Has anyone ever tried to live with 17 people in a 6 room cabin in the woods for 3 days?
It is hard.
We just got back from a family vacation where we spent 3 days in a cabin surrounded by snow in the mountains of Southern Utah. It's a nice cabin owned by the family of my brother's fiancé. They have been kind enough to let us use the place twice now. It's pretty luxurious for a cabin. I mean it has all the things a house does (fridge, sinks, toilets, showers, carpet, furniture) except for central heating. Each room has its own wall heater and there is a capable wood burning stove in the central part of the structure that, if kept going, provides enough heat to stay comfortable. Pretty much my whole family was there. Brothers and their girlfriends, sisters and their husband and kids where applicable, and my mom. That is a lot of people for 2 bathrooms, by the way.
The kids cried the whole first night because it was strange and cold and dark. (The fire hadn't been built yet) and we tried to encourage them into looking at it like an adventure. We talked about it that way for a minute and when that didn't work, tried the approach of "the pioneers went through much worse than this". That didn't work either. I suppose it's easier to live in horrid conditions when you know that's just how it is. It becomes more difficult when you are used to living one way (read: comfortably) and your parents are trying to trick you into thinking the other way (read: miserably) is a fun, exciting pioneer adventure.
Well, the first night passed without incident or cannibalism and the kids discovered the sleds. There is a huge hill (road) that is covered in snow and ice each time we visit. So we took the kids (Aidan, Bella and their cousins Brilynn and Annon) for a bit of sledding.
The goal was to see how far you could get. If you went through the stop sign, it was considered a feat. The right combination of children and adult produced some fantastic speed and great distance. As with any good sledding hill, however, the moments we had it to ourselves were slim. One group of people that came were trouble from the start. The adults were immobile and the kids well apart in age and even farther apart in their respect for each other. At one point, the older teen-age brother took his 2-3 year old brother and turned him loose on his own sled because, it was later reported, "He wanted to go by himself." The child picked up speed quickly and because of no ability to handle the apparatus and limited knowledge of physics, he careened into a bush which catapulted him into a ditch. He landed inches from a rock capable of dashing his brains onto the gravel and snow. This poor kid screamed and his immobile grandparents, retarded (?) brother, and Amelia went running to help. Once it was determined that he was OK, Amelia chastised the dumbfounded teen. It was during the deserved berating that we learned of his faulty logic ... he had wanted to go by himself. So, a toddler wants to go down a huge hill by himself? SURE! Go ahead little one with limited motor skills! While you're at it, can I get you a knife, an electrical outlet and a beer? Whatever you want! You are able to speak and kind of walk, sort of, so have a blast! ... After we had pointed out his stupidity he skulked away with his scraped up sibling and went home with is frantic guardians. And we got the hill to ourselves again.
The camping/cabining experience turned out to be a lot of fun. We spent hours eating, talking, playing games, putting puzzles together and eating. I was glad that my new family got to spend some time with my old one. We got really close again spending so much time being, well, really close again. And, if that part of it is also what the pioneers went through, then they actually had some of their life really good.
