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The only thing that ever got stolen from that first site didn’t even belong to me: it was an ancient tent, of a design that may well have dated back a century or more, an item that Boss bought in an auction of goods once owned by a couple who apparently went acamping now and then. I must describe this cumbersome apparatus, definitely a period piece, since it added a peculiarly nostalgic touch to the place when it was there, and unwieldy though it was, I came to miss it when it was gone (almost certainly to a local’s garage). It was a modified pyramid design, square at the base, with a massive two-piece centerpole nearly eight feet high, and a complete sewn-in floor. To these were added four heavy iron rods that stretched the hips of its roof, to keep them jutting out at the proper angle, so that a man of the time (5' 5" or so) could easily walk in fully erect, without so much as nodding his head, conduct his business with full dignity, and make his exit—as though the structure were merely an extension of his home, rather than fifty pounds of canvas, iron and wood. In a good gale, erecting it would have been a contest with disaster; it was an all-too dignified deep-forest (calm air) tent, designed for a generation more certain of the essential rightness of its urban habits than we are—or merely less weary of them—and it smelled wonderful: waterproofed canvas, especially in an enclosure of such surpassing rusticity and accumulated memories (even for one who knows none of the particulars), possesses an aroma, an aura, so redolent of golden days spent in quiet retreats, as to evoke waking dreams in the mind merely upon entering the little space. I dearly wished that I could have been certain of its imperviousness to rain and insects; I would have loved to spend a few nights asleep upon its floor, just for the feeling of being transported back a generation or two, in a way that is scarcely even imaginable any more. But alas, it disappeared while I was on a working vacation/stock photography shoot in Québec.
In the summer, despite the usual dip in temperature every night, it was sometimes all I could do to keep my milk from going bad before I finished it. At first I used a cooler, but since it doesn’t tie up on the line very easily, I kept it in the vestibule of the tent, though I feared this would put it at the mercy of every passing animal. They never did get into it—I had the damnedest time opening it myself—but I kept thinking I’d come back some day and find all the food devoured and the inedibles spread all over the woods.
The Crank came by the campsite one day when I was out, and noticed that food-bag. Being a child of World War II, he had to observe the similarity in shape between the suspended bag and a 100-lb. bomb, and he had to mention it among his concerns when he finally began marshaling his arguments for the Eviction. As an erstwhile student of philosophy, I was taught to identify and repudiate irrational arguments, but I must tell you: most arguments heard today, being increasingly desperate, are hopelessly irrational, especially in a world where few people learn any of the techniques of what was once called Reason in the first place—even the meaning of the word. I have no doubt at all that, had we faced off in court, a jury would have been influenced by his account of the “bomb scare,” ludicrous though it may sound.
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Eventually I took the cooler back to the garage, and hung my food in a waterproof bag on the line, covered by a sopping wet towel, which was expected to keep the precious contents cool through evaporation. It does seem to work, but only to a matter of a few degrees. It was really the perpetual coolness of the woods that kept me from having to replace the dairy products every day.|
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