Anyway, the battle between man and nature continues. Last Wednesday, a HUGE storm struck the area. I was in Warren, RI, at the time, doing some field ecology planning with Lexi. The kids were out kayaking. Less than one hour after they came back to camp, a tornado was spotted in Warren (where Lexi and I were hiding out in a pizzeria "borrowing" wi-fi from the next door coffee shop) and a torrential downpour began.
Torrential! Deluge! Flooding! Cute little Mount Hope Bay looked like the ocean and we couldn't even see across to Fall River, MA. A huge, healthy tree branch crashed down next to our cook's tiny tent. Our solar ovens blew into the bay. And the wind and weight of the water snapped the tent poles of both staff tents.
*insert dramatic picture of our tents crumpled to the ground in puddles of water*
We discovered this at bedtime, just when we wanted to crawl into a warm, dry bed after a long day of cold, wet rain. Instead, we stood outside in the dark staring open-mouthed at the flooded, broken tents. (Remember when I wrote about how my tent survived the torrential rain in Botswana? Nice work, REI. I remain impressed.) There was nothing we could do. Both tents were broken, our beds were soaked, and all four staff members were temporarily homeless.
The next day, it kept pouring. We lost electricity for almost 7 hours and had to move our closing campfire inside to the fireplace. Everyone went a little stir-crazy, regressing to childhood games like building forts out of cardboard boxes, pillow fights, and throwing markers into a bucket across the room. Eek! I used up every game I know trying to keep the group from dissolving into mass chaos.
Needless to say, our bedding didn't have time to dry. The mattresses were still saturated and we hadn't had time to take our sheets to the laundromat--another night sleeping on the couches in the lodge.
Saturday looked a little brighter and sunnier. We moved the mattresses outside to air out and washed our linens. We unzipped the tents to dry out and switched tent poles to make one completely functional tent. A new tent was delivered that afternoon, and everything was looking up, until it started raining AGAIN. The mattresses and pillows airing out got soaked AGAIN. The unzipped tents got flooded AGAIN. We had to sleep on the couches AGAIN.
The rain continued until bedtime last night. Deciding that it would be a little awkward for the new group of students to find their instructors sleeping on couches when they wandered into the lodge in the morning, we improvised with tarps and blankets over wet bedframes to make the tents habitable.
Well, finally the sun has come out. Today is gorgeous. Our mattresses are drying out again and we've found a couple spares in case the old ones are too molded or mildewed to sleep on. My pillow may still be usable after a few more hours in the sun... the only problem is,
it's supposed to rain again this evening.
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