Happy Birthday Kim

​This year, on Kim’s birthday, June 12th, Carrie and I found ourselves camping out near Vernon, outside of reliable cell service. For Carrie and I, this was our first camping trip together, and now that we are back home I can say that we got through it without killing each other.
 
Now I am not a natural camper, most of what I know about camping I learned from Kim, so naturally, I shared a lot of my wisdom, passed down from Kim, on this trip. I also spent a lot of time last Friday, June 12th, Kim’s birthday, reflecting on many Kim camping stories, which is when I wrote this post.
 
Kim loved to camp. She came by this love honestly, camping each summer as a child and teen with her parents and siblings, and in her later teens with her friends at a cabin in Orville. As single young adults, our group of friends would head out into the woods from time to time as well.
 
After my transplant, Kim and I ventured out on our first camping trip in 2011. We packed up her parents tent trailer and hit the road. Soon after this, her parents bought themselves a trailer, and Kim and her brother, Paul, took over the pop-up trailer. We spent roughly 6 summers holidaying in the old Jayco red-and-white. Sometimes the fridge would work, other times it was hopeless (at least to me, her dad always had a way to get it to fire up). It was a great time, with a lot of laughs and miles put into those small single axle wheels.
 
While Kim was recovering from her second surgery in 2019, we realized just how fragile life was going forward, and how much Kim was now being effected, due to her chemo treatments, by the cold and other environmental factors, so we decided to throw financial caution to the wind and bought our own custom made Escape Trailer. We received it in early June 2019, and hit the road.
 
Kim made that trailer her own. She put her stamp on every square inch of that trailer, customizing all the cabinets with what went where. She loved outfitting it with its own dishes, silverware and supplies, everything one might need in it to simply be able to hook up and go whenever we wanted to.
 
It was in that trailer or just outside it, while camping with Kim’s parents outside Cranbrook in summer 2020, that we got the confirmation over phone call that Kim’s cancer was back. That trip, in late July, was the last time I pulled that trailer. After spending time with her parents in Cranbrook, Kim and I backtracked to Christina Lake, our favorite place to camp, and met Tim and Heidi and their kids there for a week of camping, Kim’s final camping trip.
 
That was an emotionally awkward number of days. In many ways we knew that this final diagnosis meant, but being in Kim’s most-happy place, we didn’t want to admit or acknowledge it. We didn’t want to face or name the reality that we knew we were potentially dealing with, but we knew it within our hears to be true.
 
On our last day there, with check-out being at 11:00am, Kim and I went for an early swim. I was secretly wondering if this would be the last time we would swim together, the last time Kim would swim at all. I said nothing, trying to keep the early morning dip lite, but as we stood on the shore drying ourselves off, looking at the beautiful crystal clear water in front of us, Kim named what I already felt, saying, “I wonder if this is the last time I will see this place.” It was more than heartbreaking, if there could be such a thing.
 
And indeed, it was Kim’s final day of camping.
 
I would say that camping really was one of, it not Kim’s most favorite pastime. She loved lakes, loved to be in natural bodies of water, for just loved the peaceful atmosphere of the BC outdoors. Kim was a great camper. Lists of everything needed, everything packed and found again in its proper place. Organized and detailed. Efficient, practical. It all came back, again, to the things she valued––the people who made camping fun, the efficiency and organization of a trip well planned and executed, and the generosity that our beautiful natural surrounding have to offer.
 
It has now been six summers since Kim graced a BC Provinical Park with her camping-loving presence. But I know her camping legacy still lives on in the lives of the people closest to her. The Escape Trailer is long gone, I knew I could never camp in it again. But her supplies are littered around with her brother’s camping supplies, and as I write this, looking around the campsite that Carrie and I are relaxing in, I see as well many pieces of equipment that Kim used, or techniques of washing or storing things that she taught me. Her finger prints and legacy everywhere. I can still see the smile on her face, standing behind a camp stove, or her head bobbing as she swam in a crystal blue lake.