By DOROTHEA NORDSTRAND

For many years, while we were raising our four children, tent camping was our favorite recreation. We loved the feeling of closeness to the things of nature that surrounded us in our canvas home-away-from-home, and the immediate friendship with others who were enjoying the woods or mountains as we were. There was a mutual lack of the trappings of civilization that made us feel close to the folks who were camping, too.

When our family grew up and left us to start families of their own, we decided the forego the old tent. As a matter of fact, we simply had worn it out and it ripped to shreds in a strong wind as we camped on Vancouver Island, so we buried it there and didn't replace it.

We bought a truck with a camper on its back with an overhang above the cab and felt like turtles when we drove it along the highway. It was comfortable, but something was missing. We traded the camper for a trailer (which was also comfortable), but felt like Amtrak on the highway ... and still something was missing.

Then, one evening as we sat inside our comfortable accommodation, we realized that we had not exchanged one word with the people who were occupying the spaces on either side of us. We hadn't seen hide nor hair of humans in either place, although I had had a meaningful conversation with a big, lonesome-looking black Lab that was chained to one of them, and with a snooty, yappy poodle crouched beneath the other. Of people, we could see nothing, although we could hear the sound of TVs on the evening air ... and one of the TVs was ours.

Now, we knew what was missing. Instead of coming into the lovely outdoors and enjoying it, we were all holing up in as much luxury as we could afford and acting as though we had never left home. If this was what modern camping was all about, forget it! But we don't give up easily. We remembered all those wonderful, starlit evenings when we sat on a log and watched the sparks from our campfire swirl away into the dark sky and the fellow campers who drifted in to share our fire and talk of places and things and we knew that kind of fun was worth trying to find again.

Too old and brittle to return to the tent-and-sleep-on-the-ground routine, we bought a second-hand Volkswagen Westfalia and now the fun is all coming back. We can shut ourselves away from the world when we want to, but with the big side-door open (as it nearly always is when we camp), we once again feel a kinship with our surroundings. The smell of evergreens, the sound of a running stream, the chattering of squirrels and birdsong are once again part of our adventure. Also, that big, open door is an invitation to folks out for an evening stroll to stop by for a chat. When we are lucky enough to find a place that will still allow campfires, we build one and find that, sometimes, even RV dwellers are coaxed out to enjoy it with us. We carry a supply of marshmallows and the makings of the good, old "S'mores" our kids loved ... Hershey bar squares and toasted marshmallows squished between graham crackers. We find they still are delectable eaten by a campfire in the evening.

Camping is fun, again. The VW is a snug little bug, and no mistake. I am a short lady, just two inches over five feet tall, so we don't even have to pop the top for me to stand erect to use the kitchen when we are picnicking or traveling between campgrounds. With the top popped, there is ample height for the tallest camper and a huge flap in the canvas that will unzip to let in the cool night breezes. I relish the comfort of a true bed, (even though going to bed finds me creeping on knees and elbows halfway up the bed from the bottom and then hurling myself in the general direction of the pillow, and getting up in the morning means sitting up and doing a fanny-walk down the mattress until my legs dangle over the bottom edge). I love the convenience of the tiny, but complete kitchen, and Vern enjoys being able to drive with ease into many places that are impossible for the "big rigs." He likes the effortlessness of fitting our buglet into spaces of almost any size or shape. And we both agree that it is a friendly way to go.

An OPEN HOUSE is our Snug Bug.

Dorothea Nordstrand is a resident of the Green Lake neighborhood.