Mother’s Day Wkd madcap recap, 10 things I learned

Friday and Saturday I took off to the Poconos with my daughter for a mother/daughter retreat. The whole getaway sneaked up on me, and I realized about an hour before we had to leave that we were due to attend this overnight cabin camping getaway.

Ten things I learned from my getaway:

1. When a female retreat speaker likes to take off her shoes (and has toes that look like man fingers) I have trouble concentrating.

2. Camp cabins have a wet sock meets wet canine smell. This is normal.

3. A retreat menu consists of 300% of one’s daily requirement of carbohydrates. (MMM and uh-oh.)

4. A camping getaway is not complete unless several bugs are captured and treated like members of the family, before they die in captivity.

5. Turkeys wake up at 4 a.m….vocalizing.

6. Even if a mom/daughter hike includes spotting deer up close, friendly fowl, and indescribable beauty, wet pants, shoes, and socks will incur massive amounts of overshadowing whining.

7. Staying up past 11 p.m. for its own sake makes an eight year old immeasurably ecstatic and then immeasurably exhausted 12 hours later. Usually there is crying involved.

8. Apparently, when camping, there’s no such thing as “too much candy”.

9. Unspoken camp rule: carbonated beverages are a right, not a privilege.

10. Mysterious forces beyond one’s control cause one’s washcloths and towels to dry in no less than four days.

What are some things you’ve learned from camping?


photos of our time away.

 

Published by

Spark My Muse

Lisa Colón DeLay writes often on matters of the attending to the inner life, creating a beloved community, spiritual formation, and consciousness. She is also a designer, teacher, speaker, and host of the weekly broadcast Spark My Muse since 2015. Lisa is Latina (born in Puerto Rico) and holds an MA in Spiritual Formation and is the author of "The Wild Land Within" (Broadleaf Books) and other books.

4 thoughts on “Mother’s Day Wkd madcap recap, 10 things I learned”

  1. Awesome! Oh, btw, my parents have turkeys that travel past their house in the wee hours…they know all about those wonderful creatures! LOL

  2. 1. Remote, isolated camp sights in the pine woods of the Mogollon Rim in northeastern Arizona are a magnet for drunken Mariachi bands.

    2. If you normally brew your coffee to a viscosity that could trap, kill, and then preserve sabertooth tigers for future centuries to find, then campfire coffee isn’t all that bad.

    3. A four-year-0ld boy will think playing flashlight tag with his dad on an absolutely dark country road without street lights is better than Disney Land. This is a moment that means your life, whatever came before or comes after, is not a failure.

  3. I know when I first started going camping it was really an excuse to stay up late, pee outside and eat grossly unhealthy foods – candy and soda alongside high numbers of sausage.

    After that I got into backpacking, which doesn’t allow for any of those things. boo

  4. I would like to have a ‘blog’ of Ellie’s perception of the camping weekend with Mom. That would be very interesting. Love, Aunt Muriel

Comments are closed.