Tarp Tent Camping on Die Weide

In Die Weide we have a natural place to enjoy, which we have visited every weekend this year to water the orchard and continue blazing trails in the woods. However, I have grossly neglected writing this blog about our thorny paradise. I have writings in notebooks about the land but transposing them to the blog is work that I keep putting off. Today's blog will be about my camping trip last night.

This is my tarp tent under which I have slept on two camping trips since I last wrote in May. I pulled a one-nighter yesterday evening. Inge had to work this weekend so I chose to camp out overnight Saturday evening. Normally I would head out Friday evening but I chose to attend a memorial service Saturday for a co-worker, Rafael, who passed away recently from pancreatic cancer. He was only eight months younger than me. Time passes and attending Rafael's memorial reminded me that my date with meeting Jesus will come in His due time - a time no longer as far off.

After a delicious cornmeal encrusted fried catfish supper with Inge I packed some snacks, drinks, and breakfast supplies to be cooked on my coleman stove and headed out. The sun settled just over the treetops when I arrived at Die Weide and unlocked the gate. I pitched my tarp tent under the picnic pecan using an X-frame from two-by-fours over which I stretched and tied off a taught rope that became the ridge-line for the tarp. After pounding few tent pegs and stretching bungee cords to tarp grommets my shelter stood ready for my cot.

Our ever-friendly neighbors, Kenneth and Derrellene, stopped by with their passel of dogs and we chatted the sun down - mostly drought talk as that impacts us all this year. Darkness quickly settled over the pasture after they left and I set up my folding chair, cooler, and poured myself, "eine Krug Bier." I offered a salute and the first sip of Bier to Inge's mother Kunigunda, as she enhanced my love of good German Bier. She took us to places with fresh from the keg mugs of foam-capped, "liquid bread." "Mutti" always raised a toast and said, "Die erste Schluck ist die beste!" (the first sip is the best) then quaffed half the mug followed with a twinkle in her eyes and a huge foam mustache smile.

I love the nights here on Die Weide. The last time I camped here the moon only dimly lit the pasture with a fingernail sliver reflection. Last night though, the moon phased more brightly as "waxing gibbous" - a bit more than half full. I sat by the Picnic Pecan on Die Weide which resides in the pasture with copses of woodlands only paces away. The moon's glow paints the nearby copse of trees in patches of pale and dark grey and lights the tall grasses of the pasture in silvery tan hue. For some minutes the high pressure system that commands our drought caps the pasture with an absolute stillness. The heat of the day persists in this stillness building a sheen of sweat on my skin and twitching and itching my nose with dry dusty-drought scent. The stillness carries sound and from the southwest someone plays a mixture of country and rock music that I can hear with sing-along clarity, but so far away as to be quietly pleasing. Dogs bark in various directions punctuated by a donkey's long, loud, "braaee-huh, braaee-huh". Nearby, insects serenade me with chirps, chirrs, and whirrs and I begin to think the night's sleep will be uncomfortably warm until I hear treetops in the distance rustle and soon the picnic pecan whispers behind me passing the breeze over to tussle the hair on my arm and neck and wash the heat from my skin.

Later I gathered my walking stick, on which I have carved a face, and set out to explore Die Weide at night. The half-moon lights the way as I step-pause-step my way slowly to the path we've carved in the woods to the pond. Tonight, though the pond isn't my destination. I only seek to find a place within the woodland boundary where I can sit and listen for the rustling of critters in the woods. At first I sit upon the ground on the path, but that proved a thorny seat. And my solution to that problem lead to this haiku lesson learned which will end this blog entry.

Sturdy walking stick

placed as seat on thorny ground

prevents prickly butt.