Communing with Nature

We spent the holiday on the lake. Five of us living in very close quarters but with loads of nature to commune with. The only problem is that we’re out of practice when it comes to roughing it—and we’re not the only ones. In my small boat you could find convenience foods of every variety from cookies and Pop Tarts to microwave-able macaroni and cheese. You’d also find the microwave needed to heat the above mentioned dish as well as the generator needed to run the microwave. There were beds for my entire family, complete with memory foam mattress toppers and two pillows each. We had a propane grill and a butane burner. We also had the swamp cooler to cool off the cabin at night because it’s almost impossible to sleep comfortably when it’s 95 degrees at bedtime. There was a huge cooler stocked with ice cubes and an obscene amount of soda pop. And, when bed time came, we each had a quick shower and watched a movie on our HD TV before turning in.


Now, if you think my tiny boat lacked nothing needed to enjoy the comforts of home while floating on the lake then you haven’t seen the houseboats that share the lake today. There are boats three stories high—practically a floating apartment building, with satellite TV and misters on deck. They have four Jet skis anchored on the deck and they are flanked by two types of speedboat, one for skiing the other for sightseeing. There are blow-up toys and sun canopies pitched on the sand. They have freezers and ice makers, staterooms, and hot tubs on the top deck. And, on this holiday weekend, one houseboat treated the entire bay to a professional-style fireworks display to rival most small towns.

I’m beginning to wonder if we are even capable of slowing down. We pack so much stuff into our vacations that I need an entire day to wash everything and put everything away. What worries me most about this extreme behavior that is taking over our once humble family camping trip is that we are doing all this because we don’t really want to be alone with ourselves. Faced with several days of quiet, will I find my own company lacking? It’s a troubling question that sent me on a solitary hike away from the sounds of generators and powerboats. I forced myself to just be quiet. After an hour I discovered that I’m not boring (at least not to myself), and I don’t mind being alone with my thoughts. But I also discovered that I’ve been using all the static of modern life to drown noise of my inner-most dreams. I have dreams—things I want to accomplish for myself, not for my kids or for my community or for my job. But these dreams are tough. There’s no one willing to push me along because they are solitary dreams and the only person who will know that I failed is me. So I’m committed to some quiet time in my week. I don’t really care about the top song countdown so I can spend my commute setting the goals that will, with perseverance, get me to my dreams. It’s good to unplug, but I should warn you that it’s also disquieting.