Camping

Camping is soul food for the introvert like me. Someone who loves being outside and with nature, who adores God’s creation and doesn’t care if he’s not in a tent or the only toilet is an eight minute walk away. The tall dark trees surround you, the ever present flowing of the water, the singing birds, the rays of sunlight piercing through the roof of evergreens. Cooking over a fire with every meal. Your favorite people camping with you, what could be better? 

You spend the day gathering fire wood, cooking the next meal, making up games, running through the woods, swinging on ropes, and jumping into water. The days are spent laughing with friends, talking about everything, just enjoying God’s nature and the people around you. The nights are fun, the temperature drops some, we sing songs of worship to God while playing the guitar and drumming on anything that makes noise. Going to bed under the stars, watching meteors fly by. Getting up with the other morning people, just the three of you, to build up the fire enough to have a cup of joe. Enjoying the early morning, the light growing stronger, the people trickle in. But you were there, you were there when everyone went to bed, and were up before everyone. You were there listening to nature.

Many times I’ve thought about nature. How wild it is, and yet so uniform. So uniformly chaotic some might say. And yet here it is, the wilderness, not made by man, but out of chance, by God. I call it God’s last piece of Eden. No, it’s not the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden wasn’t full of sin, in our world today our whole ecology is based on the Fall. But it’s God’s handy work, and I can often hear him most when I’m alone surrounded by the wild. Sure man can do great things, new inventions, sky scrapers and the like, but in the end what is more amazing, the attempts of man to create things, or God’s nature? I know I would rather see pictures of Nature than anything man has created. Man wants to be in control, we seek to overtake nature in our attempts to recreate it. There is a place for farms and gardens, the natural breeding of plants, but in the end, if I had no wilderness to go go, I’d find my life much more depressing. Camping is soul food, and without it, I’d find coming back to my this busy life much harder. It puts things in perspective I think.

English Vintner