Got back from camping yesterday and when I woke up this morning it was hard to believe everything we'd been through. I mean, except of course for the lingering feeling of being wet and cold, the barely conscious urge to seek high ground at all times, the slight smell of forest and slighter smell of mildew throughout my room, and, of course, the giant tent filling the entirety of my bathroom. I squeezed around that this morning to brush my teeth and wash my face. I have a pimple in the middle of my forehead for the first time in years. I also have a toothache and a headache. Nice. I spent most of the day yesterday getting each of the four tents to safe and dry place so that they wouldn't mold, and I'll likely put in another 1-2 hours this week getting them folded up, sorted, and returned, but such is life. It was the weekend from hell, as predicted, but it was also awesome. Not only because the company started out good and got better (you can't help but bond through such experiences), but because it was beautiful.
We survived and that felt good, but it made me feel more vulnerable rather than more capable. I was forced to understand nature and my own limits. What if the tornado had hit our campground? What if we didn't have cars? What if we hadn't found the coin laundry? What if we weren't going home after only two days of the pain and cold? And how pathetic - we weren't even in the middle of nowhere in anything hellish - just a fierce two day thunderstorm, in a nice state park that even offered hot showers (which we never used because frankly we were wet enough).
I understood something of homelessness when I slept in the laundry room in a shelf above the dryers, feeling exposed and alone and even though it was hard and cold and uncomfortable still feeling bad for being there at all, that I didn't deserve even that... and in the morning after sleeping on and off I woke up to voices and my first thought was "shit, must be park rangers and here come the questions and, since I /am/ more legitimate than a real homeless person, an apologetic removal rather than one by force..." and I squirmed in my sleeping bag and waited but it turns out that time it was just some hick emptying his trailer toilet into the sewer. Relief. Zahra and I slept another fitful hour and then packed up before the real authorities might take offense.
Everything flooded the first night. We were all cozy and happy at first, eating chicken in the big tent by candlelight and then listening to the thunderstorm and feeling very safe and warm and dry inside. Then Lingxiao came in and said she was a bit wet, and Palak seconded. So Palak squeezed in a bit tighter and Lingxiao came over by me. After a little while Palak said her side was becoming unbearable and so was mine. So we sent Palak and Lingxiao into the cars to sleep, and brought in towels and whatever else we could find to try to keep the middle of the tent reasonable for Megan, Zahra, and I. We kicked out Zahra early on because the water kept coming, but she took the last available spot in a car, so Megan and I tried to last the night. Our tiny dry spot got smaller and smaller and we moved closer and closer to one another, catching only the tiniest moments of sleep now and then. Everything was damp, even wet, but we kept shrinking away from the puddles of genuine standing water until even that reached us. When three inches of water reached my face, I told Megan that we would have to figure something out. She elected to sleep in the front seat of one of the cars, and I gathered up my sleeping bag and went for a hike. It was barely even raining by now although the ground was soaking wet. I went up to the bathhouse and found a coin laundry, used all the coins on me to dry the sleeping bag, running laps around the campground while I waited, and then took the sleeping bag up to a little shelf, about a foot wide, perched above the dryer, and there I slept at last for an hour until the birds started singing at dawn.
We went climbing at Elephant Rocks and Johnson Shut In's, weather be damned or close enough. We hiked through the rain and when it stopped we climbed on the rocks, timidly at first and then a bit more ambitiously. We had to be careful, careful because things were slippery when wet and we held onto each others hands firmly and helped each other go higher and higher. At Johnson Shut Ins it was mostly me who went out, the others hadn't been there before and didn't trust it as much as I did. I had almost reached the other side when the rain picked up, turned into one of those torrential moments that can't last. I was in the middle of the river with the waterfalls and rapids on all sides and suddenly it turned as dark as after sunset and the water became dark grey and troubled. Everyone called me to come back. I did so, but calmly, thinking to myself how many times I've done the same thing in summer when the rocks were just as wet from splashing children and I didn't even have shoes on. God was it beautiful in the middle in the rain.
A dry moment at Elephant Rocks...
... and a wet one at Johnson's Shut Ins.As soon as I reached the side my friends were on, the rain stopped and in seconds there was a dramatic reversal. The sun came out and the sky was blue - it was the best weather we'd had the entire weekend. I took off my jacket - I was still soaked underneath, but lighter weight, and Ju, Prite and I went out again. Prite was wearing flip flops and started walking through the shallower parts of the water rather than leaping from rock to rock and Ju and I did. Soon he was soaked and gave up on staying dry at all. He started jumping out of crevices and splashing us, so finally I put down my bag and jumped in after him.
We attempted to go up to Taum Sauk and Mina Sauk. We did stop for a while at the highest point in Missouri and took pictures at the overlook with the last of the short sunshine. As we reached the Mina Sauk fall trail, we realized that it was longer than anticipated and also very muddy and nasty, so we decided to head back to camp. It was a good thing, because no sooner had we gotten into the cars then it started raining again - harder than ever. It was such rain that it still impaired visibility when our wipers were at full speed, and here we were trying to make our way down the mountain. The roads weren't exactly in bad repair, or exceptionally steep, but they were definitely going downhill and were very curvy and windy and gravelly and muddy. I kept reminding myself of how it had been driving through the Smoky Mountains in a rainstorm at 60 mph and I knew I could manage. Just as I was thinking about where I would pull over if it got even the tiniest bit worse, the rain stopped again and the sun came back out. We had beautiful sun all the way back home and the drive was amazing.
That night wasn't nearly as bad as the first had been. After a miniature campfire in the pavilion so that Zahra could at last have the halal s'mores she'd been dreaming of and a game of Bullshit under the yellow lights of the bathroom building, we slept relatively well. We set up a new tent that seemed a bit more solid than the first, plus put it on higher ground, plus the rain wasn't as intense. Still, we were a bit scared after the first night, so Megan and Palak elected to sleep in the cars from the beginning, Prite and Matt took one of the 'safe' tents, Ju and Lingxiao took the other, and Zahra and I decided to sleep up in the laundry area again. It's amazing what can seem like luxury after a disaster.
Only picture of the whole group: Zahra, Megan, Lingxiao, Prite, Matt, Ju, Palak, and me.
Would I do it again? Abso-freaking-lutely. But not tonight please. :)
