Writing Prompt: A Serious Tent

 Prompt: Describe an experience in a storm.

A Serious Tent

One of our more adventurous road trips out West involved a two-week excursion out to Colorado to camp and hike at various spots up and down the entire state. Before leaving on this trip, I had cast our cheap, nylon Coleman tent aside and threw down $400 on a large, beige canvas Kodiak tent from Alaska, which is a bitch to set up but once inside you feel like you can survive any kind of inclement weather. 

The tent easily stood up to a stiff wind storm in Rocky Mountain National Park early on in our trip, but the true test would come at the back end of our journey, when we arrived at a campground adjacent to beautiful Pike’s Peak Mountain. It was sunny when we arrived and we took our time unfolding the tent, getting the aluminum poles, then erecting the structure and filling it with our air mattresses, sleeping bags and pillows. We scoffed at the warnings about August being monsoon season in Colorado, feeling like we had dodged all that and chalked it up to good luck.

But Mother Nature had something in store for us, which we would see in the distance the next afternoon forming in the dark clouds encircling Pike’s Peak. Those clouds looked angry, and soon we could hear claps of thunder signaling something menacing was heading our way. Michael and I looked at each other, then scrambled toward the tent, not the car, and zipped ourselves inside.

Next thing I knew came the sound of large bits of particles hitting the roof of the tent, we soon figured out it was hail, pieces of ice raining down all around us. We laughed, and not really knowing what else to do, we climbed into our sleeping bags and lay our heads on our pillows, staring upwards. I’m not sure how it was possible but right in the middle of a raging hail storm we both fell sound asleep. It was a deep, peaceful slumber, one of the best naps I’ve ever had.

Eventually we both woke up and it was silent outside. We slipped out of our sleeping bags and Michael carefully unzipped the tent and we both stepped outside. The sun was out, and piles of ice pellets surrounded our tent. We laughed, marveling at what a superb job our canvas tent had done, lulling us into sleep in the midst of a raging storm. 

“It’s a serious tent in the old-school style,” Michael said when I asked him about it recently. Serious tent indeed. Today it rests bagged up in our attic, it hasn’t been out in the elements in a long time. But she served us well, that Kodiak tent. I wouldn’t do another Colorado monsoon without her. Best hail storm I’ve ever experienced. Thanks for the memories.