Welcome to summer camp for adults

in which the author is grasping at straws for a topic

Christian says our life in New Zealand reminds him of summer camp. Canoe trips. Campfires. A candy bar or soda pop once a week, if you’re lucky. He appreciates the simplicity of making do with what you have — and not desiring more than what you need. (It’s also, I’d argue, the simple pleasure of having someone else cook your meals, wash your clothes and plan your days, but all snark aside...)

Let’s honor Christian’s childhood memories by teasing out the analogy. In what ways is our current life like sleep-away summer camp?

(Disclaimer: Christian was a camp kid; I was not. So you’ll please forgive my hazy understanding of what camp is like.)

Some of the things we do at camp

How our life is like summer camp

1. Cold mornings. We wake before the sun, warm under blankets, the tips of our noses cold. My smart watch whispers in haptics: wake up. The dog approacheth the side of the bed with his breath.

2. Proximity to nature. We hear the ocean from our house. We watch sparrows and starlings bathe in our rain gutters. We see rabbits hopping in the night, possum roadkill in the morning.

3. Rustic living quarters. Our walls are paperboard, like a display at the science fair. Our windows are single-glazed — they whistle a bit in the wind. The front door key is a bent old thing.

4. Rowdy campers. Our cabin mates, in order of boisterousness and noisiness: Bodhi the dog, Mr. Pebbles the mouse and his four successors (Mr. Pebbles II, Mr. Pebbles III, Mr. Pebbles IV and Mr. Pebbles V), and countless flies, whom we don’t bother to name but have stopped trying to kill.

5. Activities. Any given day will find us campers studying our health apps and deciding whether to partake in strength training, yoga, night running or competitive television viewing. It’s not a hard decision.

6. Day trips. We follow the winding roads of the north. We drive to Whangarei for supplies, dentist appointments and the Fat Camel Cafe. We take a ferry to Waiheke, an airplane to Wellington.

7. Weather. If it rains, it rains. There is no stopping it.

8. Astronomy. We scramble to the top of the bluff to watch the red aurora glow and the moon set. The only constellation we know is Orion.

9. Quiet bunk time. At night, Christian listens to podcasts. I read Harry Potter in Japanese, dropping the book on myself several times before I realize I’m technically asleep. The dog snores. Christian snores. I snore.

Anyway, camp is pretty fun, I guess.

Next week, we’ll drive south, all the way to Rotorua — our longest drive yet. If it doesn’t rain (or even if it does), we’re scheduled for a kayak tour in a glowworm cave, a visit to Hobbiton and a tour at a Maori cultural center.

Meanwhile, our cabin mate Bodhi will go to yet another sleep-away camp… his home away from home away from home, where he’s up to his elbows in mud and they give him beef bones to gnaw on.

Not sure what Mr. Pebbles and the flies have planned.

Hope you all are well! Until next time…