Return of the Muddow

Day 4 - May 25

From Hot Jams & Cold Showers, © 2000 Dyanne Fry Cortez

Lovely ... are the showers that fall in early morning, after most of the campfires have played themselves out. If they're timed right, such rains can delay the full heat of day, giving campers an extra hour or two to catch up on sleep. This only works, of course, if your shelter is reasonably waterproof. But even if it turns out not to be, there's joy in a rain-washed spring morning. When the sun comes out and dries your gear, the discomforts of the past few hours will shimmer like the memory of a great adventure.
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We had one of those rains this morning, but I gotta say it was more than a shower. And campers who are trying to dry their gear aren’t getting very far. The sky still threatens at a quarter to noon, and the sun hasn’t been out more than a few minutes at a time.

It started about dawn, just as I made that first run to the outhouse. I heard a light pitter-patter on the canvas and grabbed my rain shell on the way out the door. Coming back down the hill, I observed that our smoke flaps were closed. That was good, because the stuff falling from the sky looked less ephemeral than what we’ve had the last few days.

Javier had been saying it would rain today, that he needed to install our rain pins and the ozan over our bed. He never got around to doing all that yesterday, so we had to scramble. He grabbed the ozan out of our toolbox, throwing aside a few other things I’d put in for safekeeping. He followed up with the plastic cover that goes over the spare bed: drops were already scattering every which way from the pole bundle at the top because we didn’t have the rain pins in. The many-tentacled plastic sheet that he cut to fit over the ozan was tangled, we did a lot of fumbling and grumbling before we got it right. We were too late to pick up the rugs; they’re wet and muddy and we’ll just have to deal with them when things dry up. Corners of the bed got damp, but we found enough dry space to lie down and cocoon until the rain let up. That took quite a while. I think we both went back to sleep.

I wonder if anyone has a rain gauge. I’d be curious to know how much we got. “I’ll bet an inch or more,” said a guy I met by the community sink.

Considering that we weren’t quite prepared, Javier and I did okay. Some camps got hit much worse than we did; the folks just outside our front door had a river running through their tent. But so far, I haven’t seen anyone who looks particularly unhappy. How could they, knowing how badly Texas needs rain?

I’m not kidding myself that this morning’s rain will solve our water problems. But if this festival can summon up the R-word and do anything at all to help alleviate the drought, I’ll gladly put up with a wet pillow and a few soggy socks.