Fern Gully

3 days on the trail means 2 nights camping, and in my opinion, making camp is the very best part of "camping." The first night we were out in the woods, we hiked down into a gap between mountain peaks. Imagine tall trees scattered about a valley carpeted by baby ferns, but the trees themselves acts as the pillars holding up the ceiling of leaves - this was our gap. There, in between the trees, I felt like children in a gigantic room playing house. It was beautiful, secluded, cool, and as the wind came and went, it made all the miniature ferns nod up and down simultaneously so the whole forest looked alive. In the living carpet, there was a clearing just the right size for a tent beside a fire ring left by other hikers. And a step from the clearing, a stream trickled down gently cascading rocks (more to come about this water). In all seriousness, it looked like something from a fairytale.

So, when we started off to bed, we decided to leave the rain tarp off our tent because, without the tarp, our tent is entirely see-through. When we turned off our flashlights, we could barely tell we were inside a tent and felt a part of the magical gap. After awhile, we fell asleep this way... until the howling began. The howling and the thunder. I awoke suddenly to heat lightening filling the sky over and over, encroaching thunder and some horrible creature crying (which David thinks was a coyote). Then, it hit me, no rain tarp meant we and EVERYTHING we owned and had to carry for 2 more days were about to be very wet. I frantically shook David, and we, very confused, half-asleep, half-dressed, stumbled around in the dark desperately trying to put up and tie down our tarp. And I kid not when I say literally seconds after we ducked into our tent, I thought the second flood had begun. Our tent swayed with the weight of the water, and the rain roared in our ears. We even thought the wind pulled up one of our stakes, but later found out a branch fell on the tent nearly hitting us. Safe, dry, cuddled together, we fell asleep taking turns giving each other back-rubs as the rain pounded the tent. Needless to say, we were two very fortunate people - dry and uncrushed. Night one is Camp Elmer.