Day 34: Ode to a Canvas Tent

You want to know what my favorite part about living in a tent is? Do ya?  Well, I'll tell ya.  It's RAIN. That's right, R – A – I – N.  As in the stuff that is leaking through the peak of my tent and dripping right where my head would be if I was a good little Phil-staffer who actually went to bed at a decent hour on a Friday night.  Guess it's a good thing I'm a rebel, eh, or I might be developing pneumonia as we speak.  Actually, I just like the word pneumonia and I'm pretty proud of the fact that I spelled it all by myself without any help from Microsoft Word, thank you very much.

It has been raining pretty much non-stop since before the end of closing *cough* campfire at 8:30 this evening.  And we're not talking any itsy bitsy, namby pamby, let-me-sprinkle-for-a-little-while-and-call-it-good rain, either.  It's RAINING. You  know, that constant, steady rhythm of entire oceans being emptied on your head.  Danica, Dory, Valerie, Kristy and I had a dandy time tromping and stomping our way though the puddles on our way back to the tents, but if I thought I knew the meaning of soaked after that little escapade, I had another thing coming to me.

We just spent the last couple of hours in Smallfry – which is, being interpreted, a roofed building – watching the greatest cheesy movie of my entire life (don't hate me, but it's Top Gun), and I came back to find what looked like large, wet footprints down the middle of my tent floor.  My first thought was, "Oh no, my tent has been infiltrated once again" – and yes, I did, as a matter of fact, use those exact words. But then the familiar sound of water torture registered in my brain and I realized that this was no line of thief-busting footprints, rather it was puddles.  Of rain.  Collecting from the drips running down my tent ceiling.  Oh, goody.

So I quickly gathered up my things and moved them out of the way of the falling water bombs, but as I stacked things along the (so far) dry side of my tent, I thought, "What if it gets windy tonight, too?"

Because if it's not rain, there's one thing New Mexico is rather good at and that is WIND.  It can be a perfectly beautiful, calm morning, and then suddenly your tent is gone.  Not askew.  Not flapping slightly.  Gone. With no forwarding address.  True story.  It happened to me last week and several other people just this last Wednesday.  Remind me to tell you about it sometime when you're older.  The details are a little scary. 

So yes.  It's 11:53pm on Friday the 19^th of June, 2009, and I'd really like to be sleeping.  But I can't, because right now, my pillow is busy trying to learn how to dog paddle.