The Gilded Cage
The second attempt to put up the cabin tent was, as expected, far easier than the first attempt. Getting the surprises behind you is the very purpose of setting up a new tent in a familiar, convenient setting before you attempt to unpack it in a wilderness setting or with the performance anxiety of setting up on a campground for the entertainment of fellow campers. I'll bet the spectacle of me being pulled across the pasture by a blowaway tent would have provided many amusing campfire tales. Is "Prairie Surfing" a potential Olympic event? It could be a tad difficult to schedule. Wind is not the most easily predicted element in nature.
The cabin tent is far to cumbersome for wilderness camping, but as of yesterday's sunset, it sat fully assembled with a few creature comforts at the south end of the horehound test field. I knew I would need a second set of hands after the tent floor was staked to my satisfaction and all the flexible fiberglass poles were threaded through their matching tent pole sleeves. Even without the wind factor, 12 and 14 foot nylon wall are substantial lengths to manage with a single set of hands. The tent design lifts all four walls at once. Yea, I'm stubborn enough to accomplish such feats on my own rather than risk the humiliation of the Honey Do, but it isnae a tough math equation to see it is far better to have a collaborator. Preferably one who isnae going to ask me to find words for what I want while I am being pulled by high winds.
I havenae journaled much about the two farm handies who moved onto the property over the course of the past week or three. One of those handies is ES's ex, previously referred to in this jounal as, "AB" (Assistant Beekeeper). The other is her next. Try translating that one into 21st century dialect without sounding like the mayor of the Toxic People Landfill. Letting God lead that dance. ^^^It^^^ hasn't given me words for ^it^ yet. All at Godspeed. . .
As the moment for raising the cabin tent approached, I began taking inventory for availability of that second set of hands. The busy men were all busy. AB was? ? ? The tough read I have come to accept her as. She is as gifted a psychobabbler as I am. Why use a single word when a thousand will do? I would rather not sort through a thousand words for my "Yes" or "No" while I am working a puzzle. That thousand words will be far more entertaining around a campfire with libations flowing freely. I hope I wasn't too rude when I cut her soliliquiy short and went back to my puzzling without a clear answer from her. She never showed up at the tent site, so this morning I am translating her yaddah blahs as, "Not Available." Just guessing. . .
As I attempted to schedule the second set of hands, I came face-to-face with my greatest fear in this string of apparent successes. Am I doing any more than building the next gilded cage in which I will have nothing but patronizing guards watching the door of my gilded cage to be sure I am silenced with every song and NEVER free to fly?
Hubs was the body who showed up with an available set of hands. The deed was accomplished with zero joy and finished up with another soliloquiy of the cyber-stresses being heaped on him from the remote corporate headquarters. As I listened to his venting withnae so much as an acknowledgement of the test field or the arroyo view outside the screened patio of the new toy, my fears of building myself a new guilded cage grew and grew.
Maya Angelou has been rolling though my head while I have processed this evolution. "I know why the caged bird sings."
Replies
That’s an accomplishment Arfie and even though second hands were not as easy as could be, the tent sounds neat. When I envision it, I think of the elaborate Bedouin tent I used to perform in or of the Middle Ages camp tents reserved for royalty and the elite. I’m not certain if there is any correlation to your camp tent but it’s what comes to mind.
I miss camping and spent so much of my childhood doing so, whether it was with my family with our small tents or by myself with my horse and a blanket roll to sleep under the starry skies. Granted that was before my sun allergy destroyed all ability to handle the dry heat out west.
My last camping trip was in 2014 and was more of a pit stop overnight on the fringes of the Navajo reservation on a dirt trail in Grand Canyon National Park. All the campsites were full because it was that time of year but a nice Park Ranger directed us to a secluded spot off the maps where we could stay the night. It was wonderful, just me & my husband. We had a small fire, dined on field rations with a beautiful bottle of wine and then spent a few hours just laying on the hood of my Xterra watching the stars wheel through the sky. We had no tent so we slept in the truck, but still it was awesome.
My favorite camping spots are all in the areas around the reservations in Arizona and New Mexico because I’ve always felt safe there. I spent a lot of my childhood with the Navajo and on the reservation, so I always am filled with a deep sense of connection and peace.
Good luck with you Camp Tent.
Hugs & love!
Big hug Arf….. I'm glad that your hubby showed up to help..... I hope that you'll have fun with your family this weekend and that you have a happy and peaceful Easter.....xo
Five years without camping? ? ? No wonder you are going crazier, Mighty River. I turn into a public menace after a few months without camping. It ain't safe to get between my grounding on the Bioweb.
If there is a Hallmark Easter Weekend in store, it has yet to rattle the wires, but the cabin tent puzzle is coming together pretty good. I think. Maybe. I havenae messed with cabin tents since the one we literally loved to pieces when my children were still cherubic. The fact that it used aluminum poles instead of the now standard fiberglass poles gives away how out of date my design awareness is. Even without the design diffs, this cabin tent is probably around 2.5 x the size of that one room cabin tent.There was a rain shower during the bewitching hours this morning. The rain blew in under the poorly attached rain canopy. Nothing horrific, but enough to make me glad I had chosen to sleep indoors last night. By the time I tweaked all the guy wires, etc. and mopped up the water on the floor inside the tent, my socks and shoes were wet enough to incubate trench foot and tweak my gratitude for my close proximity to a warm bath and dry socks.
I end up smelling like smoke after a night of camping. I do like camp fire.
Not even *I* smell like the socially unacceptable smoke(s) after a by a wood fire. . . Even the most prohibiting of anti-smokers seem to know that not all smokes is created equal. I think. Prohibitionists arenae the most statistifyable fanatics in any culture and every culture has them. They arenae even fun to question.
I don't typically build a campfire when I camp. At my campsite, campfires are usually social events. I build the occasional meditation fire, but even outdoors, there are far more efficient ways to cook.
Beer, meat and fire. My idea of camping.
Burp. . .
The bubba camp is in the next cove over. You can see their brights and hear their boomboxes from here. BYOB. No smoking. Enjoy.
In honor and as a way to appease my longing for outdoors and a good camp fire, I keep a well stocked stash of Navajo piñon wood incense stashed in my house. Now that I’m back in it another land where there isn’t a “single mosquito, they’re all married and have large families,” (from an Alaskan T-shirt my daughter has), piñon fires is one of the best mosquito deterrents I’ve ever know. Granted mosquitoes don’t like me so I rarely get stung but my husband and daughter are magnets for those nasty buggers. I even have Alaskan mosquito traps, lol, so I can skin them and make me a mosquito wing coat. (Gag gift from mother-in-law that is a cm sized bear trap on a key ring.)
I miss my desert camping though. I suspect though that because of my Mast Cell Sensitivity, Anaphylaxis, and Sun Allergy, it will be rare if I ever will get the opportunity to enjoy camping in the New Mexico/Arizona areas I so love. My sun allergy went ballistic last summer after the anaphylaxis and even humidity no longer provides any relief. I dread what dry heat will do now. But perhaps a winter trip down to the reservations to visit my in laws (they winter in Arizona) would work.
Light I miss it. At least I can go to grandpa’s cabin in the woods when ever I want but I have a phobia of ticks and it’s tick central in those woods. (As a kid I got a wood tick dug in at the base of my skull/spine that rather than take me to a doctor to get it removed, my mother and her friend tried every possible torture to remove it, including nail polish, nail polish remover, smoking it out, burning it out, etc...., I’ve been terrified of ticks ever since and two years ago my uncle was hunting out at the cabin and got bit by a tick and got Lyme disease so...)
Anyhow.
Hugs & love Arfie!
During the parenting years when academic, work and family yaddahs often pushed the limits of my wilderness cravings to psychotic levels, I often built small, temporary fire pits in my suburban cage. With the curious trailings of little ones, this psycho tick grew into a family tradition of "Story Fires." One of my sons desperately wants to pass that tradition on to his children and we have tried, but. . . I just the gammy. . . His co-parent was raised with different psycho ticks and. . . Sigh. . . The GKs are still young. Who knows what the future may hold.
Even without your sun disabilities, I take my shade VERY seriously in my camping expeditions, be it desert or mountain. I've gotten the most painful sunburns of my life at high altitudes, but the desert carries higher risk of heat stroke.
More empathy for both you and my similarly stricken sister. NO FUCKING FAIR! ! ! My sister makes it sound even more tragic in her geezer than it she did as a child. For sure, she is so pale she glows in the dark, but that might be from the end stage alcoholism. I'm afraid to ask. She has all her many doctors trained to avoid the A word and quite the menu of more respectable dx'es to cover in TMI detail.
Glad you have your tribal incense to keep you connected. Yea, I've always loved the irony of snow country mosquitoes being big enough to carry off small children. Is good news that at least you can see them coming? INCOMING! ! !