How one night in the woods reminded me who I was.

I found out I was pregnant and cried. Not because I was unhappy — I wasn't — but because I had a list. Kilimanjaro was on it. A lot of things were on it. And suddenly the timeline felt very uncertain.

I hit my birthday that October with a 10-week-old and postpartum fog thick enough to lose yourself in. When my husband asked what I wanted for my birthday, I didn't want a dinner out or no physical gifts or a spa day. I wanted one night camping. That was it. That was the whole ask.

We found a campsite about an hour outside of San Diego. Close enough that if everything went sideways we could just drive home. That was the entire risk management plan and it felt like enough.

My husband did everything. He set up the tent, he cooked sausages over the fire, he managed the logistics while I wandered around in the way that new mothers do — present but not quite, exhausted but trying. My son rode along in the Ergobaby carrier against my chest, warm and oblivious and perfect.

We set up the DockATot next to the air mattress inside the tent. When my son woke in the middle of the night I threw on my headlamp and fed him while my husband handled the diaper change in the dark without complaint. Nobody made it beautiful. We just did it.

In the morning my husband broke down camp while I wandered the campsite with my son still in the carrier. The trees. The cold air. The quiet. No emails. No deliverables. No performance review of my own motherhood.

Just me, in the woods, with my baby, feeling like myself.

We drove into Julian for breakfast on the way home and I was happy in a way I hadn't been in weeks. Not because anything was resolved or figured out. Because I had done the one thing that had always made me feel like me, just in a slightly different shape than before.

The logistics had felt enormous going in. A 10-week-old in a tent felt like a statement, maybe even an irresponsible one. But we did it. One night. Sausages and a headlamp and a DockATot on the ground.

That's where this started.

I didn't stop being a traveler the day I became his mother. I just had to figure out how to bring him along.