) of adult involvement." Our six got more than a modicum; Chip and I shared all their activities. We ended our day with a devotional, filling the campground with songs.

One of the ironies of life is that sometimes doing what we least want to do turns out the best. Whoever heard of coming back relaxed after a camping trip with six teenagers? But my stress disappeared somewhere on the river. Yes, we have problems. It seemed to me the entire month of August was filled with them. But being able to enjoy our teenagers is a blessing beyond measure, and makes all the other worries worthwhile.

Note:  Oh for the joy of having teenagers again!