I’m back in love with my pop-up tent. It was all just a misunderstanding as it turns out. After lying in my tent all night, listening to the rain beating down, I realised at some point that I was still dry. Which meant the tent was in fact waterproof. I figured out that the moisture I’d felt on the inside of my tent must have been condensation and not rain seeping through. I’d explain the science behind it but that would be boring and I don’t really know it anyway.
So as this trip goes on I definitely seem to be following the Berenstein Bear methodology of figuring things out. When I was a child my Dad used to read me the Berenstein bear books and I loved them. For those who don’t know, these books tell the story of a Daddy Bear teaching his kid life skills and getting it horribly wrong, so the kid learns how to do by learning how not to do. It’s very cute. I tend to live by the Berenstein Bear methodology. For instance, today I zipped my tent up so that the zips ended up closing at the bottom of the flap, which meant the rain found its way into my tent through a teeny gap. Now I could have googled how to zip up a tent flap correctly to prevent rain water getting into my tent, but I didn’t even know that it was going to be an issue. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know until you accidentally know what you didn’t know before. It’s the Berenstein bear method. And once you make a mess of it you won’t do it again. That’s how this trip is for me so far. So many mistakes, but I’m learning as I go.
I had a better day today. Lots of work stress and lots of rain, but I decided to be philosophical instead of grumpy, and that really helped. I was standing watching the rain and wondering what I’d done to attract this never-ending cold misery into my life, when it occurred to me that perhaps I could look at it from a new angle. I thought, what would this really look like if I took myself out of the equation entirely. If it wasn’t about nature spoiling my perfect camping experience. I then saw rain falling in an area that is semi-desert. That is a rare occurrence. I started to see myself as blessed to be witnessing the rain. I saw many happy birds and I saw the possibility of dried vegetation coming alive. I realised that I’d been longing to experience a thunderstorm again and here I was experiencing wave after wave of flashing lightening and cracking thunder. I thought I’d have to wait to get to KZN at least before I had this, and yet here it was. And I was complaining. I stopped complaining.
And lo and behold the rain stopped. The clouds parted. I witnessed a beautiful sunset and saw my stars again, as I sat in front of a roaring fire. I got kitty loves from the resident tabby and the world seems to have returned to normal again. The bad tripping is over for now.
