5 Quick Things #382 🏕️

get outside, don't laugh at salads, appreciate your childhood, & watch Amadeus

Hi there,

As you’re reading this, my family and I are camping with friends from our parish. If you’ve read me for any length of time, you probably know that we’re big on camping, not only because we enjoy getting out in nature and because it’s a relatively affordable weekend getaway, but because of how it forms our kids.

Camping forces you off screens and turns down the volume on modern life (even in easy, well-appointed campsites), it requires rolling up your sleeves and helping, and it provides simplified entertainment—hiking, exploring, swimming, building fires, talking, just being. Food is straightforward and unfancy, festivities look like playing card games and sitting folding chairs around a campfire, and close quarters require charity and camaraderie. We’ve been camping since our three kids were literal babies, so to them, camping is a normal family outing, and we’ve done it several times a year for decades now. The younger and more often you take them camping, the easier it gets. Is it messy? Yes. But that’s kind-of the point.

Now, would I want to camp long-term? Probably not. Do we have a camper that provides me a mattress? Absolutely, and I have no shame in that game. But I do love camping. Kyle and I are going again in a few weeks for our anniversary, and I’m grateful to have a husband that loves it even more than I do.

Campfire. Kachanovka (1888), by Konstantin Makovsky #

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5 Quick Things ☕️

1. Earlier this week I wrote a short essay for Commonplace subscribers¹: “The greater sum of my 80’s childhood parts is a general carefree oblivion from genuine tragedy: entire afternoons spent with friends at the neighborhood pool (of course our parents weren’t there; why would they be?), riding bikes with neighborhood kids, exploring the nearby creek bed and make-believing fantasy worlds therein, reading books on the couch, weekly after-school Girl Scout meetings, near-daily dance lessons, showing up for dinner when the street lights flickered on and eating what was put in front of me, and falling asleep hearing the echo of whatever it was my parents watched after kids’ eyes and ears left the equation. Homework was minimal and playtime was priority.”

2. I’m only 48 years old and have zero plans to retire (because I love my work as a writer), but I’ve been thinking about the next stage of my life a lot lately—it’s probably to do with having an engaged daughter. Whatever the reason, I absolutely loved every word of this essay from The Old Grey Thinker: “You know what’s worse than being ignored? Being patronized. Most ‘tech for seniors’ looks like it was designed by someone who thinks we spend our days confused by doorknobs. Giant buttons. Beige interfaces. Condescending language. Stock photos of people laughing at salads.”

3. A tip for dinners while camping, especially only a night or two: make a soup ahead of time and just reheat it at the campsite. It’s easy-peasy, nobody will mind (especially you), and other than any toppings that accompany it, it’s literally one bowl to mess with and clean up. Done.

4. No surprise here, but I wholeheartedly agree with Megan Hyatt Miller here on why we all must spend more time outdoors: “I didn’t take my phone or listen to podcasts while I had my hands in the dirt. I just gardened. I listened to the birds, watched the bees going from flower to flower, waved at the neighbors passing by, and felt the cool pebbles under my bare feet. On a stressful day with the kids or the business, if I just spend 10–15 minutes in the garden, I could come back inside a new person.”

5. And finally, this is one of my favorite all-time movie scenes, yet the added music visuals makes it even more *chef’s kiss*. …Such a good movie.

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Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📻

The Americana playlist Spotify made for me (I mean, I don’t really think of myself listening to ‘Americana’, but I like this playlist so maybe I do…?)

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Quotable 💬

“My attraction to wild places is, in part, an attempt to relive the innocence and imagination lost after youth. To be submersed in the innocence of a forest, the ungoverned landscape, to exist by my own laws and no one else’s, even if only briefly—this is one of the primary beacons that guides me back into wild places.”

- Daniel J. Rice

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Which is your go-to? ☕️🍵

I’ve asked this multiple times, but it’s been a few years and more than a few of you submitted it as a poll question, so I guess that means it’s time to ask it again. I still am, long have been, probably always will be, Team Coffee. I can’t imagine functioning without it, and like using a camper for camping, I have no shame in that game. (It’s also what made me decide on the next poll question.)

• Coffee: 66%

• Tea: 29%

• Ugh on Both: 5%

Find next week’s poll here.

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Quick Links 🔗

• 📐Create your own Rule of Life

• 🎧 Listen to A Drink With a Friend

• 📖 Read my books

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Join the next pilgrimage: Scotland!

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Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

When you’re forced out into nature, what do you like best about the experience? What’s hardest?

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Have a great weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. - The work of a young stonemason. …Astonishing.

1. Technically, it’s an excerpt from my forthcoming book, but still in its unedited infancy, so TBD.