Camping in the Yard

If you have a porch or a few square feet of property please try the adventure of summertime sleeping outdoors. Steamy days become cool nights here, 10 to 15 degrees cooler than in the city, sometimes with a delicious trace of ice in the air, and among my chief summer delights is sleeping about three times a week in my old green and yellow two-person tent and a nylon bag and blankets. New this year: mats all across the tent floor for comfort no matter how I roll.

I pitch my tent where the grass is mown and short, which discourages ticks. About 10:30 p.m., settling in with my pillow I watch stars through the ceiling netting; or through the door netting watch the knee-deep tide of early-summer fireflies. Every year on the very first night out there's always an incident, such as a nighttime creature sniffing around the tent. This year my presence in the meadow annoyed a deer who snorted for 30 minutes in a threatening manner, edging closer with every snort. I downloaded onto my Droid the loud and unpleasant "Police Siren" app with flashing lights, and thus established my rights without a confrontation. I've discovered that sleeping on the chilly ground eases and breaks the cycle of tormenting night sweats and hot flashes. The photo is a view through the tent ceiling early one perfect June morning.

I often wake at sunrise to a world filled with humidity embodied as mist and dew, so much it soaks the tent walls; or I oversleep and the sun heats and heats the tent until I'm driven back to the house inspired maybe to make a dreamlike breakfast of berry scones and coffee. Early one morning, creeping out of the tent into an almost psychic orange mist, I saw a buck so majestic I understood why the classics say a god disguised himself as a stag.

The Gift of Warmth

Really good wool blankets, like children’s beloved “blankies,” serve as full-body hugs, hiding places, coats, curtains, shields, bedrolls, bags, tents and more. I treasure my two.

The Hudson Bay Company, founded in England in 1670 and still around, made this unbleached wool blanket with sky-blue stripes and three “points” or lines along one edge, a reminder that North American Indians and trappers traded three beaver pelts to get one. Dense and scratchy, it's windproof, wears like iron, gets passed down as an heirloom, and is priced to match. A wire brush loosens the twigs & grass & beggar lice it picks up outdoors. Bought from L.L. Bean. After 10 years of very severe treatment, including somebody dying in it, it has only begun to look “lived in.”

The navy-blue blanket was made in Portland, OR by Pendleton, founded in 1883. Lighter in weight and softer, this is my house blanket, kept on the bed. It’s banded with rainbow stripes (rainbows and stripes are divine). This one bought from REI. Again, pricey, but like the other, you need to buy it only once.