Another holiday weekend is coming up and we’re faced with one of those amazing dilemmas that only Brent and I seem to get into. I know others do, but do you know “them”? No, you know us, and if you know us, you know that this is the kinda of thing we get into.
Independence Day weekend is this weekend. People are making or have made plans for weeks, maybe months, on where they are going this holiday weekend. The destination for a lot of people? A campground.
Now, we live in a campground. If everyone is coming to a campground, including this one, where are we going to go? To another campground? You see the funny dilemma.
In my story on summer beginning while we were camped in Wilhelmina State Park in Arkansas, I talk about the difference in the campground during the week when no one is there and the chaos that arrives with the first holiday weekend of summer. It’s been eight years since writing that, and nothing has changed.
We still don’t “go” anywhere on holiday weekends. We avoid the crowds, noise, clutter, and hassle. After all, we live in a campground. Why should be go to another campground when we can get it here?
People still pile into their cars and campers with too much stuff and bring their loud music, snot-nosed noise-making children, and big screen televisions so they can sit among nature’s beauty and watch the NASCAR races, World Wide Wrestling, or the latest Survivor crazy show. They bring their bikes, radios, motorcycles, grills, lawn chairs, and spread themselves out around their camping spot.
So, we stay in our campground, surrounded by the familiar, and await their leaving. They will leave and go back to their houses and apartments. We’ll stay in our movable home, ready to flee at the alert of an oncoming hurricane, and wait for the peace to return to the campground. Then we will get out our radios, lawn chairs, grill, bikes, and paraphernalia, and spread it around our own campsite. But no one will be here to see it.