Fragile

I was getting really sick of the sticky, spiky, painful burrs that plague my campground. Surely I didn’t pay 20 bucks for this shit. But, as I picked the living splinters out of my feet, I figured this was as bad as it’d get. A good night’s sleep and a leisurely drive north the next morning.

A good night’s sleep only lasted 2 hours. I was awoken by a crack of thunder. No worries, I figure, I have the rainfly up. I was prepared this time. Rain started to fall, and I thought nothing of it. The rain picked up, and the wind whistled in the stunted shrubby trees. Maybe it wont be so easy to fall back asleep. So I lay back and listen to the gentle patter on my roof.

Unexpectedly, the patter became a deluge. Rain pounded the tent with palpable weight. The whistle became a shriek, and was joined by the groan of my tent’s crossbars bending. The distant booms of thunder became abrupt frightful cracks. Even with my eyelids closed, the strikes of lightning blinded me.

Waterproof and windproof only go so far. Rain leaked into the tent, and began soaking my clothes and sleeping bag. The stakes threatened to rip from the ground. Suddenly, my own tent whacked me in the face as the flexible crossbars, so convenient in calm, gave way to the force of the storm. The tent collapsed around me, and the wind scraped at the sides, like a bear had pounced my tent and now clawed to get in.

I lay awake for an hour, using my own body weight to prevent the tent from being blown away. I’m scared, bewildered, and deeply tired to my core. Even when the rain and thunder stop, the wind continues to taunt me.

In a lull, I get up, and tie some ropes to the tent and stake them down. Hopefully now the tent will be more secure. I return to the tent and try to go back to sleep, but insanity has taken hold. I converse with myself, personified in the mental image of my dive instructor, but unlike my usual chats I don’t know what he’ll say before he says it. He admonishes my naivety.

In another two hours, the next squall line hits. The extra lines do nothing, as the tent continues to collapse in, smother me, and spring back out, like a demented yo-yo. Just as I was beginning to dry, rain soaks me again. But I’m simply too tired. I try to hold up my arm to prevent the tent from closing in all the way, but eventually I give up, roll over, and hope I don’t suffocate in my sleep.

The next morning, I begin to pack up, and survey the damage. The borrowed tent’s crossbars have been bent, likely unfixable. Water and sand coat everything, and the face of my cellphone has been deeply scoured by the blown grit. Outside, the rest of the camp is stirring. People chat on their way to the bathroom about hunkering down in the storm. They talk like survivors of Katrina.

The park ranger, a kindly middle aged woman, knew better. The storm had gusts over 50 mph, but in her words, “It was nothing special. Were just a little sand island in the middle of the ocean, you know. What’s protecting us?”

Surely, my desire to watch a hurricane make landfall from the beach has been greatly reduced, but her words stuck with me. What protects me? My youthful sense of immortality leads me to do things like camp in the woods by myself with no experience, but what’s going to protect me from a bear, or a storm, or a fall, or myself. Nature is far more powerful than any of us, and kills with no conscious malice or regret. Thoughts of the stone on the bottom of the sea settled on me as I drove north.