This is a story of many strands that are artfully braided.

I've always had a need for solitude and my husband Peter shares that with me. We've always given each other a lot of space and time in which to be alone. So when Michael was five and Peter wanted to take him on a camping trip I graciously declined the invitation and decided to stay at home. After that camping trip of 1988 my husband and son had so much fun that they decided to make it a yearly event. I looked forward to that week alone mostly to think and recharge my energies. The place where they camped every year is about ten miles from where we live now.
Ricketts Glen State Park.

There was also another camping trip coming to fruition. Peter took Michael on a trip across the United States in the summer of 1999. Michael was 16 then and it was a great time for him to begin driving. They took our "pop-up" trailer. It's the kind of thing that sits folded and flat, then it keeps opening up and opening up and you have sleeping space for four people. The two were gone for six weeks and I stayed home and worked, got bills paid, saw my friends, and I think gained as much from solitude that is possible. This father-son vacation could never have happened if Peter wasn't self-employed. He was running his own business then and finished a lot of work, then put up a sign that said "Gone fishing."

I got a few comments from my friends about how long-suffering I was, how "nice" I was to put up with this situation. I promised myself that I would be honest in this blog, so I will say here and now that I had no sense of deprivation in this regard. I think a boy should spend lots of time with his father. Besides, I would never have wanted to go with them then. I could not see myself sharing the pop-up with them for six weeks.

A close friend of mine was involved in a quite terrible auto accident that summer, and she was partially paralyzed. I spent time with her during those six weeks; the rehabilitation hospital where she had been placed was down the road from where I worked. We would sit together and talk and since we belonged to a spiritual group--that's how we met--prayed together too and I read to her from a few of her favorite books. Those six weeks can never be forgotten. I felt that I advanced spiritually, with my roles of wife and mother pushed to the background temporarily.

Well then. After the wanderers came home and did all their laundry I sat one night looking at them. I felt that I loved them with all my heart and soul and suddenly I was sick of separate vacations. I wanted the three of us to do something together. They looked at me.

"What can we do that we all like?" asked Peter. "Except the Jersey shore. I hate how crowded it gets."

I struggled to find an answer. Then I said "Let's go camping together next year. The three of us. Let's go camping at Ricketts Glen State Park next summer."

Looks were exchanged between husband and son. I said "I mean it. I want to see what you love so much about Ricketts Glen State Park." So we reserved a camp site for the following summer, the summer of 2000.

Move forward a year. Michael drove my car, loaded with food and books, art supplies and pillows, while Peter drove our pickup truck that pulled the pop-up trailer. We headed north and all I saw was suburb upon suburb, just more and more land-raping. Then we went into the Lehigh Tunnel. Since that trip I learned that the Lehigh Tunnel marks the spot where you are not in an outgrowth of Philadelphia. That's where you see the beginning of the "Endless Mountains," the green, the big sky, and miles and miles of forest. It was breath-taking to me, after enduring years of conspicuous consumption, land-raping, expensive people moving into the impossibly expensive "McDonald Mansions" as they are sometimes called. By the time we reached Ricketts Glen State Park I stated: We are moving here. As soon as possible.

Afterwards, Michael said "Who are you and what have you done with my mother?" They were awestruck! But I had fallen in love.