This post was originally written as a schmoozeletter email, several years ago.
Have you ever gone camping?
As a family, we did it a total of once- about eight years ago. For one night.
We got a tent and sleeping bags and a mini grill and many mosquito bites, and felt very outdoorsy.
We were invited to go with close family friends, who were more experienced campers, and it was kind of last-minute-impulsive. But it was a lot of fun and I hope to never do it again. (I don't think of myself as materialistic or high maintenance, but I really like indoor restrooms and waking up warm and dry. In a bed.)
What was significant for us about that trip is that it was the beginning of our family's travel story.
For literally nine years in a row before that, we would pile the kids in the car in the summer, and drive to Lancaster, PA, where we'd stay for a couple of days in the same rooms of the same no-frills hotel, and visit Dutch Wonderland. My husband and I did not enjoy Dutch Wonderland, but for the kids, it was a highlight, and there was really no need to ever go anywhere else- it was cheap, it was safe, it was fun, and it was familiar.
But after this first camping trip , which I think was the same summer we went to Israel for my niece's Bat Mitzvah, we got the idea that maybe the kids were old enough to start doing stuff other than our customary DW trip.
This also coincided approximately with the time that we began homeschooling, so we were in the groove of thinking outside the box, trying new things, and our schedules were becoming a little more flexible. The camping family friends were a little older and so were their kids, and they'd been traveling for years. We learned a lot from them about how to plan, pack, organize, travel, kasher, cook, hike, and then lather, rinse, repeat, based on how many stops we were making on each journey.
If I'm being honest, I wasn't gung ho about travel- I'm still not. But it might be one of the best investments we've made in our family. The team-building, the snafus, the educational opportunities, the exposure to other cultures, topographies, nature, languages, lifestyles, and the memories, are broadening. (I do recognize that it reflects a certain amount of privilege to be able to talk about travel this way. We've generally done it somewhat budgetarily- miles, points, shlepping frozen food, strategic VRBOs, but it still required setting up our jobs and schooling in a way that gave us a lot of flexibility. With all that, we would have spent more on summer camps if they'd gone, and certainly far more on Yeshiva private school tuition.)
These family friends who mentored us in traveling had children who got along extraordinarily well. When I asked them once if there's a secret to having kids who are so close and kind to each other, the dad said that they probably invest the same effort into their parenting as most other caring families, but that the trips and the tasks and diverse experiences involved, really seemed to be where the relationships took on a new dimension. Having these shared memories, pictures, videos, and life lessons creates special bonds.
In this week's Torah portion, the second one is actually called "travels." (And- fun fact- it was my son's Bar Mitzvah reading- he was so cute- he's 23 now, and still cute:) Most of the parsha is: "and they traveled in this place and they camped in that place." In fact, if you think about it, (and even if you don't) most of the chronology of the Torah itself takes place in the context of these circuitous travels in the desert for 40 years en route to the promised land.
Which is literal but also metaphorical. The Jews in the desert probably thought they were about the destination, heading to Israel. But the traveling and camping is where the real action happened for that generation, and it's what we study for our primary Biblical instruction.
The journey itself is often the purpose, what we're supposed to be learning from. These three weeks of mourning our exile highlight that lost feeling of "we're here in this life, but we want to be there, we want to feel safe and settled and arrived."
And yet, here is where we're clearly supposed to be- to learn, to grow, to do, to become- otherwise, why are we here? Like the children on these trips, we need to navigate the challenges along the way, be there for each other, strengthen relationships, take in the scenery, and internalize life lessons.
"And they traveled here, and they camped there," we keep traveling, camping, moving, learning, improving, yearning.
Safe travels in your own journey,
Elisheva
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