Night Fall

It is very hot so we unzip the flaps and open the tent windows to capture the slight breeze somehow dipping into the valley where we are camped. We are late to find a campsite because the first park was full, twenty slots with RVs tucked side by side. I want to be a tent camper, to have that simplicity, and minimalism, but tonight I envy the RVs with their air conditioning and cushioned sofas, showers, and doors. My husband and I are so dirty from dust and grime just from setting up camp and making dinner that my ankles look like when I was nine and my mom would yell out my name to come home because it was dark and time for a bath.

We lie down on top of our sleeping bags. Our two dogs – both retired sled dogs bred to withstand cold – are unsettled and panting. They lie down in our space instead of on their mats on the far side of the tent. We shoo them away but the dogs are reluctant to leave, reconfiguring their sleep space just inches away. Finally, they give up and move to their fuzzy dog mats along the other tent wall. Inexplicably, they curl up tight as if caught in a grand snowstorm. And as it is when a fretful baby takes that long surrendering breath, they are fast asleep.

My husband pulls the outer shell of his sleeping bag over himself. I marvel that he would do this when it is so hot but it is his way to bury himself in blankets, something he’s done since he was a kid. In a second, he is sleeping. I know everyone is sleeping but I am not.

I am looking out the tent windows – first the one right next to me and then the two over the ‘front door’ and then the one over the dogs and finally the one behind me. I am waiting for sounds, snorts, scratches. I listen for slithering, for soft cat paws coming down the hillside. I see that stars are starting to come out as if someone is poking holes, one by one in the deepening blue that is the early night sky.

I tell myself to focus on the stars, to remind myself how lucky I am to be in a place in the wilderness with no city lights, no traffic, no smog. The stars are now bright and thick, popping from right to left. Out of the corner of my eye I see stars moving, satellites, I decide, because they are slow and steady as they move and very, very far away.

I decide to let my gratitude for being in this place quiet my mind and I close my eyes. If I close my eyes long enough, I know I will go to sleep. It is a matter of persistence and not giving into the temptation to check one’s surroundings one more time. So, I embark on this effort, turning to face the tent wall, knowing that even if I do open my eyes, I’ll see only the green tent and not the windows.

This doesn’t work. I hear rustling outside. I remember that we left the camp stove on the picnic table and wonder if the scent from the red beans and rice we had for dinner has enticed a bear. I reach out to hold my husband’s arm but I don’t wake him. Earlier, I asked him if he was going to bring the axe into the tent with us ‘just in case’ and he solemnly nodded yes but I know he is humoring me.

Could he kill a bear with an axe or would he end up killing me or the dogs? I think of this a while I consider sitting up to investigate. If I sit up and there really is a bear at the picnic table, that will make the bear real. I stare at the tent wall and make my breathing very shallow. Meanwhile, my husband and dogs are silent and deeply sleeping. They suspect nothing.

I try to give up worrying. I study the spider camped in the corner where the back and side walls of the tent meet. I consider crushing it with my fingers but that seems cruel and unnecessary in the moment so I pull my sleeping bag over my head and breathe slow, steady breaths. Again, I will myself to sleep.

There is no bear. I know that. There may be a mountain lion on the hill above us – the park bulletin board said to watch out – or a rattlesnake coiled near the rocks on the way to the pit toilet. There is no way of knowing. I will just have to sleep and hope for the best. We are prey, defenseless in a pop-up tent I bought for a hundred dollars.

And then I pull down the sleeping bag to take another look outside. I see the Big Dipper. It is the only constellation I know besides Orion which I can’t see from my spot in the tent. I study the stars and am cooled by the night breeze. I decide in that moment to trust the night, to just fall into the earth, if that makes any sense, to become a person in the world, of the world, to relax and sleep in the arms of the galaxy. It sounds melodramatic but that is what I do. I sleep until the light changes and it is morning.