Relative Something

It seems like the changing of seasons is no longer bearing any resemblance to previous years. The hours of daylight are shortening, and the leaves are falling to the ground, but the temperatures aren’t dropping like they used to, and the grass keeps growing like it’s the middle of summer. It’s confusing my senses.

The branches of our spruce trees are catching leaves instead of snowflakes. The forecast for yesterday suggested temperatures in the 60s (F). It reached 77 (F) in the middle of the afternoon.

I finally got my new The North Face tent set up outside where I could stake it down and stretch the rainfly taut.

It’s been sitting in the basement where I erected it as soon as it arrived, but I kept forgetting about it because of how infrequently I venture downstairs. Other than the infestation of Asian beetles and box elder bugs swarming, it was a perfect day to put the tent up in the yard.

This Stormbreak 2 tent is a little bigger than my old Rock 22, but it seems much larger to me. The shoulder room inside is greater because of two added small poles that square up the top. That wasn’t a feature in my old tent.

Another upgrade from my previous tent is the smooth-gliding zippers on the doors and rainfly openings. A vast improvement.

I’ll just need to remember to reserve a wider space than in the past when setting up among groups of other tenters.

After setting all the stakes and snugging the adjustable straps on the rainfly corners, I satisfied myself with the storm-worthiness I’ve come to expect from The North Face. As long as I factor in any possibility of flash flooding, I’m comfortable riding out typical stormy weather in this tent. However, because it’s hard to compare past weather to future intensity, I’m more open to warnings that each new storm could be worse than anything we’ve seen before.

Gone are the days when I stayed in my tent while severe weather sirens were blaring overhead. Yeah, I did that. I’m not proud that I did, but my intuition that it wasn’t going to be dangerous in our precise location turned out to be accurate that night.

The unpredictability of storm intensities these days has introduced a new level of difficulty for me in sensing weather danger. I will need to keep that in mind when deciding whether to stay in the tent or not during heavy weather.

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