It's funny how, in the course of a few days, a field can turn into home. We had all mod. cons.: living room with fireplace and spectacular cathedral ceiling; compact, convenient combined dining room/ kitchen (tarp shelter); bedroom (tent); convenient and secure storage area (car trunk); loo (non-flush)--what more could you want?

Of course there were some differences from Real Home. I don't normally haul buckets of river water for dishes and (minimal) baths, nor schlep a polypropylene carboy down a precarious path through the woods to get drinking water from a copper pipe plugged into a slowitrickling spring. Nor do I normally need a flashlight to get to the loo after dark or, when I'm reading at night, have to compete with moths for the Coleman propane lamp. On the other hand, in my own kitchen, I can't reach out an arm and pick a handful of fresh thimbleberries to go into the matitudinal pancakes. And in camp, there was no phone.

By the end of the second or third day, I knew my corner of the field, and the larger neighbourhood--a quiet campground by rapids on the Madawaska--almost as well as I know my own house, and felt about as comfortable there, even when it rained for 48 hours. I liked the quietness and simplicity of it. Camping isn't Productive Work and doesn't do a fool thing for the GNP, but it is a most peaceable way of existence. Here you are too busy just managing minimal housework to have much interest in power games

I found myself letting down and actually being able to read, the way I used to read all the time--especially one rainy morning, when I had the joint to myself and retired to my green tent, curling up in the sleeping bag and simply wallowing in a novel, something I haven't been able to do for years (because there's always something important that needs to get done). When each bit of housework is absurdly inconvenient, so that you have to concentrate on what you're doing, it also (if you're in the right frame of mind) turns into an opportunity for reflection--for Martha-prayer. I could see both the burden and the blessing that women all over the world, down through the ages, have found in being drawers of water.

Got back after a week, and the Normal World clamped shut around me--not an embrace, but a sudden familiar clutch of worry/ responsibility/ busyness/ business. It felt like the cell door slamming. The very air (hot, heavy, and humid) seemed tainted with the faint scent of the sewer emanating from Lambeth. I found myself sagging with discouragement and mild depression. Oh God, how in this world can we preserve that peace? because this world is what we have to live with. The Kingdom is yet to come.

And yet Christ said, the kingdom is here among us, or can be.

We don't have to give up indoor plumbing to live in simplicity: we just have to give up thinking we have all the right answers and trying to control those around us. We don't have to live in a field, under tent and tarp, to find peace; we only have to give up grudges and the need to pay people back for their offenses against our precious selves. We don't have to live out of a single dufflebag, or go substantially unwashed in grotty shorts and t-shirt, to feel free; we only have to stop looking for happiness in what we own--and stop trying to own the sources of our happiness.

We don't need to haul water in buckets or grind our grain by hand --and the dear Lord knows, those who haul and grind may not have reached simplicity and peace themselves!--we just have to keep practicing at the Way of the Christ. Which is the path of loving others, not of being self-righteous--a way of real humility that has nothing to do with humiliation, and of a gentleness of spirit that doesn't mean being a wuss. We won't get it perfect, of course, and our peace-lessness is a measure of our imperfection. But none of us is a perfect Christian; the best we can manage is to be practicing. God knows that, knowing us.

Still, I miss the field, now that I'm back: it had a sort of golden glow over it, an odd trick of the light, and I've rarely seen more bluejays (and one scarlet-headed woodpecker). I miss the noise of the Madawaska running over its rapids. I miss the kayakers in their bright craft, and the anglers blissfully hip-deep casting for walleye.

On the other hand, that first post-camp proper bath.... ah, now that's Heaven!