Relay: These Are The Days

It has become a tradition, six years running, for my family to meet up with a crew of other families from nearby and spend a September weekend camping at Hither Hills in Montauk. When the weather cooperates, and even when it doesn’t, these are my favorite days of the year.

My daughter was not quite 2 months old the first time we went, and our poorly chosen site left our tent in the middle of a moat the first morning of our stay. Our friends’ twins were just 4. Both families literally decamped to points west until the skies cleared, then returned by the next afternoon to enjoy a dry night under the stars by a warm campfire.

By the next year, my son was on the way, Jade was 1, but not walking, and the twins had graduated from scooters to bikes and skateboards. The year after that, another family joined us, my daughter was on a trike, and my son, then 4 months old, would sit happily in his Bumbo seat watching all the action. We’ve welcomed a new family and added a cool piece of camping gear every year since, getting a little better each time at maximizing fun and making it all work smoothly.

This year, there were eight families we knew. We had 11 kids under 18, along with friends brought from home or met at the campground, milling about on bikes and trikes and scooters and skateboards with sidewalk chalk or glow sticks in hand, depending on the time of day. Even the youngest were free to roam a certain distance alone, and they blossomed in their new independence.

Most of us shared dinner together near the fire each night, then talked and laughed and made up games around the firepit. We stayed up too late and woke up too early. The kids, ever in motion, wore themselves out from so much riding and running and sunshine. There were way too many marshmallows, and for some, too much good drink, but there was the ocean right over the dunes to make the morning better. The waves were perfect and we had three days of great weather after the initial rain that kept all but one family at home for Thursday night. It’s not always like that.

In six years, many of our camping neighbors have become familiar faces. If they weren’t “home” we recognized the names and hometowns on the cute family signs many people post at their sites. People return to the same camp neighborhood at the same time year after year, just like we do. While it’s close quarters at Hither Hills and there’s not much privacy between sites, people seem to sense when you want your space and when you want to make friends.

Many conversations start with a question about another camper’s gear or someone’s clever solution for common camping problems like finding shade or shelter or a way to keep your tent clean or your food cold or your path lighted. If there’s a problem out there, you can be sure that a camper or outdoor outfitter has figured out a way to solve it. And the die-hards who have been doing it for years revel in the chance to share their innovations, to talk out the pros and cons of one sort of camp vehicle versus another, or rate a firepit or portable grill.

I love checking out other people’s campsites to see what they’ve come up with. For me, camping is filled with aha moments that begin with “there must be a way to . . .” I love finding workarounds and ways to use one thing for more than one purpose, having invention forced upon me. I love it when a bin holding sleeping bags and blankets becomes a side table in a tent, when a cardboard six-pack box becomes a spice-and-condiment carrier, when a washing machine drum is retooled into a raised fire container. Ingenious! Look up “camping hacks” on Pinterest and you’ll find all sorts of great ideas for living the good life in the great outdoors. Sometimes I want to go camping just so I can try them out.

In a world of more, more, more and faster, faster, faster, it’s great to do more with less, to slow down enough to watch the stars move across the sky, to turn off my iPhone and spend the weekend in touch with the people who are close enough to actually touch.

To me, that feels like home.

Carissa Katz, The Star’s managing editor, is still unpacking from her weekend “away.”