Camping With a Toddler Has Its Moments, but It’s No Picnic : An 18-month-old takes the great outdoors in happy stride, but his parents find the pace, well, punishing.

Over the past 18 months I have been told many things about small children, often by people who wouldn’t recognize a tot if they drove down Sesame Street. When it comes to kids, everyone has foolproof advice--which I find puzzling since no one can predict what a child will do next.

Recently this flood of wisdom became a torrent. My wife Kathy and I decided to take our 18-month-old son, Cullen, camping. The phone lines lit up.

“Oh, you don’t want to do that,” said one friend.

“Wouldn’t it hurt less to have your eye teeth removed?” said another.

“Well, this is a bold experiment,” said a third.

Precisely the point. It’s my opinion that truly harrowing adventures, searing tests of stamina and grit, are fast becoming a thing of the past. So one night, while we were eating dinner, I proposed that we go camping.

“Camping?” Kathy paused. “With Cullen?”

After several years of marriage, it’s not difficult to gauge spousal interest. I understood that my wife’s enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by the knowledge that she would have to do most of the work. Before our marriage, Kathy had compiled a fair bit of outdoor experience, including backpacking trips into remote areas. My own wilderness training peaked when, as a Boy Scout, I learned how to eat minute steak that had been dropped in the dirt.

Cullen was seated in his high chair, daubing his face with a substance that had once been a banana. As he already makes most of the decisions in our house, I decided to ask him.

“Cullen, would you like to go camping?”

He issued his answer firmly.

“No.”

As anyone who has had an 18-month-old knows, I could have asked Cullen if he wanted to wallow in fudge and he would have responded in a like manner.

I turned to Kathy.

“See,” I said. “Cullen wants to go.”

As any outdoorsman knows, the first task of camping is deciding where to camp. There are numerous campsites in Ventura County. Having no idea what would be best for an 18-month-old, I called our friend Jim. During the course of his life he has been a Marine, a member of an elite cadre of firefighters and a parent, so he is familiar with risk and danger. When I told Jim what we were planning, he was enthusiastic. Camping with a toddler was a terrific idea, he said. He’d done it with his kids, though they were now grown.

“You can take your baby and your little day pack and hike through the forest and sit under the trees and read and watch the clouds and the world go by,” he said.

It was obvious to me that Jim hadn’t had an 18-month-old around the house in a long time. Nonetheless I respected his outdoor expertise. He talked for several minutes about some of his favorite campsites, empty places atop mountain ridges commanding beautiful sweeping views, places where you hike to burbling streams to get your water, places where you are alone with the wind and your thoughts. Places no one in their right mind would take an 18-month-old on his first camping trip.

Jim made some practical recommendations too. One of them was Wheeler Gorge Campground, about 15 miles outside of Ojai up California 33. We could drive right up to the campsite, Jim said. There was a creek there and lots of shady woods. There was also a ranger who lived there. Having a professional on 24-hour call sounded comforting. Plus it absolved me of the awkward task of asking Jim to come along.

Just before hanging up, Jim suddenly had an alarming thought.

“Call the Forest Service and ask them about hunting season,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going on right now, but you want to be safe.”

When I called the Forest Service station in Ojai, I found out we would be camping during the last few weeks of deer-hunting season. The woman on the other end of the phone was perky and helpful.

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” she said.

“We won’t have hunters trooping through our campsite?” I asked.

“Trooping through?”

Hunters, she explained patiently, are required to stay several hundred feet away from designated campsites.

I am not familiar with firearms, but a few hundred feet didn’t sound like much of a buffer to me.

“You’ve never had any problems,” I asked, “in terms of shooting campers?”

I was starting to feel silly. But I also believe all lines of questioning, especially those involving bullets, should be pursued to the end.

The woman left the phone for a moment, then came back.

“I just asked one of the rangers. He said no one has ever shot a camper.”

GATHERING THE GEAR

It’s fortunate my wife and I don’t own any firearms or we might have shot each other before we even left on our trip. The second task of camping is packing. At noon our house looked like an explosion at a sporting goods store. This was unfortunate as the car was already full. Cullen wandered among the piles, scouting out the most toxic items and then putting them in his mouth.

“There’s no way we’re going to get all this stuff in,” Kathy said. “I told you we need a bigger car.”

What we really needed was a bus, but I refrained from saying so. I am a thrill seeker, but not a fool.

When we arrived at Wheeler Gorge Campground shortly after 1:30 p.m., everyone was in a better mood. The campground was indeed beautiful. We found an expansive campsite overhung by a canopy of oaks. A stone’s throw away, a creek burbled over rocks worn smooth as marbles. Cullen liked it. The instant his feet hit the ground he was off, his first chore to squat and roundly smear his face with dirt and the remains of a peanut butter sandwich.

Our campsite turned out to be ideal--a shady, drive-in site cleared of brush and grass. This was not a matter of expertise on our part--it was blind luck. I had planned on consulting with camping experts before our trip, but I never got around to it.

This was probably a good thing, because what they told me when I spoke with them later might have discouraged us altogether. Not that camping with an toddler is a bad idea. It’s just that, done right, it entails slightly less forethought and substantially more equipment than a moon shot. In fact, National Park Service Ranger Bonnie Clarfield advised camping with a toddler only under certain circumstances.

“I’d recommend taking an 18-month-old only if you’re experienced camping without them,” Clarfield said. “Since your child’s comfort is involved, you really need to know what you’re doing.”

Yes. Of course. What kind of oaf would wander off into the wilderness unprepared?

Kathy had a few concerns of her own. My wife revels in the outdoors. She is not, however, particularly keen on sharing the experience with its denizens. When the ranger stopped by our site to collect the camping fee ($12 for the night), Kathy had several questions.

“Are there bears here?” she asked.

The ranger, a pleasant, weathered-looking fellow named Jim Peele, peered out at us from the cab of his truck.

“Bears?” He cocked an eyebrow. “This is a national park, it’s not a zoo.”

Ranger Peele also assured us that rattlesnakes weren’t a problem. By his reckoning, their presence in the campground had been sparse--maybe five all summer--though for a brief period their ranks had swelled considerably after nearby road construction demolished their dens.

“They’re pretty much all gone now,” he said. “Haven’t seen one for almost two weeks.”

We watched him drive off. Kathy was un-appeased.

“My theory is that they’re here all right,” she said. “It’s just that only five have been seen.”

The wildest life in our campsite proved to be Cullen. Our son has loved the outdoors from the moment he was born. Until he discovered sugar, the only sure-fire means of consoling him was to step outside. Now that we were loose in the great outdoors on a semi-permanent basis, this was good news. But it had its drawbacks, too. By late afternoon we had covered every inch of the campground, most of it in small circles.

As adults we think in terms of a start and a finish, an unfortunate approach that denies us the joys that lay between. Not so with an toddler.

Cullen dropped stones in the creek. He bent to sweep his hands through the dirt. He veered off to swat foliage. He was supremely interested in an eclectic range of outdoor offerings, from the business of other campers to the abundant supply of animal scat, which, if we weren’t quick enough, he fingered like some pygmy tracker. He would punctuate his discoveries with such astute observations as “der garr” and “gut de bof.”

These ramblings filled Cullen with joy. They left us drained. At one point Kathy looked at me bleary-eyed.

“We shouldn’t both be walking around following him like this,” she said. “One of us should be sitting down.”

It was the one thing both of us wanted more than anything, but neither one of us volunteered. To sit down meant missing out on the magic.

As we walked back to our campsite, the late afternoon sun slanted low, spreading shadows across the ground. I’ve always viewed twilight as a romantic time of day, a brief pause, the day’s heated ardor past, the night’s yet to come. We passed an attractive couple talking quietly at a picnic table. Two wine goblets stood on the table, reflecting the softening sun. Back at our campsite we used our picnic table to change Cullen.

Later that evening we received the one thing we wanted most, company. Our friends, the Wadsworths, are experienced campers, making them confident enough to join us for dinner. Actually they fixed dinner. On unpacking early that afternoon, we discovered that we had six grocery bags of food, but nothing to cook with.

Carole and Joe brought firewood, a stove, pots and pans, a table cloth, even a centerpiece--a jar containing a pretty arrangement of marigolds. More important, they brought their 13-year-old son, Zeph, and their 7-year-old daughter, Morgan. The children immediately entertained Cullen, who by this point had reduced his parents to a state of animation resembling asphalt.

The conversation turned woodsy. While I have no qualms about bears and rattlesnakes, there is an outdoor item I fear mightily: poison oak. Numerous times in the past I have been told how to identify this diabolical plant. The explainers generally imply that any idiot can find the stuff. I certainly can; I’ve had it more times than I care to admit. Given Cullen’s gene pool and his proclivity for shrubbery, I was concerned.

We took a short walk away to see if we could find some. We didn’t see any, at least nothing we could clearly identify. Carole had an explanation.

“It’s just around the campsite,” she said with sarcasm.

For dinner we had pasta, salad and bread. At least everyone else did. I filled my plate, then left it to chase Cullen who didn’t seem particularly hungry, possibly because he’d already consumed fistfuls of dirt, nearly half a bag of Fig Newtons and the better part of an unattended mosquito-repellant coil.

He may have been distracted, too. Night had fallen. Bright stars filled the sky, buckets of silver-glitter tossed across a jet-black cloth. Cullen found this enthralling. To get a clearer look, we walked away from the fire. Joe, Zeph, Cullen and I stood in the road that looped through the campground, our heads turned up to the sky. Cullen rarely stands still. He did now. I could feel the light press of his tiny fingers clasped around my pinky.

“Oooooooo,” he said.

We returned to the fire. I sat in a chair. Cullen wormed his way into my lap. There are few joys greater than a child wound down. He squirmed for a few minutes, then went still, his legs poking out over my knees. The quarter moon rested on the toe of his shoe.

We left early the next morning, after a short hike during which I suspect two of the three of us were thinking mostly about going home. It was a beautiful fall day, a bright sun and china blue sky causing the trees and hills to leap out front and center. But it was hard to appreciate it fully on a fitful night’s sleep. Not that Cullen was tired. He had slept like a rock, spread across the one mattress we had been able to stuff in the car.

Under most circumstances, my wife is a beautiful woman. Now she looked haggard.

“We don’t have to go home early,” she said. “But how else is he going to sleep when it’s time to take his noon nap?”

Both of us know Cullen can sleep through a typhoon. But we also knew it was imperative that he rest at home; if he didn’t, his parents would be incoherent.

We left just before noon, Cullen wedged in the back seat, encased in a bubble of camping gear. Looking for confirmation of the weekend’s success, we did what any parents would do. We prompted him to do what we wanted him to do.

“Bye,” he said, lifting his only free arm to wave at our campsite.

ASSESSING THE TRIP

How much of this will stick with our pint-sized John Muir? Hard to say, though probably more than we might suspect. A few days after we returned home I called Anita Garaway-Furtaw, a nice woman with a degree in child development. Garaway-Furtaw has worked with children for 25 years, and oversees the award-winning program at Lost Arrow Corp.’s Great Pacific Child Development Center in Ventura. She understands children. I suspect she understands parents, too, because she told me exactly what I wanted to hear.

“A lot of people think young children don’t understand much, but the truth is they understand much more than we think they do,” she said when I asked her what effect the camping trip might have had on Cullen.

“Little children process information at a phenomenal rate. They’re very, very sensory creatures. I can’t think of any kind of environment where you can be more sensory than you can when you’re camping.”

That would explain the sand I am still finding in our car.

Garaway-Furtaw continued:

“When kids go camping they’re exposed to a wide variety of sights and sounds and textures. All of that helps to expand their base of knowledge, and that’s really good for them,” she said.

Then she told me a sweet story. When her son David was 3, his parents took him camping. An avid bug collector, David stumbled on a golden find--a horde of squirmy caterpillars. Patiently, Garaway-Furtaw explained to her son that the caterpillars couldn’t come home with them. Several months later, she opened a cabinet door under the bathroom sink.

“Sixty beautiful butterflies flew out of the cabinet,” she said. “It was one of the most magical experiences I ever had as a parent.”

The other day I asked Cullen if he remembered camping.

“No,” he said.

Fine with me. Odds are, he’ll never remember his adventure. But I’ll never forget the warm press of my son’s sleeping body, a sliver of moon balanced nonchalantly on the toe of one tiny shoe.

10 Tips for Kid Camping

Want to give camping with the kids a try? Want to make it a pleasant experience, too? A few words of advice from National Park Service Rangers Susan Ream-Hajdik and Bonnie Clarfield.

* Plan on car camping. With all the gear you will need for young children, backpacking into the wilderness is back-breaking--not to mention virtually impossible.

* Look at all the gear you need to cater to your little ones at home, then bring it all along. This might seem like overkill, until your child asks for a favorite blanket. Camping with young children is not a time when you just want to make do. “If your child is uncomfortable, you’re not going to have a good trip,” Clarfield said.

* Bring special treats your kids like to eat. Sure it’s bribery, but this can also go a long way toward smoothing out potential calamities.

* Bring a tent with plenty of room to move. Bring a quality frame backpack to carry your child.

* If you are not capable of watching your children constantly, think about a child leash, a baby stroller or a playpen. Campgrounds are places where it’s easy for small children to wander off and get into trouble.

* Bring your own drinking water. Many campgrounds have running water, but it often runs through rusty pipes--and if the water tastes funny your child might not drink it. Bring your child’s favorite drink along, so you can be sure he or she will get liquids.

* Choose your campsite carefully. If possible, you’ll want a shady site (to protect from sunburn) with no ground cover (which could house such undesirables as poison oak and rattlesnakes). Give the entire campground thoughtful consideration. If there’s nothing but outhouses you might want to bring your child’s familiar potty seat--confronted with an outhouse children can balk, guaranteeing you a memorable trip.

* If your children are old enough, tell them to watch where they put their hands and feet when they walk. This will help them avoid poison oak, rattlesnakes, bees and other surprises. If you don’t know ahead of time if your children are allergic to bee stings or insect bites, be sure to consult a doctor about carrying the appropriate medication.

* Set up all your gear before you leave to make sure you have everything and it’s in working order. Better yet, do a complete dry run.

“Before you camp for real, have a camp-out at home in your back yard,” Clarfield said. “That way the kids will know what to expect and it won’t be as scary.”

* Have fun. “Teach them about nature and how to take care of it,” Ream-Hajdik said. “Go on walks. Pick up leaves.”

That brings to mind one other essential camping item.

“For sure, bring the camcorder,” Clarfield added.

Who to Call

There’s a wide variety of camping spots scattered about Ventura County, from beachfront to lake and mountain campsites. For information on area campgrounds, call these numbers.

* California Department of Parks and Recreation, (818) 880-0350; campground reservations, (800) 444-7275

* National Park Service, (818) 597-9192; reservations, (800) 365-2267

* U.S. Forest Service (Los Padres National Forest), (805) 683-6711; reservations, (800) 280-2267

* Ventura County State Beaches, reservations: (805) 654-3951