When Mark Koep first started camping with his family 12 years ago, one of his fears was being attacked by a bear. “We’ve seen black bears invading trash cans, but that’s about it,” Koep said in an interview. “There’s not a lot of danger when you’re out camping, especially when there’s a lot of people in the campground, just because animals shy away from that.”
Although bears are rare, Koep said he has seen other wildlife emerge from the surrounding forest at campsites. “We have seen moose, mountain lions, and wolves in and around campgrounds, but never in a threatening way,” he said. “There was always a sense of awe and amazement to see them.”
Koep and his family are among the 10.1 million households who camped in 2020, according to a Kampgrounds of America study. “We already had growth in camping, but then COVID just accelerated it,” Koep said in an interview. “With the loss of other types of travel, camping became a fallback, plus it has the benefits of you’re relatively isolated, so you’re able to stay distant from people, and you’re able to go out into remote areas.”
Koep, who founded resource site Campground Views based on his camping experience, expects campsites to be packed this year now that COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted state by state and vaccinations are on the rise nationwide. “A lot of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands where you can camp for free by just parking off the side of a road are going to see record numbers of people,” he said. For newcomers to the campsite scene, Koep offers the following tips.
When campgrounds tell you they’re booked 2 to 6 months out, call back.
“They may have just had a few cancellations for the weekend,” Koep said. “Generally, people are booking up campgrounds, but then the trend we’re seeing is cancellations at the last second. There are about a billion campsites nationwide, and there’s never going to be a million people camping. So there’s always availability.”
(Courtesy of Mark Koep)
Broaden your search for campsites outside of major national parks such as Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Teton.
“There’s a handful of campgrounds inside Yellowstone National Park and other national parks, but if you do a 50-mile radius search around Yellowstone, there’s literally hundreds of campgrounds,” he said. “It may require a bit more research, but you can always find a campsite in the surrounding area.”
Bring a propane stove when camping in a tent.
“If you’re in an RV, you’ll have a stove or microwave in the RV and maybe even a power-appropriate barbecue. And in a tent, generally, you’ll have a Coleman camping stove that’s propane powered,” Koep said. “Sometimes you can cook on a fire at a campsite, but there’s usually a lot of fire restrictions in the summertime, especially out west.”
(Courtesy of Mark Koep)
Ask before transporting firewood across state lines.
“Some states don’t allow it,” he said. “Research and understand the rules of where you’re going before you get there so that you don’t inadvertently do something that causes damage to the area.”
Juliette Fairley is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Born in Chateauroux, France, and raised outside of Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, Juliette is a well-adjusted military brat who now lives in Manhattan. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TheStreet, Time magazine, the Chicago City Wire, the Austin-American Statesman, and many other publications across the country.
Upon writing this, I’m watching my 6-year-old granddaughter tranquilly learn to needlepoint a bookmark. It’s her Mumsee and Pops’s day of play and learning. She’s backlit by the sun, wearing lavender overalls with her long wavy gold hair in a ponytail. This lovely picture brings me back to one of my favorite memories: watching my own homeschooled kindergartener daughter, dressed in overalls and wavy brunette ponytail, encased in a soft sunbeam while she peacefully played with blocks on the playroom floor. That simple scene had taken my breath away; I knew I’d remember it forever. I didn’t know that I’d one day get to relive the delight of that moment with her daughter, my home-educated granddaughter. Out of necessity, I homeschooled my two children before anyone—including me—knew much about homeschooling, aside from seeing it as a distant, strange concept. We moved often, and I decided I wouldn’t subject my children to a constant change of schools.
I remember trying to explain our education plan to my mother. I expected her to disapprove. After all, she had raised me on the mantra “Education. Education. Education.” She herself was a pulmonologist and had proudly graduated first in her medical school class. School was such a big deal in my family that I was nervous to tell her. But I had underestimated her. When she saw our situation for what it was, she said something I didn’t expect. She said, “Well, that’s how royalty is raised.” Her supportive approval bolstered me in my resolve.
In the spirit of doing unto others, I purposed to be supportive of my daughter and her husband’s choices one day. After all, educating a child isn’t an easy thing. The biggest problem was my having no idea how to approach homeschooling. Teaching children is truly an art, as displayed by Maria teaching the Von Trapp children to sing in “The Sound of Music.” That scene epitomized my vision of what homeschooling should be. I saw myself as a kind of singing, teaching Maria Von Trapp and my children as play-clothes clad, eager pupils frolicking the countryside with me. That illusion lasted exactly one day before it burst, thanks to a reality check.
I wasn’t as patient, kind, melodious, and natural as Julie Andrews was, and my children weren’t at all hanging on my every word. It was that day that I got a sobering look at my mission. Besides not knowing exactly where to start, nor the scope or sequence of homeschooling, I realized I had everything to learn if I was going to teach my children everything. Everything.
Cumbersome, expensive curriculum manuals resembled thick phone books and didn’t necessarily guide untrained home teachers on the path of imparting knowledge. I often felt lost. Eventually, understanding that it was a matter of survival, I pitched the expensive books I had ordered into the trash and created a plan much more suited to our time and abilities.
My daughter is now homeschooling her own daughters in what is, thankfully, a vastly improved landscape. Resources abound, as do colleagues. Mentors and lessons can be found on the internet. Mom groups are available with scheduled playdates. And curriculum? Curriculum is ever so much more user-friendly.
Mother, father and daughter are painting eggs. Happy family are preparing for Easter. Cute little child girl wearing bunny ears. (Shutterstock)
Homeschool friends are now easier to find in churches, social media groups, and tutorial schools. Thanks to the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, tutors and teachers are advertising online and in-person lessons. Even the school districts have conceded that homeschooling can be the right choice, depending on a family’s needs. Curriculum writers have learned to pare down and condense instructions and rewrite lessons to launch a parent right into teaching. The curriculum is so much more appealing to students as well.
Back in the pre-internet day, I was fairly desperate for mentoring and support. I often upbraided myself for not being more resourceful. It was hard to find clubs, doings, activities, or anything for homeschool communities. Fortunately for me back then, a very gifted angel of mercy—a very talented homeschool mom—organized a cooperative tutorial school the year before we moved out of state. Another mom established a roller skating day.
Recently, I asked my daughter what grandparents could do to be more supportive of homeschooling. She said without hesitation that helping pay for lessons ranks high. It’s very appreciated. One model for this kind of help is providing a one-time contribution into a bank account for parents, which they can use to budget throughout the year to subsidize expenses: curriculum, lessons, rentals, and field trips. With some of the financial burden off of their shoulders, the parents are freed to focus on lessons of all sorts.
One arrangement that I would have loved as an early homeschooler is what we have with our daughter now. One day each week—Terrific Tuesdays—the girls spend the day at their paternal grandmother’s house playing, gardening, cooking, and exploring. Sometimes they have slumber parties. Mumsee and Pops’s day is on Thursdays. I teach what my granddaughter named “art craft.” It’s a good name, because she’s being introduced to the fine arts while still doing crafty things like Mod-podging a balloon to make a paper ball. We’ve acted out books, sat at the piano, read aloud, talked, and are currently learning to needlepoint. We’ve baked bread, colored, and painted rocks.
These grandparent days afford my daughter time for rest and planning. She has used them professionally to illustrate two books. What a wonderful thing for her to have time for her own pursuits. On those days, she does a few lessons in the morning, but then has time to use as she needs. Alleviating time stress helps home-educating families function more smoothly.
There was a study that found that grandparents that spend regular time with their grandchildren remained more mentally flexible and generally experienced better health and well-being.
Nobody can accurately describe the blessing of grandchildren. When I first experienced being a grandparent, I knew it was a joy one had to experience to understand. The Bible says that grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and that a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. What a joy and a privilege to get to participate in my grandchildren’s development, all while imparting an inheritance. It tires a grandparent out in one way, but serves as a fountain of youth in another.
Chicago-born, Boston University-educated, first-generation American, and freelance writer Evelyn Glover has traveled the world with her college-sweetheart husband of 34 years. They live near their grandchildren in Franklin, Tennessee, where they pursue and teach many varied arts: writing, cooking, painting, needlework, piano, and cello.
The Wolfenberger family. (Courtesy of the Wolfenbergers)
David and Mitsue Wolfenberger started a crab business on the coast of Washington in the 80s. They enjoyed small town life which provided a relatively protected environment in which to raise their family of seven children. But today, the Wolfenbergers are run a successful international nonprofit organization providing marriage education. In some ways, theirs is still the quintessential American story of family, hard work, and ingenuity.
“Our children worked alongside us in the crab business and in this way, developed good work habits and some skills. They washed totes, unloaded crabs from the boats and packed shipping crates. This is a demanding business, and since I had to be on the job full-time, my wife, whose first language is Japanese, homeschooled the children,” David said. “Our children’s flexible schedule provided us with opportunities to go on family camping trips and road trips during the off-season, when they weren’t working or getting an education.”
David and Mitsue’s own relationship had already planted a seed to grow something more. “From the time we were engaged and then married in 1982, Mitsue and I considered our relationship the most essential ingredient for the happiness of our family. My wife and I often had discussions with other couples who felt the same way. We wanted to do something to strengthen our own relationships, and help other married couples in our community, including our own married adult children,” David said. It was just discussion—until the crab business took off and they found success, and opportunity to pursue their passion.
David and Mitsue Wolfenberger. (Courtesy of the Wolfenbergers)
“We wondered where to begin,” David said. Then one day, the couple were spending time with their newlywed son and his wife, and their new daughter-in-law suggested they take on marriage enrichment education in their ministry. The very next day, David called a friend who had two decades of family therapy experience and asked him to come on board.
“We decided on two main objectives: revive marriages and train young people to conduct marriage enrichment programs. Three younger couples got involved and together they created the program we now call “Energize Retreats,” a two-day marriage enrichment program inspired by the teachings of Mark Gungor, a well-known marriage educator,” David said.
It was on one of these retreats that David had an “aha moment.” During one activity, husbands and wives met in separate groups. When the subject of pornography came up, the room went silent and at first no one said a word. When the conversation finally commenced, David discovered that this was a huge and common behavior causing serious problems in the marriage relationship.
The Wolfenbergers realized that if they didn’t take on this issue, nobody else would, so they decided to make pornography awareness a new objective of their ministry. In order to effectively address the problem, more education was needed. David financed an intergenerational group of men to attend a Christian sponsored workshop on the addictive nature of pornography and its negative impact on marriages. This was a boost for the attendees to overcome their own issues and then learn how to help others through getting trained in mentorship. This group of brave men did just that and as a result, High Noon was given birth.
The mission of High Noon is to help us understand the harmful and addictive nature of pornography, especially for today’s young people who are inundated with inaccurate, harmful sexual triggers in social media and elsewhere. Some of us may not think it’s such a big deal, but when we hear first-hand about a person’s struggle, it becomes obvious how a porn habit has the potential to hijack future plans for everlasting love and well-being.
“I started watching porn mainly out of curiosity about sex. However, it quickly turned into something I would go to when I was bored or frustrated. Luckily, I never reached the point where I was watching porn everyday but if it had not been for the recovery process of High Noon I might have gotten to that point. I would say that pornography had a negative impact on my relationships, and made me think of sex in a way that is likely not ideal and is not about love. Because of porn, my concept of sexuality was all about the pleasure and intensity and not at all about the emotion or love that is so deep in sex. It affected the way I viewed others, relationships, and even affected my motivation to pursue a relationship that could result in marriage. When was I able to say to myself, enough is enough? When I entered into a serious relationship and was on track for marriage, I decided that I could not continue watching pornography. I realized that it felt like I was being disloyal to my partner and pornography affected the way I valued her. I wanted my first real sexual experience to be about the love I had for my partner rather than the desire I had for sexual pleasure. I knew that overcoming this struggle with porn was essential to creating a lasting relationship of real love.” (Anonymous from a participant in High Noon mentorship program)
High Noon has created workshops with curricula for young adults, couples, and families. In these programs, singles can grow their sexual integrity before marriage and develop the skills needed to overcome the temptation of pornography. Husbands and wives can listen to presentations and discuss what it takes to experience greater intimacy and build trust in the marriage relationship. Parents can learn how to guide their children into God’s plan for sexuality in age appropriate lesson plans in the “School of Love” curricula.
High Noon proves that the curse of internet pornography can be lifted when individuals recognize its negative, addictive influence on their lives and seek help. Its mentorship program has been very effective in helping men and women break free of porn. “What made the difference for me was that I was surrounded by others who wanted the same things I wanted,” one anonymous participant shared. Being part of a weekly check-in call system for eight months helped this person overcome the challenge. “Now life is awesome. I am living life on purpose and building my dream every day. I have a beautiful wife that I am free to love unabashedly with all of my heart. I do not have the useless negative distraction that porn is and can use all of my time focused on creating a life that I want. I have confidence in who I am; I know that I am now aligned with my integrity goals.”
It’s impressive to see how the ingenuity and courage of one couple has produced effective and far reaching programs for families here in this country and abroad. What began with two people has multiplied and contributed to thousands of healthier individuals and families.
Poppy Richie is a freelance writer and former teacher and administrator at the Principled Academy in the San Francisco Bay Area. She co-authored a K-12 Character Education curriculum, “Discovering the Real Me,” and contributed to online elementary-level science education curricula for various companies.
Tiberiu and Sandra Czentye outside their South Carolina home. (SAM)
Parting from his wife and two sons was the hardest thing Tiberiu Czentye had ever done—harder than the upcoming 40-mile trek that would end with him crawling on the ground as he tried to evade armed guards near the Romanian–Yugoslavian border, harder than what would be months of hard labor in a Yugoslavian prison after he was captured anyway, and harder than the two years he would spend as either prisoner or refugee while crossing five countries before he finally won his freedom. “Family—that is why I left; I escaped Romania for the future of my kids,” Czentye said. “The biggest, toughest, most painful moment of my life was when I turned off the lights and kissed my kids and my wife goodbye, because I did not know if I would ever see them again.”
Tiberiu’s wife, Sandra Czentye, and their two sons. (Courtesy of Tiberiu Czentye)
Even now, from the safety of his own home in a free country, when he speaks of it—when he remembers those goodbyes—he’s moved to tears. Czentye and his family lived in communist Romania, during the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. From the beginning of this plan, he was clear about his goal: America. There, his family would have freedom and the opportunity for a better life and future for generations to come. “I studied. Many people leave and they don’t know what they’re doing or why,” he said. “If I make this sacrifice, at least I want to leave my family in one safe place for many generations. So I studied: the population of the US, the economy, the states, the two parties, the political power, the military power, the power of the dollar and how strong is the economy, and all these things put together.”
America’s history as a country built by immigrants was crucial for Czentye. He was migrating for his sons’ futures, and he didn’t want to bring them all the way to a new country where they would be looked down upon—and that didn’t happen in America. “I bring them here for their futures, and to feel good, not to be hurt,” he said. “I had a very strong reason to risk my life.”
He knew he was risking his family’s future as well, but he had a strong feeling that he would make it—throughout his journey, he said he must have been blessed. Man alone can only do so much, he said, but perhaps God played a part too.
A young Tiberiu and Sandra Czentye. (Courtesy of Tiberiu Czentye)
The Value of Human Dignity
Circumstances were bleak under Communist Party rule in 1989 socialist Romania, when Czentye set out on his mission to escape: schools were brainwashing centers, hard work was penalized, and his sons’ futures were almost certainly shaping up to be worse than his own. But Romanians didn’t always equate socialism with dictatorship—many people in the world still don’t. First, came the promises of free stuff, allowing socialism to take hold, Czentye said.
However, once the Communist Party had power, it quickly became clear that it couldn’t keep its promises. Then, the regime closed the borders, morphed into a dictatorship, and its unrealistic goals ended up impoverishing the nation. “Under these restrictions and these political things, there started to be a shortage of food, shortage of gas—shortage of almost everything,” Czentye said. “People were dying.”
That hit too close to home when his younger son got sick and ended up severely dehydrated. At the hospital, Czentye learned of a treatment for the virus, three daily doses of which could help his son to recover. But the medicine was produced outside of Romanian borders, and the regime refused to buy foreign pharmaceuticals. Upset, Czentye checked his son out of the hospital, despite widespread accusations that he was sentencing his boy to death. Instead, he hired a nurse and purchased the medicine on the black market—and his son got better. His enterprising spirit was clearly at odds with socialist culture.
Tiberiu Czentye in South Carolina on June 2, 2021. (SAM)
People in Romania had three options, he said: they could work hard and do their best while remaining unable to distinguish themselves or see the fruits of their labors, they could become lazy and collect the same pay as everyone else, or they could get out. The material side of things was only one concern.
Communist schooling, from kindergarten through college, focuses on brainwashing students while glorifying the Communist Party, Czentye explained. History is rewritten, all the media is state-run, private property disappears, and your movements are monitored and restricted. “Once they have power, they tell you what to do and how to do it,” he said. But there are always people like him, Czentye noted—people who want to make their own way and show their own worth.
In order for the regime to keep up its ruse, it doesn’t stop with lies and brainwashing. The secret police turn neighbors into informants, in a country where no one is allowed to criticize the party. “If somebody, just one neighbor, tells them, ‘Well, Tibi said that …’ in the morning they break down the door, take you from there, and you just disappear forever,” he said. That’s the worst part, he said: first, people turn on each other, society loses trust and faith in fellow humans, and people lose their dignity.
“People start to give you up. It starts to lose the quality and the value of the human being. I don’t want to say it because it’s not so fair, but they start to be more [like] animals, and just bend to the power.”
In contrast, family values were deeply ingrained for Czentye—growing up, he witnessed commitment between his grandparents and between his parents. As such, he didn’t just want a nicer life for himself: He wanted a future where his sons could flourish. Like his parents and grandparents had done before him, he wanted to lead by example and live out values worth imitating.
“That is why I left home, and left by myself. They have guns on the border and they used to shoot people—they don’t allow you to leave. I thought, ‘Please, they kill me, but they don’t kill my family,’” he said. From Czentye’s home in Timisoara, Romania, he crossed the border into Yugoslavia, where he was caught and sentenced to what amounted to slave labor, digging holes for electrical cables. After three months, he made his escape, traveling through Austria, through West Germany, and to the Netherlands, where he was placed in a refugee camp.
While in the Netherlands, Czentye sought political asylum in the United States and petitioned Romania to let his family visit him. The timing was fortunate—the regime had been overthrown and a new government was working to establish its legitimacy—and Czentye’s petition was granted. Being reunited with his family was unforgettable. He still remembers his trip to the airport, the suspense, and the first moment when he saw his family’s faces. With tears of joy streaming down his cheeks, Czentye was finally able to hug his loved ones again. It took a total of two years for Czentye to gain asylum, and in 1991, he moved to the United States.
“I had two luggages, two kids, my wife, and God,” Czentye said. He landed in Portland, Maine, where his family was entitled to a year of government assistance. After three weeks, he turned it down, and the family packed up and hopped on a Greyhound headed across the country. They had their eyes set on San Francisco, a hub of opportunity and industry.
The Czentyes in San Francisco in 1991. (Courtesy of Tiberiu Czentye)
His Grandchildren’s Future
In San Francisco, Czentye worked three jobs at once, taking neither vacation nor sick leave for five full years before starting his own business. But things in California—and many parts of America—have changed since then, he said. From 2007 to 2009, Czentye would spend time traveling up and down the Southeast, looking for a new place for his family. He found it in South Carolina, and after his youngest son graduated from college—both sons studied in California, one at UCLA and the other at Menlo College—they made the move cross-country. Still, even after seeing changes firsthand in California, Czentye was appalled when socialism became a popular movement in the United States.
“I was shocked. Shocked! And very upset,” said Czentye, who today is CEO of a digital archiving company and a happy grandfather of five. “I really believe it is my duty to share my story and tell these crazy guys who like socialism that it’s not like that.” Inspired to do more, he got involved in local politics and was recently elected executive committeeman for his county, and is looking for more opportunities to share the truth still.
However, Czentye acknowledges that it’s not all these young people’s faults that they’re endorsing socialism; rather, their parents may have failed them by not teaching them to mind their character. The schools may have also failed them by pushing them toward expensive degrees in oversaturated industries, racking up loans they now struggle to pay off. Even before Czentye set foot in America, he studied the culture, and from day one his wife and he were clear with their sons: Parents are the foremost teachers in life. Police and schoolteachers have roles to play as well, but those should never supersede parental guidance. He spoke openly about socialism, communism, what happened in Romania, and the follies of human nature.
Tiberiu and Sandra Czentye with their sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. (Courtesy of Tiberiu Czentye)
Czentye and his wife wanted to give their boys good lives, and they made clear their expectations: that the boys should use the good manners they were taught and strive for excellence—and they did, doing well in school and sports. Their sons are now raising their own families with these same traditional values. But Czentye saw that many of his sons’ friends in grade school weren’t brought up this way; without good values, a person’s character can slip, laziness creeps in, and the mentality of blaming others provides an easy out. These resentful souls take readily to socialism and its promise of free things, he warned.
A second warning sign, a tactic reminiscent of what Czentye experienced in Romania, is the divisive culture attempting to take hold in America. “The socialists, they work very hard to divide us: to divide us by nationalities, to divide us by blue-collar workers [versus] white-collar workers, if you are a member of a political party—all of these things,” he said. But Czentye believes that truth will prevail, and if people can recognize socialism for what it is, America can stay free.
“I’ve had the chance to go [traveling] in many countries since I’m here, and since I had my company, I went back to Europe, I was in South America, I was in China, I was in Africa, [and] Japan. I can tell you, America is not perfect, but it is the best,” he said. “And from here, I’m not going to run anymore. I’m going to fight and do what I can against socialism and for a free society.”
Tiberiu and Sandra Czentye outside their South Carolina home. (SAM)
