Mt. Shasta

I just got back from four days camping at Lake Siskayou, near the base of Mt. Shasta.Six families from my boys' school went. My family and I slept in a tent. I was dreading it.Instead, I loved it. One dad, Greg, made fresh olive bread baked over coals -- a technique he learned from the Bedouins in the Sinai. (This is the person who also brought an Olivetti typewriter for the kids to play with. You would have thought it the most magnificent video game ever created, the way the kids gathered round it).What I loved most was swimming in the cold lake, looking up at Mt. Shasta. I felt so small in the very best possible way -- part of something much bigger than I -- a perspective often lost in the grind of daily life.I loved sleeping in our tent (with a very plush air mattress), looking up at the big trees and stars. Big trees are healing.Did I mention how great the food tasted, even when it wasn't great food?And when I came home, I loved our home even more. Our sometimes chaotic, always messy home now seems very beautiful to me.  And I am more appreciative of this wonderful, strange foursome that is our family.