In Rainy Boots and Puddlehopping

I’m laying in a tent with a laundry bag for my pillow and a fresh beer resting on a suitcase-for-a-nightstand. The Lady is putting the kids to bed a few feet over in the Bus. Once again, it is raining.

Through the open tent door and as the pitter of a steady fall of liquid raps against the rainfly, I can see the fire I had just built burning strong. I had time to throw on two more logs and tarp up the rest before Mother Nature took her daily piss on our parade.

“Good for the trees,” I think, and I mean it, but I also would like to be standing around that fire.

With dry jeans. And a considerably less soggy pack of cigarettes. A less moist ass, I suppose.

But the sky opened up all day for us, clear blue over black waterfalls crashing frothy foam into the rocks below. Red spruce towered high above, and I even got the chance to fashion a tow cable from an old birch stick and fish out a lost shoe from over the steep edge of the trail when Wylder decided to have a go at youthful rebellion.

The kids don’t want to eat their lunches, but we all want ice cream. The fire wants to be sat around, but the wood is often wet. And the Bus is eager and willing to fire up and cruise us 35mph all along these winding woodland backroads to song my heart a-racing, wondering how I can do this every day again.