Camping

My first backpacking trip with troubled youth had me outfitted with a borrowed pole tent and a trash bag for rain gear. Of course this would be the trip we let the kids make all the decisions. About 2 hours into hiking in the rain after dark I was rethinking everything about every decision I had made in the last two months. The layers of wetness on my person had become like second skin. The first layer of rain had mixed with sweat and formed a layer of grease over my skin that was close to my core body temperature; which was about as warm as shared bathwater when you are the youngest in a family of three. The new rain was getting colder to match the dropping temperature and hitting my uncovered head like nails dropping from the sky. I was carrying the rear of the group, supposedly making sure no one was attempting to run away. In truth, the only one even contemplating running was myself but I had no idea which direction would provide relief the quickest so I continued to follow the herd of troubled kids.

The trail was flat with the mountain to our right. When I say the mountain to our right, I mean you could hold out your right hand and steady yourself on the incline with not much lean. As we rounded to a creek I could see gear being shed through the black wetness and assumed this would be where we were staying for the night. I was one of two adults in charge of this operation and had no idea our coordinates or if the entire party was still with us. I found a flat ground and laid down my wal-mart tarp as my footprint and went to work securing shelter, my shelter that is. The damn kids were on their own. They had to go and snort Benadryl or break into a liquor store and now we all had to be miserable. That cool 22k I was bringing in for my new job with benefits was not in the front of my mind at that particular moment. I threw my pack into the opening of the tent and set the structure up with my gear inside. The tent had no rain fly so the footprint would have to be taken up to keep the rain from spitting through all night. By the time this was all taken care of my bed for the night was a puddle of water. In a panic I pulled any and all dry clothes from my pack to mop up the moisture, not thinking that I was breaking all ties at that moment with myself and anything dry for the next 48 hours at least. I caught my error just in time to retrieve my down sleeping bag and lay it on the borrowed thermarest. Water was already begin to pool around me on the tent floor. The sleeping bag was soaked at the head and foot but the middle was still dry. I recalled hearing from an eagle scout that the way to get the optimal warmth from your sleeping bag is to sleep in the nude. This worked out at the moment as I had no dry clothes left. So there I was, naked in a fetal position in the sleeping bag clamoring for the last few inches of dry as the water continued to fall and creep around me. This was my first job after quitting graduate school, my first venture out of science and into humanity as a profession. I still had a broken heart from a love lost that spring to the west coast. But I slept sound that night, curled in warmth, the stillness keeping me dry as I waited to be reborn in the first light of sun that would show me where I was in these dark north Georgia woods.