Campfire Chat: Breathing Bigger, Packing Lighter, and Naming the Tent Scout

I have reached the stage of life where one tab in my brain is researching rooftop tents, another is thinking about wildfire prevention, another is wondering whether I remembered to clean out the junk drawer of obsolete charging cords, and another is quietly spiraling because my kids keep doing awful things like growing up.

This month has been a weird little charcuterie of modern life: wet wipes, wildfires, monarch caterpillars, campfire smoke that seems personally invested in ruining your evening, pollinator lawns, digital clutter, and the gut-punch math of kids moving farther from home.

At first glance, not exactly a tidy theme.

But the more I sat with it, the more I realized the thread is care.

Not the glossy, self-care-bathrobe kind. The real kind. The kind that asks: What am I using? What am I wasting? What am I carrying? What needs my attention before it breaks, burns, clogs, disappears, or moves to Ohio?

Yup. We’re getting into it. Pull up a camp chair. Let’s chat.

📖 On My Nightstand

The UnWipe. If you had asked me a few months ago if I could ever get really excited about a little gadget that helps you feel clean in your downstairs parts, I would have said, “I’m all good there, thanks.”

And then I met The UnWipe.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with wet wipes for a long time. They are wildly convenient, especially for camping trips, road trips, periods, kids, mystery stickiness, and those bathroom situations where toilet paper simply does not feel like it has the range.

But wet wipes are also terrible for plumbing and the planet. And “flushable” wipes? Ask any plumber. That word is doing some heavy lifting.

When samples of The UnWipe were sent to our Field Trip team, I was intrigued, but I did not think, “Oh, this will be life-changing.”

Yet, I now have The UnWipe in our tent, car, guest bathroom, main bathroom, crossbody bag, and yes, my nightstand. This baby is great for post-poop wiping, period wiping, post-sex wiping, and any time you want the clean feeling without sending a sad little wipe into the waste stream.

Tiny problem? Maybe. Big difference? Absolutely.

We get into it more in How to Green Your Sexual Wellness Game and our People Who Give a Damn interview with Jim Kaslik of The UnWipe.

🌿 On My Mind

“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”

I’m a big Mary Oliver fan, and I put that line of hers on my phone home screen because I need the reminder more than I’d like to admit.

It is so easy to get caught in the day-to-day churn. The emails. The errands. The “just one more thing.” The digital clutter. The actual clutter. The tiny tasks that multiply like someone fed them after midnight.

Long days, fast years.

That “breathing just a little” line hits me especially hard because sometimes I realize I am literally breathing shallowly, as if I do not have the time or patience to take a full breath.

That’s no good.

And yes, I know the irony of putting a reminder to live more deeply on the very device that keeps trying to drag me into the shallow end. But that’s kind of the point. Every time I pick up my phone, there it is. A tiny checkpoint.

Are you breathing?

Are you here?

Are you living, or just managing logistics?

I don’t always love the answer. But I do love the question.

🕯 Inside the Tent

We have an exciting new friend joining the Field Trip family this week. A rooftop tent.

I am trying to be cool about this, but I am not.

It will give us so much more flexibility for camping locally, sneaking away on quick weekends, and road-tripping without turning every overnight into a giant production. We still prefer tent camping over camper or RV life, and this feels like a sweet spot: a little more comfort, a little more ease, still very much a tent.

I can’t wait for you to meet Scout. (Yes, we named him because we fully expect him to be a bona fide member of the family.)

I don’t want to give too much away yet, but stay tuned. Scout already has big plans in mind.

📍 Pinned to the Map

Smokey Bear’s resting place in Capitan, New Mexico is officially on my bucket list.

At 80 Years Old, Smokey Bear Is Still Hot Stuff is in this month’s lineup, and if you’ve been a reader for a while, you know I love a good research rabbit hole. That proved especially true when I started looking into Smokey’s history: the real bear, the wildfire prevention icon, the very beautiful story of a burned cub who became the face of forest fire prevention.

Julie from our team was recently in Capitan visiting Smokey’s resting place because her son is a firefighter working in those same forests. And right now, he’s fighting wildfires there.

That makes the whole thing feel less like a cute retro poster and more like what it actually is: a living, breathing, dangerous, exhausting reality for the people on the fireline.

From what Julie shared, Smokey’s resting place is small. Quiet. Not some big flashy destination. Just a simple place to pay respects to the live bear who stole America’s heart and helped generations understand that wildfire prevention is not just a slogan.

Honestly, that feels right.

And my thanks to Julie’s son, Ryan, and to firefighters everywhere. You take risks each day to protect the people, the wildlife, and the places we care about.

📦 What’s in My Pack

A map with longer lines on it.

One of our sons is moving from South Carolina to Ohio with his boyfriend in less than a month. He is only about an hour away from us right now, so that one is going to sting.

Our oldest son and his girlfriend are still living in Maine, where we moved from five years ago. We had hoped they might make their way down here by now, but no luck yet.

Our daughter is still in South Carolina, but she is not coming home from college this summer. She’ll be living in an apartment on campus and working.

And truly, we are happy for all of them. They are doing exactly what they should be doing. Building lives. Making choices. Figuring things out. Becoming more themselves.

But still. Our already empty nest is feeling even emptier these days.

So yes, the new rooftop tent is exciting because it means more camping. But it also means more road trips to Ohio. More road trips to Maine. More excuses to point the car toward the people we love and make an adventure out of the ache.

That’s the thing about gear. Sometimes it’s not really about the gear.

Sometimes it’s about what the gear makes possible.

🧵 Thread I’m Pulling

Cleaning up. Not in a sterile, everything-must-sparkle way. More like: what are we carrying that we do not need to carry anymore?

This month we’re talking about greening up your sexual wellness routine, cleaning out your digital life, helping pollinators without accidentally turning your yard into a mess, and figuring out why campfire smoke seems to choose one person and haunt them all evening.

Important journalism, obviously.

But under all of it, there’s a bigger question: can we make our lives a little less wasteful without making them joyless?

I think yes.

We can swap wet wipes for something reusable. We can stop pretending “flushable” means harmless. We can finally deal with the box of old cords instead of letting it become a museum of technology we no longer recognize. We can mow slower, plant smarter, and make room for bees.

🎒 Packing Out

This week, I’m thinking about all the little ways we tend a life.

A quote on a phone screen. A clean feeling without a guilty wipe. A quiet memorial for a bear who became a symbol. A firefighter in the forest. A tent named Scout. A kid moving farther away. A road trip not yet taken.

None of it is separate, not really.

The way we care for our bodies, our homes, our families, our forests, our inboxes, our campsites—it all adds up. Tiny acts. Tiny choices. Tiny gadgets, even.

And sometimes, when the nest feels a little too quiet, you pack the car, climb into a tent, and remember that love has always been a moving thing.