A Fresh Tent

This is a Kelty "Grand Mesa" two-person tent, and I also bought the footprint. Tonight I sleep in it for the first time and anticipate through the screens the wonders of the night sky and creatures sniffing about, and, in this hot weather, an incredibly beautiful, steamy full hour of dawn, all orange and marbled with fog. Think I'll spend the weekend in it.

This is also the first time I set up the tent myself; the very first was in midsummer with my friend Marsha demonstrating the amazingly simple clip-on strategy used on tents now in place of the "sleeve" strategy of my old green-and-mustard dome tent that made erecting it rather like a session of tae kwon do.

I didn't sleep outside at any time last year, and regretted it. Time on earth -- directly on the earth and beneath the night sky -- is important; you live each night only once. There's a foam pad in there and my 40-degree sleeping bag and little pillow and a light soft blanket that in the chilly pre-dawn hours I will love feeling against my neck and chin. See you in the morning.

Twenty Years and Tattered

Finally this afternoon the business of a too-busy summer was said and done, and for the first time this calendar year I had time and energy to set up my tent, because in summer I like spending a few nights a week sleeping in it, enjoying the cool earth and looking up through the netting at the fireflies and stars, and waking in the dawn amid mists and freshness. Having folded my tent carefully last fall, I unrolled it-- a six-sided, two-person dome tent--took the poles and stakes from the carry bag, and as I worked the tent poles through the sleeves for maybe the 200th time, remembering adventures in the Ozarks, in an Iowa county park, on a stony island in Wisconsin, and so on--heard: rip--rip. Shredding gave way to more shredding. The netting that formed the dome was kaput.

My first thought was to buy new netting of just the right kind, cut it hexagonally and machine-sew it myself across the tent top: good as new. But, impossible. The tent is 20 years old.  It cost precisely $20 at Grandpa Pidgeon's, a chain store defunct in 1999. The twin zippers haven't worked for seven or eight years. One of the poles is a replacement, and six inches too short. It is time for a new tent.

Was it really time? I asked myself. And answered: Yes; what perfect, perfect timing! Tomorrow, day after Labor Day, tents will be on sale everywhere and you will find the next love of your camping life.

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.