Amidst the cattails

I’ve been living in a tent for the last ten days — the annual July vacation at my parents’ camp, a peninsula of oak trees that juts out into a marsh on the river. My parents have a little cabin that they built before the 1972 wetlands legislation went into effect, and the rest of us (that is, my siblings and our families) bring tents. We’re a family that keeps getting bigger all the time, and I counted 11 tents this year. The age range spanned 83 years – from my father, who is the oldest, to my niece’s baby, who just turned six weeks.

People often ask, “So what do you do all week?”

We do spend a lot of time sitting around in the shade of the oak trees, talking and joking and playing games. But we also swim, and paddle canoes or kayaks, and build campfires, and cook meals on the grill, and drive to town for ice cream, and go sailing, and play bocce or cards or that game where you toss cornbags through a hole in a board. When the whole family is up, there’s always something going on. And anyone who wants a break from the noisy crowd at the firepit can take an inner tube and float quietly in the marsh.

That’s Dandelion Niece in the photo.