At 6:02 on Sunday morning, a mockingbird landed on our back fence and ran through every car alarm in Kendall. Six third graders sat straight up in the dome tent at the same moment, and one of them said, very seriously, "Is that a robot?"
That was the end of Maya's ninth birthday campout. The start was a lot more organized, because Maya planned it.
The plan Maya wrote
Maya turned 9 on Thursday, May 22, and she'd been planning this night since March. Her plan was on a sheet of paper in four colors: green for food, blue for activities, orange for "rules," and purple for things Dad had to do. Purple was the longest section.
Five girls from her class came over Saturday at 5:30. Dana texted every parent ahead of time for allergies, bedtime habits and a pickup time (9 a.m.), and Maya's invitation told everyone to bring a sleeping bag, a pillow and a flashlight. Two brought flashlights. We have a bin of cheap kids' headlamps for exactly this reason.
A storm rolled through at about 3 that afternoon, so I set up our green-and-tan dome tent at 4:30 on wet grass with the rain fly on. The tent sleeps eight on paper, which means it sleeps six third graders and all their stuffed animals in real life.
The flashlight scavenger hunt
This was the best part of the night, and it cost almost nothing. Before dark I hid eight glow sticks around the backyard ($9 for a pack) and wrote a list of 12 things to find with a flashlight:
- a green mango on the Haden tree
- the smallest leaf on the avocado tree
- a sleeping anole (Nico's idea; he knows exactly which leaves they sleep on)
- Pickles in a window
- eight glow sticks
Nico, who is 5, was allowed to stay up as the official guide. He took this job as seriously as he takes being kindling manager. He found the anole in about four seconds and then stood next to it whispering "be quiet, she's sleeping" to every girl who came by.
Pickles watched the whole hunt from the kitchen window with the face of a cat who would like to file a complaint.
The fire pit and the 70 rule
Before the hunt, while there was still some light and the pizza was gone ($42 for three large), we lit the small fire pit for s'mores. Nico gathered kindling, I lit it, and six girls held marshmallows in the flames at the same time, which is the closest thing to a fire drill I've ever coached.
Now, the honest part. The forecast dew point that night was 71. Dana's 70 rule says no tent camping above 70, and on a normal trip we'd have cancelled. We made an exception because the house was 40 feet away, the back door was unlocked and anyone who wanted to sleep inside could. I clamped the Ryobi fan to a tent pole, and it hummed all night. It was still sticky. At 11 p.m. it was 79 degrees.
At 10:20, one girl decided she wanted to sleep inside. Dana made up the couch. At 10:50 she heard the others laughing through the screen and asked to go back out, which I'm counting as a win for the tent.
Lights out was officially 10. The whispering stopped at 11:40.
Where the grown-ups slept, and what I forgot
I slept on the screened patio on my sleeping pad, about 15 feet from the tent door, close enough to hear and far enough that six girls could believe they were on their own. Dana slept inside with Nico, who went down at 9:15 right after the scavenger hunt and was asleep before she finished reading him one page, or so she says.
Here's my mistake. I forgot about the sprinkler timer. At 4 a.m., the zone by the fence turned on and hit the side of the rain fly for 12 minutes. I lay on the patio listening to the hiss and praying. Not one girl woke up. The rain fly did its job.
In the morning I made café con leche for Dana and me in the white enamel mugs and pancakes for everybody on the Coleman stove on the patio table. Parents arrived at 9. One mom asked whether her daughter had slept. I told her the truth: eventually.
That night, Maya wrote a review in her nature journal. "Best birthday. 9 out of 10. Minus one for the bird."
