The Joys of Camping and Words

Chers Amis,

camp n. A place where tents, huts, or other temporary shelters are set up, as by soldiers, nomads, or travelers.
v. camped, camp·ing v. intr.
1. To make or set up a camp.
2. To live in or as if in a camp; settle: Camping is more enjoyable in sunny weather.

Sorry I have been silent for so long, but we are recovering from our latest adventure and all my organized thoughts have fled until the flotsam and jetsam are sopped up and contained. Our mill is draped in still soggy camping gear. For Labor Day weekend we packed up several hundred pounds of then dry sleeping bags, tents, rations, bug spray and the like, and wound our way into the mountains of North Carolina to meet a good friend and to glory in nature. The Weather Channel said that there was little chance of precipitation and the radar was clear. I think they a) were on vacation themselves b) lost their forecasts and were winging it or c) have a twisted sense of humor. It rained for three days.Luckily, children love being wet and friendship is not hampered by a good drenching. Plus, our friend lives only 20 min from the campground and has plenty of warm beds and a dryer!

Yesterday we alternated between school and positioning air mattresses and luggage carriers in sunshine. The girls had a fun homework assignment for their creative writing class. They had to replace "weak verbs" with "strong verbs" i.e. eat became gobble, devour or chomp. We needed a thesaurus so we searched on-line and found a REALLY neat site the Visual Thesaurus. It is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus. Search for a word i.e. camping and it shows a think pad/word web type diagram that shows : camping in the center marked with a dot color coded for part of speech (red - noun). From this extend lines to the synonyms encampment, bivouacking, and tenting. Click on one of the synonyms and it redraws the diagram with that term in the center and all new synonyms. On the right hand sidebar the definitions are listed with the part of speech. Try it! They even have a foreign language beta version. You can type in "camping" in English and ask it to search in French/Spanish etc. and results for both languages show up. Very cool! You can only try it a limited number of times before they ask you to subscribe, but you can return to the site and start anew. If one was doing much writing it would be worth the $2.95/month. Ack! mildew is one fungus we do not like and I have a lot of work to do on that front. Off to disinfect and dry. . .

-- Marjorie