Replying to Avatar Stacking Functions

Quick story about taking my young boys camping for the first time..

Little backstory: the only show on TV that we watch in our house is 'Alone', where 10 contestants get dropped in the bush with 10 items to see who can last the longest. My 2 young sons both especially like the show and have been wanting to go backcountry camping for the first time so they can pack their 10 items and give it a go.

Also about a year ago I found a kids book called "Adventures in Big Thicket" that they've been reading before bed for months. It combines southeast Texas folklore with the wisdom of Solomon, and tells tales of a variety of woodland and marsh animal characters.

So for the younger one's birthday we made the 4+ hour trek to the Big Thicket in eastern Texas to camp and look for some of their favorite creatures from the book.

The timing wasn't great since it's summer and the humidity was almost 100%, all of the creeks and rivers were in flood state bc of so much rain, but we had a great time!

We searched for gators, my older son ran over a snake on his bike (and spotted a bunch of others), we made an all night fire with soggy wood and cooked barbacoa tacos

We found carnivorous plants (4 of the 5 species of north America are there)

Aftet a few nights we ended up coming home with about 100 mosquito and chigger bites, and finally found a gator the last day (the boys named it Old Gus like from the book). They were so stoked!

I'll say they took the good and the bad parts in stride, and we plan to go back in fall hunting season and bring bows & arrows. Any camping from here on will feel like glamping to them lol

Upon return we had a birthday party for the younger one with all his friends. The boys kissed the floor of the house when they walked in, and had a whole new appreciation for air conditioning and bug/reptile free spaces :)

#camping #bigthicket #dadstr #alone #storytime
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1776 6mo ago

That’s awesome. You’re doing those boys such a huge service doing “real” camping with them in the bush with no amenities. Some of my best memories are afternoon outings with my Dad at all times of year, where he’d tell me we could cook lunch out in the bush and stay the whole afternoon on one condition. We were only allowed to take one match. If I could light the fire with a single match and no paper, we could have a cookout. If I couldn’t, the adventure would be over and we’d go back home. You wouldn’t believe the care I took to make sure I had the driest material of all sizes that I could find, staged in a sheltered spot for that one shot lol. He likely had a Bic in his pocket but I never found out.

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Stacking Functions 6mo ago

Thanks for sharing that, I love these anecdotes.

And yea I had the kids grab the dangling pine needles out of the tree branches since those were the driest ones. They love making fire at home too (what boy doesn't), and help me make biochar.

My dad never took me camping or taught me much in the ways of nature so I'm trying to correct that for our future generations.

I wondered if I should even share this story so glad to hear it resonated