10/18/2026
Autumn Rains
When I arrived at my campsite in West Virginia last Tuesday, I saw that there was a dead tree looming over the site. An ominous sign. Tent campers call those "widow makers" for a reason. The weather at the moment was pleasant enough, but the forecast said there would be heavy thunderstorms and high winds in the latter half of the week. Just the kind of weather that brings down dead trees. It was a big tree, and could flatten my tent. It wouldn't do me any good either. I went to the camp office and explained the situation, and the next day, the service crew came out and took down the tree. For them to do so, I had to take everything out of my tent and move it out of the way. After the tree was down (with a tremendous crash) and cut up, and the pieces hauled away, we dragged my tent back to its site and I moved back in.
That night, the predicted thunderstorms arrived, with torrential rains and harsh winds. Over the succeeding days and nights, the rain would ease off at times, and then return, heavy and drenching. This was good for the many waterfalls in the area, and a little rain can actually be lovely for landscape photography. I have proper rain gear, and don't mind getting out to explore in a bit of rain. But it rained more than a bit. Especially at night. All that water soaked the ground, and the campground became squishy. Everywhere. Including the ground beneath my tent. And then I started to see water pooling inside, on the floor of the tent. That was when I discovered the tear in the floor, which no doubt happened when we dragged the tent around during the tree-felling. Oops.
So the last few nights of my trip to West Virginia were a little bit challenging. My residence had water on the floor, and the floor rested upon extremely mushy, squishy, muddy ground. This is unpleasant, especially when nature calls at 4:00am and you have to get out of a warm bed in your bare feet. (I kept my shower shoes beside the bed, so my feet didn't actually have to go into the ick. But it was nevertheless unpleasant.)
However: although the nights were not fun, I did have a wonderful time in between downpours. The trees were at their peak of color, the mountains were spectacular as always, and all that water produced some beautiful fog and mist in the valleys and across the hills. Into each life some rain must fall, as Ella Fitzgerald said, and all things must pass, as George Harrison said. The soggy ordeal is now over and I'm snug and dry at home. But that glorious mountain mist will be missed.
