First, a necessary bit of information: my boyfriend’s name is Steven. 

Here’s another relevant tidbit: we met at church. After concurrently attending for a year, we met on Easter in 2012. Our first date was almost exactly one month later. (Although Steven will tell you that was just our first “official” date, that the first date, in fact, happened one week and two days before that and involved four hours spent in Barnes and Noble finding Waldo and his stripy companions on every page of Where’s Waldo?. That was our “accidental” first date.)

These factoids are necessary because here’s what they point to: we are in the process of reading through a devotional book together as part of a church small group for dating couples. And that book, in breezily mentioning the idea of a personal retreat, set us on the insane adventure we had a couple of weekends ago.

We went camping.

It sparked in Steven first, the idea of going away to a place that wasn’t someone’s parents’ home. I was open, and tried to be open, and wanted to be open; but I will admit (sorry, honey, but you probably know this) that I was initially more apprehensive. Could we really just go out there and do it? Also, could we, 1. Find a campsite close enough to public transit so we could get there? And 2. Carry all the supplies we’d need? “We’ll keep it really simple,” said Steven. “We don’t have to shower or change clothes or anything.”

A few more relevant facts: I had been camping once in my life, the summer after graduating from high school. I went with a few friends and contributed by helping hold the tent up after it fell down. Steven hadn’t been camping ever.

We did have a friend with a tent we could borrow, so check one item off the list—but add the item of setting up a tent. There were other hurdles looming, like the fact that neither of us had made a fire before, and that we didn’t know what food to cook over a fire, and also that we didn’t have sleeping bags or even a flashlight.

Regardless, we started researching for that weekend, just a few days away. We found several campsites that were close to the city and accessible by train, we chose hiking over going to one of the beachside camps on Long Island, and we got ourselves ramped up.

And then none of the places we had looked at had any sites open.

“Labor Day weekend,” I said, trying to be comforting. “We’ll go then. We can at least do a day hike this weekend.”

I could see Steven wilt.

For me, it was a relief to have more time to get ready. Or to second-guess our capabilities to the point of changing my mind. I’m a planner (slash worrier) by nature—not spontaneous, not particularly carefree.

But Steven is spontaneous (he says it’s because he’s not a good planner, i.e. doesn’t remember things unless he does them right away). And he’s also in the process of job searching, which is discouraging under any circumstances, but had been particularly discouraging that day.

And I watched him, and I realized: I want to make this happen for him. He’s right. This is totally something we can do.

“Come on,” I said. “There’s one more place I found, let’s just see if they have anything open.”

And then we were going camping.

My inner worrier still had plenty of opportunities to freak out over the next couple of days, as we scoured the internet for a trail map and put together a foil-packet meal and lots of peanut butter sandwiches and wrestled a comforter into a vacuum bag and then into my backpack. We only slept four hours the night before we left, due to frantic shopping and packing and credit card fraud issues. On the train, Steven crocheted straps (yes, my boyfriend knits and crochets, and I therefore have awesome scarves) to secure the tent to his back (and, for an hour or two, mine).

We got off the train in Tuxedo, New York, successfully followed our map to the trailhead, looked up at the rocky trail disappearing over a mountain or something, and looked at each other. “Okay,” we said. “Let’s do this.”

And we did it. We backpacked into our tent site: an eight-hour, “moderate to strenuous” hike of at least ten miles, we think, although it’s hard to be sure since we took a different trail than intended pretty early on. We talked and didn’t talk, we prayed, we smiled, we gaped at deer and at mountaintop views. We found the campground before it got dark, we set up the tent easily, we made a fire and cooked our foil-packet tempeh/zucchini/tomatoes and roasted corn on the cob, we went to the lakeside and looked up at the stars. We discovered maybe we are outdoorsy types.

When we triumphantly plodded up to the campground, the only people on the entire site who hadn’t shown up in a car, the rangers asked where we had come in from. “Tuxedo Station,” Steven answered. They looked at us like we were crazy. We looked at each other and smiled.

We were.

And right then, it was the best way to be.

Amy (Allen) Frieson

After graduating with an English degree, Amy (Allen) Frieson (’10) moved to New York City and spent several exhilarating years working in children’s book publishing. Now, she works as a career consultant and has much more time for writing, reading, wandering the city, cooking non-vegetarian meals (a new thing), dreaming about apartment renovations, and leading worship along with her husband at their NYC CRC.