Last month, during a long road trip that had already taken our family to see bands in honky tonks and blues bars, to eat in barbecue shacks and country kitchens, and to visit multiple museums and baseball parks and a racetrack — and Graceland! — I drove our van up and around the narrow, winding roads that lead into the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.
My wife Rebecca, gripping the armrests with white knuckles, nervously eyed the cliff edges to one side of the vehicle as on the other side oncoming pickup trucks roared past, uncomfortably close. My three kids like to pass the time on road trips by staring at their mobile devices, texting snaps and watching online videos. So they noticed — as did our GPS mapping device — when we reached the stage of our journey where there was no cellular service available.
Now we were navigating by landmarks: “Turn left after the mailboxes. If you reach the pond you’ve gone too far.†And then, another few kilometres along a dirt road through the trees, we came to our campground.
The peaks of the mountains surrounded the grassy clearing on all sides, a vista of green triangles dotted with the magical mists that give the area its name — the white-blue steam is said to look like smoke, though to me it resembled a series of tiny, low-hanging clouds arranged in and among the sloping forests. We knew there was a great population of black bears in those woods — the largest preserve for them in the United States — and could hear the chorus of crickets and could see a groundhog wandering along the edge of the roadway.
In the afternoon sun, in the humid southern heat, it felt like a great escape. We weren’t roughing it here — the canvas tents were already set up for us with beds and fresh linens provided inside, and the central shelter space provided meal service and access to board games and running water and fresh brewed coffee. But still: we were away from home, away from the familiar urbanity of our usual travels, and now away from the digital data signals that provide constant demands on our attention for most of our waking lives.
A place we could conceivably get bored.
Not that we did get bored. We played horseshoes and tossed beanbags into cornhole boards and read novels we’d brought along. The kids made friends with some boys visiting from Alabama, and they compared accents and sports experiences while making s’mores by the campfire and hiking around the grounds. We played epic, seemingly endless, rounds of Uno while sheltering from a rainstorm.
It was glorious. The “glamping†was fun, and the scenery was the stuff of postcard memories. But as much as anything, it was time away from the grind, out of reach of the physical and digital tasks that keep us revving around the clock in our daily lives at home.
For parents and kids alike, it was a valuable reset away from the blinking lights and moving images that have become our constant companion in work and leisure alike. A chance to wander around the woods, wonder at the glorious sight of the night sky displaying untold universes, and to ponder the transfixing flicker of the campfire.
When crusading journalist John J. Kelso and legendary º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøStar publisher Joseph Atkinson created and fostered the Fresh Air Fund charity in the first years of the 1900s, the world was a different place — no cellphones or tablets yet existed to keep kids ensconced in social media and video games, and most kids didn’t yet lead the hyper-programmed lives they do today. But in their mission to ensure needy city kids could have a chance to experience fresh air and nature of a kind not found in city life, I think they stumbled on a need that has endured. Even as life has changed, the need to see and experience something different has remained. It’s the same fresh air that many of us have breathed in order to learn about ourselves and our world, and to grow as people through the experience of going to camp.
And thanks to the Fresh Air Fund and Star readers, it’s an experience thousands of children have gotten over the years, and throughout this summer. This column marks the last in a series marking this year’s fundraising campaign for the Fresh Air Fund, in which we set out to raise $650,000 to support more than 100 overnight and day camps around Toronto, to ensure that underprivileged children in the city have the chance to attend.
It’s a tradition nearly 125 years old that we at the Star are proud to carry on — as our publisher Jordan Bitove wrote shortly after the kickoff of the campaign in May, it is an “honour,†a chance for us who are fortunate in so many ways to “make camp available to those who wouldn’t get to experience it otherwise,†and to signal that “every child deserves the same opportunity.†Readers like you have come forward with donations large and small (donors of $10 or more get a tax receipt) to get us a long way toward reaching our goal. But the campaign goes on, and your donation remains welcome and needed, to ensure this tradition can live on into future years, to give more children the dose of fresh air — a change of perspective, unplugged from their daily concerns — that a trip to camp can provide.
Out in Tennessee, my 11-year-old daughter was upset we were only staying a couple of days before moving on. She was just beginning to really explore the possibilities and opportunities of life in the woods, away from cellular data and amid the wildlife. “Can we go camping again soon — like in sleeping bags and our own tents that we have to set up?â€
If all goes according to plan, she’ll be doing just that as you read this, during a long-weekend trip to a spot near Georgian Bay. I feel so lucky as a father to be able to give her that experience. And so lucky as a member of the Star team to be part of a tradition of providing that experience for many more children. I and be part of that tradition too.
GOAL: $650,000
How to donate:
With your gift, the Fresh Air Fund can help send thousands of kids to camp. These children will get to take part in a camp experience they will cherish for a lifetime.
Online:
To donate by Visa, Mastercard or Amex use our secure form.
By cheque:
Mail to The º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøStar Fresh Air Fund, 8 Spadina, Toronto, ON M5V 0S8
By phone: Call 416-869-4847
Tax receipts will be issued.
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