A year ago, we did our first camping trip with friends. We’ve camped a number of times with family, but had never been fully independent camping. We’d camp with my parents and they brought the camp kitchen and planned the meals. I was pretty nervous the first time we went it alone. But then we had an amazing time and were talking about doing it again this year by the end of that first trip.

This time around, you could say there was no real reason to be anxious. We knew it was worth all the work, and we knew it would be great. Unfortunately, my antidepressants stopped working and the new one I recently started on is working for the depression, but unlike the last med, this one wasn’t is kind of hopeless with anxiety. To say I’ve been irritable lately doesn’t really cover it. And after close to a year without  the sharp, serrated edge of unmitigated Nervous Nelly, I’d forgotten how bad it was.

I spent the week before camping slowly pulling out supplies and making a huge pile. I also spent a ton of time freaking out and accomplishing nothing. It was a terrible feeling.

We planned to a menu to meal share with our friends. I got a couple of new solar lanterns and a cooler. We ordered a food delivery with lots of fruit and s’mores fixings. We did a lot of shopping for the s’mores because we were planning a taste testing and wanted options.

Despite all the procrastination, I got it together.  We packed two cars to the gills with kids and camping gear and headed out on time(!). Just like last year, we lost cell service several miles before we arrived at our campgrounds. There’s a safety in knowing you just CAN’T use your phone. When it’s not an option, you stop thinking about it.We planned to get to our campsite shortly after check-in. Last year, all of us arrived after dark. Putting up tents in the pitch dark of the Adirondacks was pretty terrible. We had a new tent we’d never set up before and it’s not user friendly. I never again wanted to fumble with it after dark.

We had to get two camp sites because our squad is deep and NYS only allows 6 people per site. We set the kitchen and the kids up at the lower campsite. That huge, unwieldy tent, which last year held the parents and one kid, is big enough for all six of the kids we had with us, so with their agreement, we put up just one tent for them to share. We put a smaller parents’ tent up on the second site, across the road and up a slight hill.

We made spaghetti for dinner, with sausages cooked over the fire. Our friends arrived and joined us for dinner, and once they set up their site, we all gathered around the fire for our first s’mores taste testing.

Since I went gluten free, there are a few things I had given up ever replicating without gluten. S’mores was one of those things. Gluten makes graham crackers, graham crackers.As evening fell, the kids were cooking and stacking s’mores, then closing their eyes in bliss with each bite, while I did damage control on the marshmallow smears and candy wrappers.

Finally I had a chance to make my own. I brought gluten free graham crackers, but as I suspected, they fell apart in my hands before I had a chance to get marshmallows and chocolate near them.

Anticipating this, I had a second option, which I wasn’t too sure about – salted multigrain rice crackers. I made a s’more with these crackers, a chunk of Snickers bar for the chocolate, and it was AMAZING. The rice crackers were definitely my personal winner for the taste testing, although Nutella, and a Stewarts coconut dark chocolate bar were close seconds after the Snickers in the chocolate category.

After we got the kids to bed, the grown ups sat by the dying fire, listening to the kids howl and laugh together and accuse one another of stinking up the tent, as one does. They finally settled down, and then I saw my first shooting star. It had a sparkly tail and is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

After that, in between deep conversations about everything, we counted satellites making their way across the sky, and saw three more shooting stars before we called it a night around midnight. We retreated to our tent up on the hill, which stayed clean and quiet because there were no kids up there.

Our friends introduced us to a new camp breakfast on the last trip, and this trip we made it a tradition, bringing our own cast iron skillet to accelerate the process: seasoned scrambled eggs, potatoes, and sausage cooked together over the fire, along with bread toasted on the fire. I don’t know why bread toasted on the fire tastes so much better than regular toasted bread, even without gluten, but it was incredible.We spent the day on the lake at the campgrounds. We discovered there was no swimming area because there were leeches. The Chaplain had the pleasure of pulling one off of Six’s leg. I paddled across the lake to an island? A peninsula? We had to know! We’re still not sure! with my ten year old son.

I agreed to allow my five year old to ride between my legs, knowing with him in my personal space it would be tough. We wanted canoes but they were all rented out, so we got kayaks. Those had a lot less space for extra people. But guess what? Horse flies are a lot less successful when you have a little person in your lap slapping them away from you. He dragged his hands in the water and got bumped around by my paddle and generally had a grand time.

Lunch was sandwiches, chips, and fruit. A PB and J my kids would have turned their noses up at had we been at home was very satisfying when camping. There were staggered afternoon naps for the grown ups, a few passing showers, and the kids spontaneously pulled up camp chairs and played clapping games together. At one moment, our girls were doing a clapping game to a pop song, and they started mumbling the lyrics.

I thought they had forgotten the words, but later they told me the lyrics were explicit and they didn’t want to sing it in front of our friends’ toddler. Two other families were camping together on the next two sites with girls the same age as ours, and we heard their sweet voices singing the words to the song, filling in the gap.

Our friends started on their dinner – corn cooked on the fire, with speedies (chicken kebabs I haven’t had since I was a kid). I knew intellectually that there were different camping cultures, but camping with another family really brings those things to the surface – camping with my family growing up, a campfire every night was not a given, and we cooked most of our food on a camp stove. And there was A Way to set up camp and take down.We’ve learned a lot from our friends about camping over the fire – what you can cook, how to cook it, and how amazing it tastes. What supplies you need to do it safely. How to build a fire. And they’re learning from us, camp take-down techniques like bringing a dustpan and brush to clean the tents out before taking them down to reduce the number of dead daddy long legs, dirt, and pine needles you bring home.

And all of us are getting the privilege and pleasure of watching our kids blossom with hours of independent play in nature. They found countless frogs and toads, salamanders, snakes, red squirrels, and lake critters like crawfish and water snails. My thirteen year old daughter fell asleep on a camp chair one afternoon and woke up with a little red squirrel in her lap.

At dusk, four or five kids would gather a combination of solar lanterns and headlamps and go running off, creating a bobbing row of lights winding in and out of the trees. After talking about where it was OK to go and respecting other people’s campsites, off they went, and with a relatively small campground, we didn’t worry about their safety.

After dinner we had a second s’mores taste testing, mainly because we’d so many s’mores supplies that we wanted to try to use them up.

That night there were more shooting stars. Three joined the grown ups after hearing us cheer after seeing our first shooting star of the night, and she stuck with the  grown ups until she’d seen several satellites and a shooting star of her own before heading to bed.

The next morning was more breakfast over the fire – this time an embarrassment of bacon and scrambled eggs, followed by camp take-down.On the way out of the campgrounds, I tried to put our city into my GPS. There was no service, so none of my apps were working. I knew the first turn out of the campground, but couldn’t remember anything after that. I decided to go by feel, and when there was a route that ran N/S, I took south, knowing it would eventually lead home (and hopefully, to somewhere with cell service).

On the way to the camp at the beginning of the weekend, we’d seen signs for a scenic byway to our campground, but I was having trouble staying awake so we opted for the highway to get there sooner, but a couple of “by feel” turns on the way home, and I accidentally found my own scenic byway. I don’t know if it was the same one, but it wound through trees, passing vacation homes, summer flowers, and the beautiful Lake George before taking us back to the highway an hour later.

While the directions snafu could have been anxiety-inducing, it wasn’t. I was still blissed from our time in nature. The anxiety didn’t come back till a few hours after we’d gotten back. In fact, I didn’t realize how relaxed I’d been over the weekend until I started feeling anxious again at home.

We’re already scoping campsites for next year and have locked down our dates. It feels good to have a summer camping tradition. The kids were begging to go back before we’d even left. Maybe anxiety won’t be my best friend the week before we leave next time. Either way, I know that weekend will be a therapeutic recharging for everyone.