Some things are just better outside. With all due respect to the treadmill crowd, you can’t beat a walk in the great outdoors. The best, juiciest, thickest hamburger that can be made in the finest of restaurants can’t compare to an average backyard barbecue burger.
I think of Labor Day as a weekend-long celebration of the outdoors life. We swim, fish, hike, cook, and eat outside on Labor Day weekend. That is the one time each year that no one seems to notice the bugs, or the heat, or any other impediment to enjoying life outside.
This year’s festivities were no exception. Volleyball, a homemade obstacle course, and grilled burgers and sausage highlighted the weekend. For all the times that we’ve paid our hard-earned money to be entertained inside – for every trip to Chuck E Cheese’s or the air conditioned black lighted mini golf course – they can’t compare to the free trip to the park to cook and play and eat and play and eat some more.
I don’t know why we can’t get the whole family together to do this more often. Just like we only cook a turkey once a year at Thanksgiving, we only gather the whole kit-n-kaboodle together once every year to spend a whole day outside. No one ever complains that they don’t like the turkey and stuffing each November, but we wait a whole year before we do it again.
Similarly, no one ever gets bored at the Labor Day picnic. Even the Yuppie cousins from the city obviously delight in every minute of three-legged races, water balloon fights, and roasting marshmallows.
This year, I declare 2nd Labor Day, sometime later to be determined, when we’ll try to marshal the troops to do it all again. Maybe they’ll come; maybe they’ll decline on account of that’s not how we do it. But I’m asking. And whether they come or not, I’m going again.
