Sleeping in the Rain

Today I was rummaging through my under stairs closet looking for an old tarp to use so I could finally sleep outside in my hammock and I came across something else.  My very first tent that I bought all by myself.  It was a Sierra Designs Starlight and I loved that tent.  It started my mild obsession with tents.  It was a single-person tent, it was coffin-shaped and bright yellow and blue and easy to set up.  It had mesh screening on the roof so that you could look up and see the stars. It also had a matching yellow rain fly.  Those were the days before “low impact colors” were popular…..:)

When I worked for the YCC (Youth Conservation Corp) one summer in the 70’s, I had a long commute to work, so I bought the tent.  There was a campground near one of the areas we were working on, so I pitched my tent and me and my Alaskan Malamute stayed there for two weeks at a time.  I was a vegetarian at that time, so bought a wild food identification book and added to my diet what wild things I could find.  Once, I found one brown thing called a Pinesap that wouldn’t kill you if you ate it, so plucked it and threw it onto my soup.  I learned that just because something can be eaten, doesn’t mean it tastes good.  That was the exception to the rule tho, and I happily added Morel mushrooms to my supermarket basics.  Another time I invited my crew over for dinner and had spaghetti.  A dubious look came into their eyes as I expounded on what was in the spaghetti.  No one died – but no one ever came back for dinner.

Unfortunately, I was unable to take my dog with me to work.  Her name was Talia and being an intelligent animal, she got bored.  I had to tie her up when I was away and it must have been agonizing to be outdoors and not able to investigate all the wonderful smells.  One day, I came back from work and found that she had destroyed my beloved tent. Huge holes in the bottom and the rain fly was half ripped off.  I couldn’t sleep in it, so had to go home and take the long commute to work the rest of the week. That weekend I bought some blue ripstop nylon and began to sew. I was able to fix the rainfly with no problem, then I ran out of nylon.  Being from a camping family, we had plenty of it lying around, but most of it was scraps.  There was black, red, grey, green, white and blue.  So I did the rest of the repairs with those scraps…..and a lot of seam sealer.  My tent now looked like a patchwork quilt. I didn’t care, it was waterproof.  While I was sewing, I decided to add some extra touches.  I made little bags to go on the inside of the tent and I added a design to the door of the rainfly.

comet door

Artfully initialed bag. My initials were CED.

repaired floor

Anyway, the tent lasted for several more adventurous years.  Then I joined the Air Force and got married to a non-hiking man who is a wonderful cook.  I still managed to collect tents tho.  We did primitive car camping instead and I learned that “primitive” is a relative word….especially in relationship to cars.

Anyway. Obviously not finding a square or rectangular tarp that would work for a hammock, I bought a vinyl rainfly for 7 bucks at Sportsman’s Warehouse along with 50 feet of paracord.  I am now ready to sleep in the rain tonight.

YAY.

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