Backyard Camping

Long before sta-cations were in vogue, I was a backyard camper.  Our house didn't have air conditioning, so our camping tent staked in the backyard kept us comfortable on steamy summer nights.  Such a treat it was when Dad, Mom and I would roll out our sleeping bags and make the evening a tented, family slumber party.  Before we got the tent, Dad would pull the station wagon close to the kitchen door and lower the car's tailgate and backseat.  The three of us would slither into our bedrolls in the back of the car and settle in for a night among the stars and summer night sounds.  We couldn't roll over, let alone move, because we were jammed shoulder to shoulder into the back of the station wagon. But we were so happy.  Such simple, joyful times are usually captured somewhere in the recesses of my memory.  Fortunately, these particular happy memories were flooded back to me recently while I was taking a refreshing, deep breath of the cool evening air at Devil's Lake.  The layers of decades were peeled away and once again I was a small child of endless summers, reveling in backyard camping with my fun-loving, nature-loving parents.