Written by Monica Rojas, Upstream Care for Place Fellow

As we pull into our campsite everyone knows what to do.

The tent gets set-up. ZUP!
The beds get unfurled. SWOOSH!
The fire gets started. SIZZLE!
The camp chairs get reconstructed.
Click, Clang, OW!

After years of camping, our family has a set routine when we arrive to our site. It doesn’t matter if we are settling into a spot next to the Tamarac River at Big Bog, creating our own shade at Upper Sioux Agency, or listening to a waterfall at Cascade River. Every member of the family knows how they are expected to help.

Our camping trips have become a part of our family rhythm and everyone looks forward to participating. Living our week or weekend in Minnesota’s natural spaces always seem to bring out the best in us. As we hike, swim, learn, and relax we all remember how to breath at a slower pace, pay attention to the moment and be together both as a family and as people with nature.

Tear down of our site at the end of our adventures runs in a very similar way to the set-up, but in reverse.
All the extra things that have been gathered get packed away or returned to nature.
The beds gets rolled and stuffed.
The tent comes down.
The final step of our tear down, is a group effort.

We walk our now empty camp site, double,
triple checking we haven’t left anything behind.
In this process, we find many things past campers have left behind.
Juice box straw wrappers,
The plastic top to a tent stake,
The tabs used to open cans of pop.
While we walk, we gather up these pieces of trash, adding them to the bag of our own garbage.

Leaving the site a little better than we found it. Thanking it for the time it shared with us.

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