Flash Friday ~ Effortful Fun

 

I first read the term "effortful fun" in Laura Vanderkam's email newsletter last Friday morning. Vanderkam's example of effortful fun was reading, which is interesting, because even though I love to read, I don't exactly consider it fun, and I also think of it as more of a lazy default activity rather than something that requires effort. At the time I read the newsletter, I was going through my email as a way of procrastinating getting ready to go camping, which is an extremely effortful, but fun, activity.

We'd planned the trip a few months earlier, then rescheduled it due to a friend's daughter's graduation party that would fall in the middle of our original weekend. We'd be going to our favorite spot, the place we'd gone nearly every year for the last 16 years. But still, I dreaded the prospect. Not the camping. Not the location. Not even the inevitable rain. But the massive amount of work required to find, sort, and pack all our camping gear and shop for and prep all the food. Not to mention the unpacking, cleaning, and putting away when we returned (a process I've dubbed "decampression"). Wouldn't it be easier to stay home?

Perhaps sensing my foot-dragging-ness, C stepped in and carried out some of the tasks I usually do--hauling the gear up from the basement, grocery shopping--on top of his usual jobs of loading about a cord of wood in the truck, getting together hatchet and lanterns, filling the water jug, washing water buckets, and tuning up the old Coleman stove. I eventually rousted myself out of my funk enough to sort through the gear and decide what we should take, wash the dishes that had been sitting in the musty basement all winter, load the coolers and organize the food, lug everything out to the car, and write a list for the children of their packing duties.

C and I headed out in afternoon in the pickup, with the tents, the coolers, the dishes, and the wood. The kids would follow later, after E and Z got home from school, M got off of work, and they had all packed their personal items into the car, with the sleeping bags and mats, duffel bags and pillows. It was cloudy and chilly, and I was tired. I still didn't feel like going camping. I dozed in the not-that-comfortable passenger seat, while C drove and surfed radio stations.

After we crossed the Kennebec River, drove under Route 1 in Bath, turned down the peninsula, and passed the shipyard, I began to perk up. I could sense the sea air. When the mudflats and estuaries came into view I could feel my body relax. Near the tip of the peninsula, I began to feel excited. We were going camping! A whole weekend away from screens and news and housework and real life. We stopped at the farm stand and bought two gorgeous pies---strawberry-rhubarb and raspberry-blueberry---and headed across the causeway and onto the island. We picked a campsite well removed from other campers, but not too long a walk from the beach, set up two tents, started a smoky fire to beat back the mosquitoes, and cut two generous slices pie. This was the life. Effortful fun. A lot of work, but so worth it.

What's even more effortful than car camping? Backpacking! And what's more fun than going backpacking? Reading about someone else doing all that work. If you want a little effortless fun, check out my book, Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail. 

Seah Kayaking and Nature Journaling

The very first thing I did the first time I came to Maine was go on a five-day sea kayaking trip. I went on another a year later and took kayaks out for shorter adventures during my two years in college on the coast. I bought a used ("tupperware") boat many long years ago, but only had it out on the ocean once or twice before I had kids and my kayak became a dust- and spider-collecter. I've gone out sea kayaking maybe twice since we had kids (one of those trips is chronicled here). And I didn't know how much I missed paddling, that salty film on my skin, even lugging heavy boats over mudflats.



Then I had the great good fortune to have been invited to teach a nature journaling workshop for Northstar Adventures and I spent last Saturday paddling with a small group of people in beautiful Penobscot Bay, from Castine Harbor to a pair of islands in Brooksville.

There we explored the shore, did a variety of writing and drawing exercises, and ate a delicious lunch (some of our group even took a swim in the cold water).



It was a pretty divine day and I was so happy to be back out on salt water (and wondering why the hell we live in Maine but inland). With each workshop, freelance gig, and piece of writing sold, I feel one tiny step closer to my career goals (which I once articulated as, "Go canoeing and write about it.") Yet, as we speak, I'm sending out resumes, because the demands of three teenage kids (all of whom have stomachs, feet, and teeth, three expensive body parts), a house whose appliances and fixtures are all exactly 16 years old and therefore all meeting their demise at once, and two 20+-year-old cars mean that the necessity for "real job" is becoming unavoidable. Which means that going canoeing and writing about it will once again become a weekend/evening/lunchbreak/interstitial pursuit. I won't say I'm not sad about that.

But in the meantime, if you want to join me for a THREE DAY!!! nature journaling workshop, I'll be teaching at Little Lyford Lodge in the Greenville area for the Appalachian Mountain Club. See here for details.

Summer Round-Up

I thought summer wouldn't go by so fast this year, since we didn't take a three- (or eight-) week road (or hiking) trip in the middle of it, but, if anything, I think it went faster. After the first day of "Hey Mom, hey Mom, hey Mom," I knew I had to sign E and Z up for a LOT of camps, which I did, which was nice for me (and probably for them, too, but they won't admit it), but it also resulted in a lot of the same kind of rushing around to get places on time that characterizes the rest of the year and is, I believe, a huge contributor to making time fly by. But, this summer was not ALL rushing around. Since my last, 4th-of-July update, we took a weekend trip to Vermont (for a funeral and some college tours, but also a bit of sight-seeing and hanging out in swimming pools; I have no photo evidence of that trip, however).

We also went to the beach.



And I, without kids, did some bird-watching.



And saw Maine's peculuar red-billed tropic bird.



And some bonus seals.



We went to the beach again.



And we went on a 5-day camping trip.


With 4 other families, for a total of 21 people, 12 of them being males under the age of 18 (five of those being males 13 years old).



While there, we climbed a small mountain.



Then we went to the beach again.



And we went hiking again.





And, finally, we celebrated the nominal (though not calendrical and, this year, not even weather-wise) last day of summer by taking a gorgeous boat ride among harbors and islands and coves.



This summer may have gone by too fast, and it may not have been marked by an epic vacation, but it was still pretty darn nice.

Beach Day

This is the first summer in four years that we don't have a big vacation planned. No three week road trip. No five-hundred mile hiking trip. And I've been feeling kinda sorry for myself. Whenever anyone asks what we're doing this summer, I sigh and say, "Nothing."

We do have a camping trip with friends planned, and a few days at in-laws' camp, but nothing epic, and I'd pretty much resigned myself to a summer spent puttering around the house, tackling some projects we've been thinking about for a long time. One of those, is painting the kitchen, and I would have spent all of the last two weekends doing that, except I was persuaded (with little difficulty) to attend a bird club trip the first of the two Saturdays and we were invited to E and Z's best friend's birthday party—at the beach—this past Saturday.

My kids are some kind of mutants who, whenever I say, "Let's go the beach," say "No! I don't want to. I hate the beach." But when a friend is involved, they change their tune. So we piled in the car and trundled off the to beach on what promised to be a hot, sunny, beachy kind of day, and hit the waves.

Sitting here, writing in 90 degree heat, 900 percent humidity, I feel cool just looking at this photo.

And it was pretty spectacular. It doesn't mean I won't have to coax and cajole them next time I want to go to the beach, but at least they admitted to having had fun.

In other coastal news, my essay "The World in their Hands," which takes place in part at the beach, and which appeared in The Maine Review last year, has been republished on Nature Writing for your reading pleasure.

Hermit Island Retrospective

This year's Memorial Weekend trip to Hermit Island marks the twelfth year in a row we've gone  camping there. While I don't anticipate it will be the last, I was feeling nostalgic for all our past trips and felt like rounding up a few several photos. Over the years, we've gone with various groups of friends and by ourselves, for the boys' birthdays and (more recently) for Memorial Day. One year we went in September. Each trip is a little different from those in the past, but every one includes: frisbee on the beach, dinner over the campfire (often grilled pizza, but this year I decided to forego the large amount of labor ahead-of-time that involves), sometimes a hike to the north end of the island, once or twice bicycles, always digging in the sand and chasing waves. But it's always fun and though I dread packing and unpacking the camping gear, it gets easier every year.

This year was extra different because M (yeah, that tiny kid standing on the log in the top photo) had to work Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, so he drove himself down to join us Sunday evening. We brought a friend of E and Z's with us, but none of our grownup friends were able to go. The weekend alternated between rainy and cold (but thankfully not both at the same time) as it often (but not always, as evidenced by lots of blue sky and sun in these images) does, and we spent a lot of time huddled around the fire, Z heating up smooth rocks for people to hold and me reading out loud. It wasn't our most active camping trip ever, but it was relaxing and fun and wonderful.