Perpetual Ruminations

Our First Campout

Today I was thinking about how my wife and I can camp out in the winter now that we have a hardshell camper. This thinking also brought back a memory from when I first met my wife, and our first camping experience. It was either late March or early April when we decided to go camping; I cannot remember. I do remember it being an early spring for us in northern Minnesota; the snow was gone, and it was unseasonably warm.

I took my future wife out to a spot in the woods, and we set up the tent, gathered some firewood, and set about making our dinner. After we cleaned up and stowed everything, we sat and enjoyed the fire. Soon it was dark, and the temperature dropped. The forecast for the night said clear and mild, but it had clouded up and gotten pretty chilly.

Once the fire had burned down, we retired into the tent for the night, snuggling up on our bed that consisted of a waterproof mat and a thick quilt. We covered up with a pile of blankets and soon I was sound asleep.

The problem was that the bed and blankets were sufficient for one, but with two of us, they didn't completely cover us. A few hours later, I woke because my partner was shivering and her teeth were chattering; she had caught a bad chill.

I knew I had to get her warmed up, but I didn't have any heat source inside the tent. Outside, the wind was blowing, it was snowing, and I knew we wouldn't be able to get a fire going. Even if we did manage to get a fire burning, we had no shelter from the snow coming down and the wind whipping it around. The only other option was the car, so we grabbed a couple of blankets, snuggled in the car, and waited for it to warm up.

The weather had turned nasty, so it only made sense to pack everything up and return home. She felt bad that we had to end our camping adventure and was afraid I'd be disappointed. That was the reason she had not woken me up when she started to get cold.

We drove to her house and put her into a warm bath with a cup of hot chocolate. It took a while, but eventually she warmed up, and we went to bed sometime just before sunrise.


Our first camping adventure together ended with her suffering mild hypothermia. She was afraid I'd be disappointed because we had to pack up in the night and bring her home. I was convinced she'd never want to go camping with me again!

That was in 2002, almost twenty-four years ago. Since then, we've upgraded to bigger tents, a pop-up camper, and now a hardshell camper, and we're still going strong!