Life Stage: Big Tent

Sometimes I joke that growing up is just building your own prison out of things you love

Sometime between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. last Wednesday night, I got kicked in the head. I jolted awake, not sure what was happening for a few seconds, then realized it was my 3-foot 6-inch tall preschooler’s feet in my face.

I was trying to sleep against the wall of the biggest tent I’ve ever owned, and finding it a little cramped because my child, who was sleeping between myself and my wife, had worked himself into a position exactly perpendicular to us:

I gently turned him to lie parallel to his parents, the orientation I believe the tentmakers intended when they designed the tent. He remained asleep the entire time, the kind of sleep quality you can only obtain when you have complete trust in the world and your parents, no concept of time, and no responsibilities whatsoever.

This tent, the MSR Habiscape 4, is a tad under eight feet wide by eight feet long, weighs 12 pounds, and is six feet one inches tall in the middle. It is the first tent I have ever owned (I guess technically it’s Hilary’s since she got it for free from a previous job) that I can stand up inside.

Hilary and I met 14 years ago at about this time of year, and we moved in together about 13 and a half years ago—into a 2005 Chevy Astrovan, which had less square footage than the MSR Habiscape 4, and which you definitely could not stand up inside (or actually sit up, except in the front seats). We slept on a small mattress in the back of that van for a year and a half before we moved into an apartment together, and for the first half of our relationship we adventured often, sleeping in sub-five-pound two-person backpacking tents, tarps slung over trekking poles, bivy sacks, and sometimes just sleeping bags under the stars.

Then we got a dog, which usually necessitated a 3-person backpacking tent (except the time/times we mistakenly packed the 2-person tent), and then we had a baby. A baby we could fit in a 2-person backpacking tent, but with all the baby stuff we had to take with us, we figured maybe we just do the big car camping tent—which fortuitously appeared in our lives about three months before Jay was born.

Jay’s first-ever camping trip wasn’t until he was almost two years old, and when I mentioned to an acquaintance that we took a Pack ’N Play with us for his first camping trip, she seemed appalled, saying “You don’t have to take a Pack ’N Play” in an almost scolding tone, as if I didn’t know the first thing about camping. She was right, but look, I’ve slept outside on a portaledge hundreds of feet up a cliff, and on top of a coiled-up climbing rope on the rocky top of a peak, but that was a younger version of me. Older me had been getting his ass kicked by newborn/infant/toddler-related sleep interruptions for almost two years, so fuck yes we were taking that Pack ’N Play, a sleep sack, and whatever other interventions we might need to eek out a few hours of quality sleep. Also, this tent is 64 square feet! It’s not like we don’t have room.

Sometimes I joke that growing up is just building your own prison out of things you love, but that’s of course exaggeration—it’s more like sacrificing your own freedom in exchange for things you think will be worth it: pets, kids, a consistent roof over your head, maybe some plants to nurture.

Are there days when I somewhat wistfully stare out the window and reminisce about the days when I could just pack up a few things, strap them to my back or my bike, and head off into the mountains for a few nights out? Sure. But I’ve also been quite pleasantly surprised by how comfortably I have slid into the Big Tent life stage. We just got home from spending five nights in the Big Tent near Fernie, B.C., and yeah, we didn’t get very far into the backcountry, and getting Jay to go to sleep when it was light out until after 10 p.m. was a struggle, and I didn’t really get to do anything I might have done I been visiting on my own (look at all those peaks!), but I also didn’t have a single moment of wondering if I should be doing anything else.

If we’re doing things right at all, our 3 1/2 -foot-tall Amateur Human Being should be acquiring more skills and resilience as time goes on, and it won’t be too long before more of our trips utilize the lightweight but cramped quarters of some of our backpacking tents, and we leave the Big Tent at home because we’re farther into the backcountry. Which I guess will be a new stage in life—at least for one of us.

--

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider supporting my work via Patreon or through a paid Substack subscription: