Muir journals for kids.

So we are taking some boys camping this weekend, to include a 20-mile hike. We are going to the C&O Canal, which has a neat story itself. I’d love to get a light mountain bike and ride the whole thing one day, which would not be hard — perhaps to kayak along the length one day, too, later.

The weather for Saturday (hike day) looks gorgeous. Not too warm, definitely not cold. The last time I was there was this same weekend in 2000. I was still a senior in college and hadn’t lived anywhere but Maryland before. I said “Goodbye” to the mountains and valleys there that time; I suppose I knew it would be a very long time before I would return. I was on journal hiatus in those days and instead wrote bad poetry and played a lot of music for staying sane during my grad school applications. And I liked to take a lot of walks. That was my other car-free period, before my three cars in two years while I lived in Carbondale.

I remember coming across a page on the Sierra Club’s site about keeping “nature journals” the way that John Muir did. It’s still there, so I downloaded and printing the template, hand-cut some paper and bound some little nature journals for the boys with red ribbon. If not for poems and notes, they can always be used for rummy scores and keeping track of things seen for future use. It’s as much something for them to think about as to actually use, if that makes sense.

We’re roughing it much more than usual. No kitchen or showers or toilets or electricity. I’m bringing my own food because I don’t want to be one of those pain in the butt vegetarians who gets too vocal about it. And, I like to cook.

Instant coffee in a camp cup. The smell of my musty sleeping bag with the ducks inside. My trusty daypack. Penlights. New hiking shoes. My shortwave radio. Fire. The stars that I took for granted when I live in Southern Illinois. It’s going to be a nice weekend.