Big Bend National Park, Really Really Far Away, Texas

Wow.

Wow wow wow wow.

That's all my idiot brain could think as I drove to the Big Bend National Park, then through it, to get to the Rio Grande Village campground. The Chisos mountains are knock-you-on-your-ass breathtaking, and it was honestly a challenge to focus on the driving and stop gawping. So much twisty, windy, hilly roadway--there may have been an exclamation of "Wheee" or three, no lies.

Full disclosure: The last time I camped in a tent was when I was very little (maybe 4-6) and it was pretty much a disaster. It's a whole story, with drenching rains, a soggy tent, and a dog with half a face. It just gets more awful with details, so suffice it to say it ended with a rainbow and my written-in-stone belief that I would never camp again.

Did y'all know camping is cheap? It is--some places are just $7 a night--at least one place I looked into was free. And that's where the idea started. It wasn't exactly because I wanted to camp, per se, but as the idea bloomed, so did the appeal of the challenge. Never pitched a tent (or knew how it was done), never worked a camp stove or built a fire, knew absolutely nothing about camping (how it works, where to park, where to put the tent, what tools I would need, etc.)--so I started studying in the months I was breaking down my apartment, getting rid of stuff, and making plans to head to Kansas.

I made my lists, revised them, cross compared pricing of different items, and read many, many online reviews to get a sense of what I would need, what to expect, and help start narrowing down to the list to what is required (because there is a whole lotta extra crap you don't actually need).

I even watched videos on how to put up a tent...which they kept saying was a "two man job," but it turns out it just takes one woman.

That's right, I said it. Me. (C'mon, you had to know that was coming.)

So, when I practiced putting up the tent in mom's living room it was probably a bit too easy. I made sure not to rely on things I wouldn't have with me at the campsite, but I was still on carpet, in a climate controlled environment, out of the sun and wind. Once I was doing it "for real" at Big Bend, I got most of the tent up without breaking too much of a sweat, but hammering the tent pegs in turned out to be a real bitch. I did it, though--I got them in and they were nice and tight. I felt triumphant and made a sandwich. Mighty yawps abound.

Well, then came the night.

I stayed up until maybe 10 o'clock--I wanted to see the stars I was promised and I was not disappointed. The skies were clear and as the night progressed the sky grew brighter and brighter with a clean view of all those distant suns. But I was tired from all my mighty tent building and campsite set up, so I went to bed. And of course woke up about two hours later needing to visit the communal ladies room. Because I'm old, it was cold, and ya know, nature. Ugh.

The camp was so quiet that every noise I made felt jet engine loud, from the zip of the tent door to the crunch of my feet on the gravel--don't get me wrong, there were night sounds of little bugs and whatnots peeping and cheeping, but it was otherwise completely windless and silent. Every footstep I made sounded like a titan crashing all the stone pillars of the world and I was sure the whole camp could hear me. When I came out of the ladies room, I happened to look up and nearly fell down. What a difference two hours makes...millions of stars and not one cloud in the sky. I don't think I've ever seen the night sky quite like this, not ever in my life, not even as a child.

I was very tired, though, so titan stomped back to my campsite, felling more cities and waking the rest of Texas along the way, zipped myself up into my tent and my sleeping bag, and tried to settle back down. All in all, it was going pretty well! I had put up a tent. I had a flashlight. I was sleeping in nature and not freaking out. It was good.

I was in a doze when it started. A hollow sound that seemed too far away to be of any consequence, except that it was.

Did I forget to mention the wind forecast for that night? It said 30-35 mph winds, with 50 mph gusts. The night was so still up until that point that I figured the forecast had simply been wrong. Not so. Not at all.

For the rest of the night the wind shook my tent, yanked it to and fro, beat it up, down, left, and right. Three of four tent pegs came loose, leaving the tent anchored by one stubborn peg and one highly annoyed occupant, curled tight in a ball of shivering distress. One of the flaps of the canopy also came loose and whapped it up all night long.

The wind howled and roared, receded, then would scream and gust and caterwaul and there was just no end to it. And no consistency of course, since this wasn't some breeze coming off the mountain to gently lilt all the little baby animals to sleep. No, this was the wailing and screeching of the banshees locked in the 4th circle of Hell, spewed up from graves in the dark folds of the canyons to shriek us through the night and into daylight so that eleven full hours in that tent equaled maybe four or five hours of actual sleep. I'm guessing.

It was like living in that Night on Bald Mountain part of Fantasia except there were no ripped demonoids, just me in my little tent made of tissue paper and tears.

But I did it! I made it through the night with zero panic attacks and only just a little tired. Although I did pack up the tent that very morning and prepped the car for sleeping. Because nope. Nope nope nope. That was enough of that.

More Big Bend later...gotta motor.