Summer

I just changed the pictures on the blog tonight to reflect my favorite summer activities.

The small picture on the right is a shot of the Skov kitchen tent, the infamous Chuck Box on the new table, and my Pirate Queen Flag that Tom gave me for my birthday before he was deployed to Iraq - again :(

The big banner picture on the blog (which I can't figure out how to make it small enough to fit the space without scrolling - sorry) is "The Village Camping Crew." These are some of our closest friends and family members who join us for the annual Memorial Day and Labor Day camping expeditions that bookend our summer. The timed photo definitely captured the character of this familial crew.

We figured out that the Skov Brothers (elder) and I have been camping Memorial Day weekend since 1986 - 23 years of weathering the unpredictable spring weather in tents in a Minnesota State Park. We joke that our children will find us dead of exposure huddled around a smoldering campfire when we're in our golden years. They'll have to explain to their children, "This is the way Grama B and Grampa Dale would have wanted it. They made us freeze our asses off in all manner of extreme weather on this weekend when we were kids. Let's have a prayer and call the sheriff."

Last weekend, on the 23rd anniversary of this gathering, we experienced the wonderful extremes of the weather. It was cold, it was rainy, it was hot, it was sunny. Forestville State Park was the beginning of our group camping experience and the catalyst for many of us learning to fly fish for trout. The group sites have changed, our group has grown and contracted and grown and changed. The constant over the years has been some Skovs with a Clark or two mixed in.

Yes, we have documented the journey in The Chuck Box Journal. We have friends and family members who have declined to continue battling the elements, some children who are on their early adult journeys away from us, and some old campers who have rejoined us. (Welcome back MH and Tom!)

There are many other friends who many of us count as the Village of support that journeys through life with us - but this is the camping crew. We love those who no longer, or never have camped with us. But in the summer time I treasure these friends who come together to live a simple existence now and then.

We erect our shelters and kitchen, build and maintain our communal fire for cooking, heat, and as a gathering place for storytelling, we eat communally and cooperatively, we drink, we play, we read, we fish, we sleep, we walk. Most importantly, we care for one another.

I am deeply thankful for the Camping Village.

P.S. Caught a 14" brown trout on a Blue Wing Olive. Saw the biggest beaver ever swim past me submerged in three feet of water no more than five feet from my chest-wader-clad legs!