Ah the joys of the open road. Driving with my wife and son on our camping trip for what I hoped to be a fun and relaxing vacation.

“Are we there yet?” a peppy voice asks.

“No,” I growled, “we are not there and will not be going if you ask again.”

“How about some music?” asks my much more patient wife, Jen. She looks through her phone for a minute and the wheels on the bus starts playing. Not much better but getting there I think.

Half an hour later we are still driving, and it is my turn to choose the song. I go with a classic called the sound of silence and pull onto our exit. As my song ends and Jack chooses his, sigh B.I.N.G.O here we go again.

Finally, after 3 hours in the car we are at our destination. I park the car and we start to unload our bags. We decided to go old school for our trip and just packed the essentials. Our bags have water jugs, a compass, flint, a knife, folding shovel, food trays, tent, sleeping bag, sewing kit, food for a few days, hygiene supplies two changes of clothes, and our one luxury, a portable battery for our phones. And Beary our sons bear. Of course, with Jack being 5 his bag is considerably smaller, and his extra was just added onto mine. This brings me back to 2 decades ago when I was 12 myself and used to go camping and lived in the country with my family. Before I lived in the city and surrounded myself with convinces. I wanted to show my son how I grew up in a limited way at least and teach him some stuff about how to live in the woods for a few days at least.

“Ok hun, got everything?” I ask.

“Think so just the bag after all, right?”

“Yep that should be it. Jack you ready to go?” I ask him. As he is currently pulling at my hand, I assumed that meant yes and we started to walk towards the path. “Ok Jack what do we do before crossing the road?” I ask.

“Look for cars,” he says and makes us stop so he can look. “Ok, no cars we can go!”

 He grabs mine and Jen’s hand and starts to run across the lot. I finally feel at peace here just walking through the woods. So calm and quite no humans around for miles as far as I can see. A nice peaceful walk except for us as Jack is giggling his head off as we lift him up and swing him forward. Just a nice sound to have as all parents know.

“So, Zach are you happy we decided to do this for our vacation?”

“Yes love, this was a great idea. I just hope the Jack likes it. 4 days in the woods might be a bit much for him without his YouTube toy videos and all. But I think we all needed this. Just a time to get away from it all and relax you know. So, thanks for the idea bitch.”

“Hey, language ass,” she says looking down at Jack.

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“Sorry hun, still having trouble with that,” I know most would find us weird, but we have weird pet names for each other. I call her bitch or slut and she calls me ass or jackass. This along with our small arguments about stupid things we find fun and seems to work for us.

We kept walking for a few minutes until Jack started to get tired and sat down. I got down on the ground with him and looked him in the eyes. “Do you want me to carry you for a while?” I ask. He just looked at me and reached up for me. Picking him up, I start walking again with Jen taking Jack’s bag to lighten the load for me.

God, I love that woman, while only 5’ 5” and 150lbs she was tough as hell and very good at organizing things. She always tried her best for us and even when things went wrong we would figure out how to fix it together. Short neck length hair and brown eyes she was a beautiful woman who I was lucky to spend my time with.

We walked for awhile more before finding a spot we could set up our tent. Just the one semi large one for us to squeeze into. I set Jack down and asked him if he wanted to help me set up the tent. He grabbed his bag and just started to empty it and was trying to set it up by himself. Chuckling, I gratefully took off my bag and set it down. Taking out the tent from my bag, Jen handed me the spikes from Jacks and the tarp from her bag.  

Jack and I put the tent together in twice the time it would have taken me by myself, but he seems so proud to have put it together. He keeps going in and out of it making me go in with him. I set up the sleeping bags and tell him its time to make dinner.

“What’s for dinner” he asks. Just hot dogs tonight, nice and easy. Would you like to help me make the fire? His eyes lit up and he says in a surprised voice “yes”.

We gather up some rocks to make a ring and some twigs and wood to make a fire.

“Ok Jack when making a fire we have to be very careful so that we don’t make it to big or catch anything else on fire” “k daddy”. I show him how to set the wood and tinder up so that we can get the fire started and how to make sparks with the flint. He grabs the flint and starts trying to do it with limited success. But he continues until a spark lands and the tinder begins to smoke. I show him how to gently blow on the tinder until it caught on fire and get the rest of the fire going.

Jen cooked the hot dogs and we eat the dinner pretty fast as we are all pretty hungry after all the walking. With the sun going down we decide to turn in and head to sleep. Laying down we sang Jack his lullabies and snuggled until he fell asleep. “good night my bitch”. “Night asshole”.   

A quick breakfast of scrambled eggs later we decided to go for a walk threw the woods. Jack running ahead and looking at everything. “hey Jack” Jen called “how about a game of tag, Your it”.

Laughing Jack ran up and tagged me yelling “your it” and the chase began. Through the trees and bushes we ran laughing as we go. I grabbed Jen and said, “your it hun” and ran away after Jack.

Through all the running we passed deeper into the woods. The leaves changed color from green to red and purple. Out of breath I called for Jack “Jack come here it’s time to settle for a minute, daddy needs to catch his breath.

Looking around I noticed the trees looking weird and realized that I was not sure where we came from. Looking at the sun I figured the general direction we needed to go in so figured we were good to check out these very pretty trees.

Walking through the forest with Jack between us we just looked around us. The leaves were now changing to weirder colors as they seemed to be rainbow colored now. “weird” Jen said. “I know right, pretty though huh.

A few trees merged into an arch and I told Jen “this would be an amazing place to renew our vows someday, perfect trees and so nice and peaceful”. “True, that would be a fun thing to do”.

    Walking under the arch swinging Jack in our arms we felt a strange pressure, and everything went black.