PA Woods, Early June: Forty Shades of Green!

Sunday morning found us camping out in a pine stand in the Quehanna Wild Area. (To read about the adventures and misadventures of day one of our backpacking trip, see yesterday's blip.)

The sky was overcast, with just a bit of sun trying to peep through. I walked out to the rock overlooking the Valley of the Elk - looking for elk, of course, but we did not see any on this trip (despite plenty of elk sign, by which we outdoors folk mean impressive piles of what we were certain were elk droppings).

What a surprise in mid-morning when, instead of clearing, the sky congealed and it commenced to pour down rain! (Now, this should not have been a surprise, as it's rained almost every day for the past six weeks, but the weather forecast we had seen before leaving for our trip predicted none of that.)

So we retired to our tents to wait out the rain; ate our ham and cheese sandwiches as a late breakfast; began packing things up inside the tent. Rolled up and put away the blankets, the sleeping pads, the sleeping bag, the clothes and gear. I had my iPod shuffle and a little pink speaker with me, and I turned it on. So in spite of the rain, it was a real rockin' 80s party in my tent (that's the only music I have on it - songs from CDs released in the 1980s).

Eventually the deluge slowed down to just a drizzle. The trees in the pine forest would continue to drip for hours, but it was time to pack it up and walk out. I opened my tent, set up a staging area outside with a half-groundsheet where I continued packing up the remainder of my gear. Aside from a moment of hysteria when I was worried that Everything I Owned Was Getting Soaked, I eventually got it all together, and we began our walk out in mere drizzle.

Yes, I stewed over what to do with the camera. Pack it in the pack where it might stay dry? But what if we saw elk? If elk walked out of the mist in a scene straight out of a dream (they didn't), I would surely want to gut myself right there if I didn't have my camera at hand's reach. (I thought about it and realized that I'd rather not see any elk at all than see elk and not be able to take a picture of them. Isn't that silly? But it's true; that's how I felt.) In the end, I put the camera in its camera bag, wrapped both in a larger plastic bag, and then slung the whole thing over my left shoulder just beneath my ripstop overshirt.

Let me point out at this juncture that packing up soaking-wet camping gear, especially a totally soaked tent fly, is not nearly as much fun as it sounds. In the end, I stuffed the soaking-wet tent fly in a plastic bag, strapped it to my pack, and stuck the mostly-wet tent itself into the tent bag. Things were wet and oddly shaped; nothing went on easily. It all dangled at odd angles, each thing clonking awkwardly against other things, as I walked. To see me, you'd have been certain I was an amateur who'd never done this sort of thing before; you might even have pitied me, laughed, looked away.

I wasn't sure this arrangement would work too well if it truly poured. However, my husband reassured me that our walk out would be fine, that it would clear. He sometimes has a sixth sense about these things; and in this case, it turned out he was right. As we were walking out the trail, I suddenly realized how shiny and clean and GREEN everything looked. Freshly washed. Like something from the land before time: the great Pennsylvania rainforest.

Suddenly realizing its beauty, I pulled out the camera to snap a photo of the green trees and the waving ferns - and the sun came out for the very first time that day, lighting the scene you see here.

"This ridiculously bright shade of green," I said to my husband; "It's all REAL! Who would believe it?"

The photo you see here is totally unretouched. The color's not supersaturated, I didn't mess with the shadows, the sharpness, the contrast, the exposure. This is exactly what it looked like! The Pennsylvania woods, au naturel.

We finished our walk out, stowed our gear in the car (oh that happy moment when it's all in the car and you realize you DON'T CARE what happens next, now that your gear is packed up to go), and headed for home to resume our civilized life.

One of the great things about backpacking is that it makes you appreciate anew the comforts of home. A strong cup of coffee or an icy-cold drink, a warm meal, a hot shower, clean clothes, a soft bed, the companionship of our tabby cat (who missed us LOTS!). I enjoyed my woods adventure (in spite of the rain and the unfortunate incident with the biting flies and my left hand - which was feeling a bit better today, by the way, thanks) but it felt like heaven to come home.

I threw all of our wet and dirty clothes and blankets into the wash, and in a few hours everything was clean and dry and sweet-smelling. My husband aired out the tents and the groundsheets on the drive way for twenty minutes in the sun (and got them in just in time before the next round of strong thunderstorms moved in during late afternoon), and shortly everything was dry and good as new. I aired out my sleeping bag and pads and backpack in the bedroom and let the cat play in them (he adores especially the sleeping bag, into which he crawls all the way down to the very bottom and pretends he's well hid).

And so we returned to the comforts of hearth and home, where we lived happily ever after! And that completes the story of our early June backpacking adventure in the Quehanna Wild Area!