Backpacking Mom

It was only me and junior – our oldest kid – going. We got a ride to the station after a visit to a family member, so we were both already socially spent before even boarding the train. Having a whimpering child and a stressed out mum is a pretty rough premise for a start of a tour.

This was the first overnight outdoor trip of the year, and hopefully it’ll remain at the top as the most chaotic.

Luckily for us, the train ride went smoothly, and we had lots of snacks to mitigate any stress. And the event was held really close to the station – like really close:

And to make it even easier there were supermarkets right on the way.

The festival, which was a hybrid between an outdoor market and a festival, and was generally really well organized, although super crowded. There were stands for all sorts of outdoor brand, outdoor personalities, UL’er, bushcrafters, families, scouts and more.

Hanging out a festival and finally getting to talk your heart out about gear and tips, turned out to be pretty difficult with a sensitive and at this point very overstimulated child. The first major lesson here, could to bring some sort of communication device, and leave them at camp to watch cartoons on a tablet, depending on how safe you would feel leaving a kid behind.

Generally speaking I felt super safe at the both the campsite and the festival grounds of the event. There were loads of families around, even a lot of kids smaller than Junior. There’s likely several privileges to my feeling of safety that come into play though, as the majority of people were white (or white-passing) and/or spoke Danish. Maybe I would have felt different if I didn’t blend as well.

To Diversify the Outdoors, We Have to Think About Who We’re Excluding

Outdoor recreation has historically excluded people of color. That’s beginning to change

We took many rounds to try to find the food booth, and failed, and returned to camp to share a cup of Soto noodles and some wraps with trail mix.

We then returned once again to the festival ground, to find the food court right in the middle of the camp. Fantastic. The silver lining was that they sold out everything anyway. I spoke shortly to a cook who said they served several thousand people, which blew my mind, as I imagined the event to have maybe 500-1000 visitors at most.

We tried to locate the snobrød, or twist bread stand that the scouts had. For international readers, snobrød is probably the Danish specialty, when it comes to outdoor cooking, and the concept amazingly simple: you take some dough, wrap it around a solid stick, and then you roast/bake the dough over embers until done. Usually this process involves burning the tip of your bread to soot, and afterwards leaving the whole baking job with your parent while you run off to play. But alas, they were sold out.

The man I spoke to could however tell that scouts had “exploded [in numbers]” in the capital region, which Junior thought was endlessly hilarious. “Mom, the scouts have exploded!“. Glee.

The booth next door was an outdoor family who had an even better option: wrapping store-bought croissant dough around a stick in lieu of twist bread dough, and they had exactly two portions left for us to make.

They also had a small workshop to braid your own paracord bracelet, where junior made this beautiful specimen:

We stayed up till nine in an inferno of sound. The whole thing turned out to be way more festival like than I pictured it to be, with several camps having brought speakers and having something to drink, somewhat akin to Roskilde Festival camps. Nothing crazy, and definitely not as unhinged as Roskilde, but still way more than I bargained for, and way beyond the usual discussion of whether to bring a little measly bluetooth speaker outdoors.

On top of that I could hear live music from the festival ground, several overtired children crying, parents complaining about the cold, one parent going “He thinks it’s a circus in there”, presumably referring to their hyperactive toddler in a tent. I had debated in my head, whether this next move would normally be OK in a secluded campsite, but in this situation I gave up — I had to add to the noise. On top of the live music, speakers, talking, crying and the wind I added “Mimbo Jimbo is building a light tower, voiced by—” an audiobook. There was nothing else I could do at this point, I was too exhausted and junior had to go to sleep.

I fell asleep next to them.

I woke up an hour later with a logistical problem. I had to go to the bathroom. And the toilets were just short of 1km away on the festival site. The campgrounds where to packed to just pee in a bush. I ended up asking some super nice tent neighbors, who where luckily still awake around a small bonfire, if they could keep an ear on the tent, and that my phone number was written on a note in the vestibule of the tent. Said that likely nothing would happen, and that I was alone with my kid, and they agreed. Then I ran.

This again a time where it would have been best to have brought baby alarms. It was one of the most stressful loo visits in my life. On the way back I decided to quickly buy a coke in the bar for the impromptu lookouts as a thanks. The bartender tried to persuade me into buying a beer. I replied hurriedly.

“NothanksIhave togobackromytent mykidissleepingthere andthiscokeisnotformeitsfor-“

I think they might have had a beer or two themselves.

“Well 🤪☺️ what about a beer 🍻 for your husband then?! 😉”

“Nothanks! Justthecoke!”

I finally got to pay, although I low key regret not being able to hang out with the chatty bartenders.

I raced back to my camp, and as I had predicted, nothing had happened. I asked politely and sat down with them, finally being able to socialize within earshot, still out of breath, and they wondered out loud why I had taken that long. That’s when I spotted them. Toilets. Bright blue port-a-potties, just 50 m away.

My dudes, I just sprinted 1.5 km to use the bathroom, only to realize there were toilets right over there.

The next day we had tortilla wraps with chocolate pieces for breakfast. The snapfold bowls folded nicely out, and we where able to use them as plates. Junior had slept well in a sleeping bag, with a down blanket on top, as it got down to 2°C. I had been cold though, even though I had wool leggings and a wool sweater on, and topped it off by putting on a puffy jacket on. I had asked Junior if they was cold so many times, that they ended up telling me to stop asking. They slept with wool leggings, a long sleeved wool tee, a wool sweater and thick wool socks too.

We packed up camp, and left for the train station. We made it just in time for the train. I don’t know how much snacks and candy Junior prowled through on the train, I just know that is was too much.

Dad and Baby met us along the way, and we somehow managed to cram in a visit to some old friends on the way home. They had called us the day before, “Where are you?!”. Turns out their birthday party was not the day after. They still invited us over for lunch, which was lovely, as it’d been ages since we last saw them.

We came home extremely spent. I hung up our tent to dry on a rod in the bedroom. We ordered out food – a longstanding and sensible tradition to end trips.

My pack ended up weighing a lot. I’m leaning more into UL territory, but collecting UL gear for one person is expensive enough, let alone purchasing for four, or in this case, just for two. On top of that, UL gear for kids is hard to come by.

I don’t have the weight at hand for all our items, and I know I’m missing some things, but hopefully I’ll make a lighterpack for our trip and a gear breakdown as the next post.

Lots of thanks to the organizers of Danish Outdoor Festival, our lovely tent neighbors who kept watch, out patient friends and everybody else!