Our church goes camping once a year during the summer. During that time, we listen to speakers and spend some time talking with other believers at a nearby lake. One year our family was able to stay in an A frame. The cabin is in the shape of an “A,” which is why people call it an A frame. I have sweet memories of my own childhood, staying in an A frame for about a week while we were on furlough. It is one of my happiest memories of childhood.
When you walk through the front door, you see an area downstairs. Then you see a stairway that goes up to a bedroom in the loft area. You can look over the railing and see what people are doing downstairs. I don’t know of any other shape of house that can do this. Everything is made of wood: the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. So it feels like you are in a very fun cabin.
In the A frame where I stayed with my husband and children, the loft had exactly three beds for the three boys. The downstairs had two bedrooms. My husband and I slept in one room, and my baby girl slept in the other. It was nice to be able to give the baby a nap right after lunch in a darkened room that was away from everyone else. The A frame was also consider
ably cooler than a tent would have been in the middle of summer. (Forget taking a nap in a 90 degree bright, sunny tent. You feel like you are in an oven!)
I loved the fact that only our family was in the house, so the experience built our sense of family unity. There was a small kitchen downstairs, and I was glad to be able to have the lactaid milk not spoil for my two children who were lactose intolerant back then. Also, you could get a cold snack from the fridge, or a cold glass of water. In a regular cabin with other people, you can’t even go to the bathroom without people looking at you in your pajamas. So the feeling of privacy in the “A” fra
me was also fun.
In the early morning when the children woke up, they could play quietly while my husband and I continued sleeping, because the boys were safely locked in. If we had stayed in a cabin with other families, after going to the communal bathroom, a toddler would have been tempted to walk out the unlocked front door, go to the pretty lake, walk onto the pier, and fall off and drown. I didn’t have to worry about such things when we were safely bolted in our A frame.
I still smile every time I look at these pictures of our time in the A frame.
Tags: "A" frame, camping, church camp, family unity, summer
