The air was cool, yet dense with foliage and automobile exhaust. My father and I unraveled long, stringy silver poles and fumbled with the directions to the tent. My mother unloaded sleeping bags from the trunk. My sister sat near, unphased by the smell of raw earth all around her, still sleeping in her car seat. 
    We were in Door County. Usual. The moth-eaten oaks and maples, bottlecap-ridden drives, night sky glittered with constellations you only saw in books; it was all familiar. The cicadas echoed my mother’s monotone hum as she joined us in our unfolded fold-up chairs.
    We marveled at it all. As familiar as it all was, you couldn’t help but stop to admire every once and awhile. We talked about politics, music, sports, the ride up; very little about our surroundings. It wasn’t necessary. The burnt copper soil soaked up into us from our feet, the calm sky above penetrating our skulls. Stale beer and fresh bark busied our noses.
    Besides, we weren’t much of talkers. My sister always had her scraggly headphones. Her gray-green eyes personified focus, a trait she prided in when it came to her education. Every afternoon, 3 o’clock, her toe tapping the leg of desk 82B, gently shifting the textbooks above. She got her work ethic from my mother, who never attended college but always regretted it. My mother, on the other hand, was the sputtering engine that ran our family’s conversational hatchback. My father failed in both categories.
            “Look at the bird’s nest, Lukas.”
    My mother was gazing at the tree. She looked back at me. The flames between us illuminated our faces. The day had faded to night, so my mother prepared a fire. Smoke and stray ashes momentarily cluttered my sight. It returned only for me to find that my sister’s chair, which had been making its way slowly out of our circle, was now entirely removed; my father hid behind his book; my mother eyes locked again on the nest. The fire light was hardly doing its job. I could scarcely make out the trailing corner of my mother’s mouth, my sisters tapping foot beyond, my father’s dark furrowed brows.
I was the first to retreat into the tent that night, wondering what it must be like to live in a bird’s nest.