Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 68

Camp ing and
Motherhood
Wherein Mom and Dad take the 8-month-old
to the end of dirt roads and beside the rushing
river for her first taste of the outdoors.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY LAURA FORREST HOPFAUF
A
s a mother, all I want to do is
make a home for my family,
so it feels almost counterintuitive
that when my daughter
was 8 months old my husband, Tyler,
and I decided to take her camping
in New River Gorge National Park. But
as a new family of three, we wanted to
instill in our child a sense of wonder in
the world, a love of the wild.
Compared to our life before baby,
this four-hour journey from our home
in the Panhandle
of West Virginia
should have felt tame. We'd camped
in the middle of the Everglades, in the
vast Sahara, in hammocks in a rainfor68
BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
est, slept wide open on mats at the bottom
of the Grand Canyon, and lived
for days on uninhabited islands in both
the Pacific and the Atlantic. All of this
to say my husband and I were decently
self-sufficient, aware of our surroundings
and capable. But on that drive down
the state toward New River Gorge as the
towns became further and further apart,
the mountains grew and the trees reclaimed
their land in a mosaic of green,
I felt nervous. Maybe even a little scared.
Butterflies ticked around my stomach as
if I myself were a child on my very first
camping trip with my own father trying
to sleep after he had told me a ghost
story about Union soldiers prowling the
night on horseback and the branches of
the trees, to my small ears, sounded like
the click of hooves.
There is something scary about having
a baby, a child, a family. Something
that I can't quite name. From the moment
I found out I was pregnant, I have
carried this urge to hold everything together,
safely in my hands, as if I can
turn myself into a home where no harm
can touch.
But there is the contradiction of
wanting to go, to explore, to retouch
that spot without cell phone service, and
cable, and flushable toilets, to reintegrate
Adventures
in
New
River
Gorge
National
Park

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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024

Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 3
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 4
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 5
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 6
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 7
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 8
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - Cover4
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