Our room, however temporary, with a viewTent: Origin Middle English: from Old French tente, based on Latin tent- ‘stretched,’ from the verb tendere. Which looks like tender, as in “showing gentleness and concern or sympathy” HAH I say HAH . . . HAH.
It all began gently enough. Ann had invited us for the weekend to camp in her woods in the Adirondacks. Brian had bought the tent, almost a year ago, in hopes of camping out on the way to our wedding. (It had yet to leave the backyard.) We drove out and in clear PERFECT woodsy weather had pitched the tent on the leafy pine needle ground of the Arcadian, historic, pastoral countryside.
We had dinner, talked and laughed with our gentle hostess and climbed into the spacious accommodations with our two fur coated roommates. The moonlight shone through the diaphanous ceiling, the loons called from the lake, everyone was snug. Then the rain began.
It was gentle enough, some would say sympathetic even. We remembered not to touch the walls lest it encourage a leak, though bug chasing dog noses didn’t heed that rule. The bugs and the noses would “entertain” us for 2 nights.
I kept slipping off the air mattress too. This would be fun for you normal folk. For a dizzy headed do nothing like me, reclining itself is a bit of a challenge. Laying on the ground in the too dim night light of the Coleman lantern was enough. Laying on the ground in a tent in the woods in the rain AND swoon-slipping off the damn thing was a bit much for stroke-boy. But I simply smiled a clenched toothed smirk and threw the f**king thing out of the tent and went to powder my nose in the trees . . . in the rain. This is when the low animalistic growls greeted me mid-powder. Intellectually I knew this was, probably, merely Ann’s aging, cautious Pug snugly calling from her nearby tent. Nonetheless, I reacted like it was a voracious hostile Yogi looking for my picnic basket. Mid-powder I dove into the tent. B diplomatically swallowed any amusement.
We spent the next day in bright sunshine. Touring the grounds, visiting town, brunching at one of the jaw dropping clubhouses, and enjoying a club-wide picnic dinner top off by a pancake dessert. I never knew the rich could be so entertaining. I never knew you could put melted butter, maple syrup AND brown sugar on a pancake.
That night, like clockwork, the rain began the moment we bedded down in the tent. This time we were entertained by bug chasing, nose pokes AND supernatural uninhibited rolling thunder. (We thought the loons had been loud.) And I refrained, despite my engaging needs, from taking a powder.
Monday dawned pastorally and B packed up the tent, loaded the Caribou onto the roof while I busied myself snapping pics on my iPhone (someone has to attend to the art) . . . and off we went.
Happy, grateful, still full of pancakes, and ecstatic that we have a tent in the storm.
- - - David
