Opus Dei Camping Trip

When we were in Quito I purchased a necklace at one of the markets that has an alternating pattern of small pieces of wood (bamboo?) and some kind of nut or seed. Ordinarily, I’m not one to wear jewelry (except my wedding ring) but there was something about this style of necklace that I liked. Perhaps it was the price. Anyway, I brought it, put it on and haven’t taken it off since.

In the few months that I’ve been wearing it, something strange has happened. The seed, or whatever it is, has started to wear away. I don’t know if the cause was the salt water from the ocean at Canoa, or my rather pungent sweat, the daily shower I take (sometimes two!), or the fresh Washington, D.C. air. And I can’t tell if it is continuing to wear away or not.

Whatever the cause and pace, the seed is currently a spiny, prickly, shriveled thing that scratches my neck whenever I turn my head quickly to look at a pretty girl or to flag down the ice cream man. I call it my Opus Dei necklace.

So, on Columbus Day weekend we went camping. At this point, we’ve established camping as a regular family activity. So far Maya has been camping every year of her life.


In the summer of 2003, before Maya was one year old, we camped a few days at Mount Philo state park in Vermont. In 2004, we camped for a week at Jalama Beach County Park, north of Santa Barbara, California. In 2005, we did a few overnight camping trips to Virginia Beach (First Landing State Park is great!) and to Shenandoah National Park. In 2006, we camped at Bear Lake in Utah for a week and around Salt Lake City for an overnight. In 2007, we did a few nights at Vermont’s Grand Isle state park on Lake Champlain and did a few overnights at some Maryland state parks. And this year, because we were in Ecuador most of the year, we were limited to only this two-night trip to Point Lookout State Park in Maryland.

Jonah, of course, has been camping with us every year since he was born too, starting with Bear Lake, Utah when he was just about one year old.

In fact, camping has become such a big part of our summer routine that Rebecca made me a family camping flag for Christmas last year. The flag is an oak leaf (representing Jonah Oak) and snowflakes (representing Maya Snow) on a purple background. If she was really thoughtful, Rebecca would have stitched and sewn the leaf and snowflakes onto a green background, since green is my favorite color. But, I’ll take what I can get.

This camping trip to Point Lookout State Park on what I think is called the southern shores of Maryland was the first time we got to use the flag. We hung it on the site post and it looked great. We had a good camp site in the “playground” loop. The park is situated on the Chesapeake Bay, so there is a pier and a nature center where we got to watch some folks crabbing with fish heads and see the turtles and crabs in the aquariums get fed. I never saw a crab eat before; it was pretty cool and creepy at the same time. I think getting eaten by a crab would be a horrible way to go.

In addition to all that fun, Maya liked riding her bike all by herself around the loop and Jonah, of course, liked gathering sticks for the campfire. I taught him how to pee on the fire to put it out. When he gets older, I’ll teach him how not to fall in the fire while peeing on it when drunk.


So, for obvious reasons, even though it’s about a two-hour drive from Alexandria, we really like this park. There is also a grass picnic area and sand beach that we pretty much had all to ourselves. The beach is along the Chesapeake Bay and the weekend was warm enough so that we could swim.

The problem with the warm weather was that the mosquitoes were still out in full force. Even though I kept myself covered up, I got eaten to pieces. Including some monster bites on the back of my neck. Fortunately, whenever I needed to scratch my neck, I just turned my head and my necklace took care of it for me.