Back from the trip! I tell you, I never felt so free as camping for free. The no see um window covers worked great. I have a lot of things that I want to do and change and you know, unless I made this trial run, I wouldn't have known what exactly I needed. I'm hooked.
Back when I was a young mother with little ones, I packed up the mini-van with car seats and kids and toys and walkers and bottle warmers and diaper bags and playpens and all the many things little ones need just for a weekend trip. The whole ordeal was brutal. And that wasn't for a camping trip; that was a trip 100 miles away to visit relatives. The thing is, I know that my parents never carried that much gear for their children for a week or a month compared to what we were bringing for ONE WEEKEND. It made me think of the things we THINK we need, when really we don't.
I read a book, _Westward the Women_ I think was the title, a compilation of several excerpts of women's diaries who went overland to Oregon and California in the mid 1800s. They talked about how during the trip that the weight of all the over-packing was causing some of the rigs to break axles and such and the burdens were too much for the animals pulling them. They said in their diaries that they had favorite things that all of the sudden were like millstones around their necks. And one woman wrote about seeing a beautiful massive hutch tossed on the side of the road where others had come to the same conclusion: carrying excessive things just wasn't worth it.
So I spent some time thinking about that, about what is excessive and what is needful. I think that many of us THINK we need a lot more than what is truly necessary. This was a very enlightening discovery.
Back when I was a young mother with little ones, I packed up the mini-van with car seats and kids and toys and walkers and bottle warmers and diaper bags and playpens and all the many things little ones need just for a weekend trip. The whole ordeal was brutal. And that wasn't for a camping trip; that was a trip 100 miles away to visit relatives. The thing is, I know that my parents never carried that much gear for their children for a week or a month compared to what we were bringing for ONE WEEKEND. It made me think of the things we THINK we need, when really we don't.
I read a book, _Westward the Women_ I think was the title, a compilation of several excerpts of women's diaries who went overland to Oregon and California in the mid 1800s. They talked about how during the trip that the weight of all the over-packing was causing some of the rigs to break axles and such and the burdens were too much for the animals pulling them. They said in their diaries that they had favorite things that all of the sudden were like millstones around their necks. And one woman wrote about seeing a beautiful massive hutch tossed on the side of the road where others had come to the same conclusion: carrying excessive things just wasn't worth it.
So I spent some time thinking about that, about what is excessive and what is needful. I think that many of us THINK we need a lot more than what is truly necessary. This was a very enlightening discovery.
