Walking Meditation

"Om mani padme hum. This will bring the powerful, benevolent attention and blessings of Chenrezig," hums the teacher, "the embodiment of compassion."

I've been sitting on a prayer cushion for twenty minutes, eyes closed, feet tucked under my hips. Damn, my knees hurt! Please God, Buddha, all the gods, give me a break. The teacher rings the bell. I gratefully rise. Moving too fast. Follow his example and slow down, bow to the room, fingertips pointed beneath chin, backing out the door.

We are to clasp our hands waist-high, slip on our shoes outside the door, walk slowly, in rhythm, behind him.

"Om Namo Narayanaya," he chants, "releasing us from bondage to lower consciousness."

The woman in front of me stops at a bench to tie her lace-up sneakers, then steps back into the moving line.

"You're out of order," the teacher snaps. "If you don't walk in the same line as you were sitting, you'll screw things up!"

Om mani padme om, I mutter, and keep walking, all the way to my car.

Scissors, Paper, Stoned

Sitting on the floor in a half-lotus position impossible when sober, guitar in lap. A faculty-student party, so I am surprised to be handed a joint.

A shared high, grad students smokily aware of our theses waiting on our desks, some neatly ordered and half started, some only loose papers thrown about in piles.

I sing in a reedy voice. Everyone smiles.

I remember this when sitting in the chair for my oral defense, legs scissored, paper ready, fearing I'll be stoned.

Chartreuse

Envy consumed me whenever I looked at Grace. I had to practice being cool, but Gracie just did it.

I was fourteen years old and couldn't believe my luck when she admired the chartreuse sateen jacket I'd bought with babysitting money. This was before I decided synthetics were pseudo. I kept caressing the silky fabric, admiring myself in store windows. I knew the color was awful, close to neon, but it was "in." Either this or hurt-your-teeth fuchsia. I liked the Frenchy sound of the lustrous green: shartrooz.

Gracie liked the color, too, and I let her borrow the jacket. She told me later that was the first time she even noticed me, wearing something like that. I didn't care if I ever got it back.

Gracie's mother Millie was a drinker. You could count on Millie (we weren't allowed to call her "Mom" or "Mrs. H") to be out at a bar with someone when I stayed overnight. So we could come and go as we pleased.

My mother would have died. Not that she trusted Millie as a chaperone. But Mom trusted me. Whereas I was just itching to do something even a little bit bad.

One Friday night Gracie and I went to the movies and missed the last bus to her house. We knew better than to try to rouse Millie. They lived only a couple of miles from town, so we decided to walk. It was pitch dark. I was wearing the jacket and walked on the outside so any car's headlights would reflect off the chartreuse and we wouldn't be run down. What we didn't count on was the gang of boys on motorcycles who whizzed by, whistling. We were flattered at first, proud we came off as women in the dark. Then we saw the boys stop about a half-mile ahead.

"What if they come back?" I ventured.

"They'd attack us," Gracie assured me, high on the adventure of it.

We looked around for an escape route, realized we were surrounded on both sides by fields of corn with seven-foot stalks. We both jumped at once, first into the ditch and then scrambling on our hands and knees as far into the field as we could before we heard the roar of engines draw close. We sat silently for what seemed like hours, long past the time they gave up and drove off.

Then Gracie started giggling. "I was so scared I wet my pants!"

"Me, too!" I snorted, blissful tears dripping on our jacket.

Water Messages

He sips water from my glass, this creature whose semantics I understand, laps so quietly I must nuzzle him to hear. When thirsty, he listens, holds his nose just above the surface of his own bowl, interprets it as if he'd studied Emoto's Hidden Messages in Water, though of course it does not speak to him of Chuzenji Lake springs.

But my water. Ah! He eyes it dripping slowly from my bathroom faucet, waits for my act of devotion: to see his longing, lift him gently where his arthritic limbs can no longer jump, and wait Zen-like while he drinks.

We have created a language where intonation is everything. My voice rises, rings like a temple bell; I call him mameki-neko. He has learned to mimic with a chirp: "You are my goddess of happiness, my Kissyoten" I imagine he is saying.

He beckons with his moonstone eyes, moves toward the bed. This is the syntax of our relationship: in his sleep the soft fricatives of his snores punctuate my dreams. If he dozes on the couch, I am restless until he jumps up next to my pillow.

I consider catelepathy.

I spoon with him, hold my hand around his belly. When he awakens, he rolls onto his back, eyes darkened, paws folded as in prayer, inviting my cheek to rest on his head, his purrs matched by my own.

The Night I Quit Being Saved

Mama was a Methodist and Daddy was a Baptist but he never went to church. He went fishing on Sundays for the big old catfish Mama would roll in cornmeal and fry in bacon grease the way he liked it, but then she wouldn't eat it and neither would I. Mama had me baptized a Methodist.

I was real serious about church. I liked to listen to myself sing the hymns and then I wondered if that was sinful, if it was bad to love singing and especially the sound of my own voice, but I knew Jesus loved me because the Bible told me so.

My friend Bobbie Sue was a Baptist, so when I slept over at her house I kept my ears peeled, hoping I'd learn something about Daddy. There I was at dinner with Bobbie Sue and her older brothers and her parents, and they started talking about how the Lord had directed their missionaries to Africa to build Christ's church and save all the Poor Savages there. I knew something was fishy because they weren't wishing just to heap blessings on those Poor Souls. They told me flat-footed that anyone who dies without being saved goes straight to Hell.

That kind of took away my appetite. After dinner Bobbie Sue and I played paper dolls with my Lucille Ball set and I let her pick out Lucy's outfits but my heart wasn't in it, still thinking about those Poor Slaves to Idolatry and how I just could not believe so many people were going to Hell without the Baptists. But Bobbie Sue's brown hair was thick and soft and naturally curly and that's where I fixed my thoughts. How could she be so pretty and still be so wrong?

We slept together in Bobbie Sue's bed and the next morning she asked did I remember what I did. I said what do you mean and she said you kept stroking my hair and talking in your sleep, mumbling poor soul, poor soul. I guess I knew who needed saving.

Heads Up

I don't know where my head is today. If I had it on straight I'd be writing something inspirational like Kitchen Table Wisdom. Instead, I think of death, depression, sex - not necessarily in that order.

When I say my second husband was Mr. Potato Head to me, I mean that in the most loving way. Dick is a gruff man with a surprisingly simple sense of humor, the kind of guy who considers The Duct Tape Book a perfect gift.

His granddaughter gave him the original Mr. Potato Head one year for Christmas and he made such a fuss over it, the top of our bedroom armoire was gradually filled with a Tuber Town community.

Mrs. Potato Head was there, of course, and the usual combination of parts. With our divorce, I barely escaped the upward marketing trend in Potato Heads. Otherwise I might have found more of them looking down on me — Pirate Potato Head, Trick or Tater, Spud Bunny, and my favorite: Darth Tater.

What about my first husband, you ask? A talking head. To be more exact, Dave was a headshrinker. Psychiatry was not, in those days, so far removed from the original practice perfected by clans in the Amazon river basin, where shrinking heads had religious significance. With modern shrinks, harnessing the spirit of the enemy became harnessing the energies of the id. I tried it myself, when our marriage was dying. After nine months of therapy it suddenly dawned on me that I had my head up my ass.

The only other arena where "head" comes to mind would bring me full circle: death, depression, sex. Maybe next time.

Translation

When Dick and I went to Mexico for our honeymoon, we almost didn't make it back. The ferry to Cozumel hadn't even reached the Muelle Fiscal pier when we started arguing. He wanted to rent a motor scooter. I reminded him of our SCUBA trip to Grand Cayman Island where we had a scrape on mopeds.

After we found a small hotel, Dick — ignoring my concerns — went out to get a scooter. Traffic was light because October was off-season and to my surprise we did fine. Until the last morning. I was packing while he returned the bike. When I walked down to the desk to check out, I saw two policias. "Senora Monaghan? Accidente."

Mierda.

I had only a few standard phrases of Spanish, but managed to translate their rapid-fire assurance that my esposo was not muerto; rather, on his way in an ambulance to the hospital a few blocks away. He'd run a stop sign, been hit by a truck.

Estupido!

The hospital formed a square around a central courtyard with azaleas, a beautiful Mexican plum tree, a few benches, and walkway access to each room.

The medico enhanced his scant English with drawings and gestures indicating a broken right arm and three crushed ribs. The break in the arm would require intricate surgery to avoid permanent nerve damage, even paralysis. He communicated this while rubbing his hands together, as if he couldn't repress his delight over such an unexpectedly interesting day.

The surgery was two doors down from the room where Dick would recuperate and where I could stay, as well. This was more than a convenience, because there were few services and no food for patients. A nurse would visit on occasion during the day, but I was to provide general care and feeding. No one among the staff spoke English.

Dick — looking like a giant, bruised papaya — slept fitfully after the operation. His first groggy request was to pee, but he could barely move from the pain in his injured ribs. I hailed a nurse on the walkway. But como se dice... bedpan? "Contenedor?" I tried, after rifling through the dictionary. I pointed to the toilet in the nearby alcove.

She gave me a split-toothed grin, and returned quickly with a standard bedpan. Poor Dick. It took awkward maneuvering for me to catch even his small trickle without sloshing. When the doctor checked in the next morning, he immediately saw the problem. "Urinario," he explained, and shortly returned with a gourd-shaped pot.

"Ah," said Dick.

Outside the Margin

For the first half of my adult life, I lived in the margins, staying in one place until my feet itched to go somewhere else, never settling in.

At parties I watched people stand with legs comfortably cocked. When I tried to copy their loose limbs, I'd stumble. Overhearing conversation about a new book I'd make a note to read it. By the next party, they'd be onto something else.

Girlfriends would read my poetry and say, "Maybe you need a therapist." Guys would say, "It has no balls." Even my signature lagged.

When I was a girl, Mama told me, "Don't be ugly." Sometimes she and Daddy called me "Sister." "Don't be ugly, Sister." Stay on the straight and narrow is what they meant.

My hair was straight — and lank. When it wasn't French-braided and pulled tight, it hung like damp straw. My grin was lopsided. I know this from my first-grade picture. That was the school where all the elementary kids met in one big room and the teacher made us stand up, starting with the oldest, to tell something special that happened during the summer.

I was bug-eyed by the time it was my turn. "Lice!" I blurted. "I got lice this summer at the public swimming pool and Mama had to pour kerosene on my head." For weeks afterward, boys would run up and poke cootie-catchers in my face.

When I was thirteen I read a novel about a woman who learned she was part Black. I fantasized that my mother was my grandfather's secret love child with a beautiful wild woman. I wanted some insurgency in my blood, freedom from demands to be quiet at meals, to not sing in the car, to wear shoes when I'd rather be barefoot.

I'm still hungry to sit cattywompus, to run untamed, to roam crooked and wide.

What I Don't Want Death to Be

I don't want to be greeted by the poet who came to our writers group several times, whose only subject is her dead mother and her wonderful childhood. First of all, I don't believe it, although life must be tedious for her if she'd rather be playing jacks. God! Is that what she'd be doing, in my heaven? With others just like her? I'm too cynical for this. Could I choose another door, please?

OK, this door's an obligatory option, the one that's hot to touch, smoke coming off those red rocks. But this is my afterlife and I've already walked on hot coals, so the prospect of hopping for eternity isn't the least appealing. It's better than playing jacks with that sappy poet, though. I'd rather hop than gag. But it's my death I'm imagining, so I can veto anything.

What else don't I want? Honestly, as much as I've been a shoe freak, I wouldn't want a line-up of stiletto heels I had to wear. I'm not saying I wouldn't like to try on on a pair of Jimmy Choos. But, no, not for eternity — think of my screaming arches. Actually, no fancy clothes, either. I've gotten used to comfort. No reason to change that just because I'm dead.

I'm kind of thinking no men. But even I am not that stingy. Of course, men could go to their own heaven. I don't mean segregated. I'd like a place with all sizes, shapes, colors, and yes, genders. But no sex. That would be stupid. In my heaven, at least, no complaining, no jealousy, no looking in the mirror at the latest wrinkle.

So, unless it's completely different from earth, the men in my heaven would have to be gay. No straight men. Straight men tend to lack a sense of humor, and they just can't help looking down their noses at someone or something. Yes, I know — that's what I'm doing right now, but like I said, I'm making this up so I don't have to be nice. I did that the whole first half of my life and I'm done with nice. Pleasant? Occasionally. Bitchy? Often.

But, see, in my heaven nobody gets upset. So your ego can just be outrageous. Wow. I could do anything I want and nobody would care, because it's my heaven. But why am I calling it "heaven"? Not sure about the alternatives. Calling it "my death" sucks.

How about "my eternity"? Surprisingly that sounds a bit ominous. Yikes. To have to be or do anything forever? Too damn long.

Okay, here it is. I want my eternity to be in flux, and each new version will be like reading the latest novel by my favorite author. No, even the author will change periodically. No, I'll be the author. Wait a minute! I think I am.

The Gig

It always begins with pop-up story figures. Like the books young children love. As you open the covers, a two-dimensional scene unfolds.

The first time it happened I was in an airport, surrounded by hundreds of people as I walked toward my gate. Suddenly these were not people. They were figures fixed in time, two-dimensional paper cut-outs. I was completely alone among them. The sensation passed and I boarded the plane. As I looked down the aisles, there it was again — the seats were filled with cardboard passengers. I thought I was going crazy.

A friend assured me this was a spiritual vision — a realization that all is illusion — and I was relieved. Then the depression hit. I felt as if I'd been given a part in a play without script or rehearsal. And no other actors; only stand-up figures to represent other players in my life. I dreamed of death, of nothing following nothing. And wondered how I could be so afraid of nothing.

Strangely, this play was backwards. At 4 pm on a Monday afternoon in June, while sipping tea and chatting with a friend in her living room, the curtain descended as if the sun had suddenly disappeared. I excused myself and went home, already sorting through remedies for depression: hot fudge sundae, long nap, meditation, journaling.

But every force of will was puny against this blanket of melancholy. It felled me for ten days until the curtain lifted at 8 pm on a Thursday night, as unexpectedly as it had dropped. I was again on the stage of my life.

This has happened frequently enough that I no longer question my sanity. But each time, I experience the sense of disorientation, though somewhat attenuated as the years pass.

When I heard Steve Martin read his autobiography, Born Standing Up, I laughed aloud at his closing to one show:

Okay, folks! I think that about does it. We've had a good time tonight, considering we're all going to die.

Lost and Found

A few years ago I sold my guitar; my rosewood Alvarez, my beloved, resonant, androgynous instrument, its woman-shape touching like a man. Arthritis had finally ended my ability to embrace or stroke it properly. 

When I was 21 years old I heard a Julian Bream recording of Rodrigo's "Concerto d'Aranjuez." I had studied piano as a teenager but had not been in love. This music smoked of passion. Even the composers' names were transporting: Albinoni, Carulli, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and my favorite, Villa-Lobos (vee-yah low-bus, pronounced with a long caress on the first syllable).

The Alvarez was not my first. I learned on a Martinez student guitar. Like the piano, it created melody from strings pulled taut and pressed with precision. But the Martinez vibrated with more emotion, begged for greater sensitivity. Held properly against my chest there was no distance between hand and chord. No keys, no hammer, only the immediate and sensuous rapport between fingers, strings, heart. I was an avid lover.

My first husband and I moved from Boston to Indianapolis to San Francisco and finally to Cincinnati over the six years of his medical internship and residency. In each city I found a teacher and a companion with whom I could play duets. Other relationships were incidental to these musical rendezvous. I was very good for a beginner.

By the time our daughter was a year old, however, I was expected to be socially gracious, to cook gourmet dinners for guests, to go to teas with other doctors' wives and chat about potty training, to volunteer for community service. I had no time for these activities, which bored me. Grateful that my daughter took substantial naps, I practiced two hours a day, first exercises to limber up my fingers, then pieces like Carcassi's "Andantino in G," even some flamenco riffs.

I wanted so much to excel. I'd heard all the masters, knew what was possible, yet lacked the spontaneity to improvise; my fingers would not fly. My fervor was admirable, my capability serviceable, my dedication commendable, but I was not a talented musician.

For more, see shaking like a mountain

A Sign

I think my Dad loved me. He said it once when I was thirty-two years old, shortly after my first divorce. My mother had come to take care of the kids because all I could do was weep. One evening after dinner I told her Dad never said he loved me.

Later that night she handed me the phone: "Your father wants to speak to you."

"Hello, Dad."

"I love you," he growled. We were both embarrassed.

I wasn't surprised, then, at his funeral — having prayed for a sign from him — to see among the all-white casket sprays of glads, carnations, daisies and the crosses of red roses bordered with lemon leaf, one exotic anthurium thrusting a yellow stamen semi-erect from its red, heart-shaped flower.

I was my father.

It was my father grumbling, "Fuck this!"

Digression

My dear,

I am intrigued by your command of Arabic and on Tuesday (Aththalathaa) found a course that promises to teach me in three hours.

I am to associate with images, and shall apply myself: "MOUTH is FUMM, in Arabic" (I imagine your thumb in my mouth).

From the poem "In Arabic" by Agha Shahid: This much fuss about a language I don't know? So one day / Perfume from a dress may let you digress in Arabic?

I pray that one day perfume from my dress may lead you to digress, in Arabic.

Tempted to sign with a smiley WAJH,
Mary 

Sense and Nonsense

Don't ask me about sense of place. I can remember people's deepest secrets but forget their names, what year it was, or even what city we were in.

The first time I was challenged to write from a sense of place was in a poetry workshop. Our assignment on day one was to walk around the grounds, settle on one spot, and spend an hour noticing every detail — no notes — then write a poem describing what we saw.

I chose daisies. Daisies, I'd been told, represent simplicity and innocence. And of course I knew their prophetic powers. I did not know their name is a corruption of "Day's Eye," thus anointed because they close at night and open in daylight. Nor did I realize their family includes such exotic cousins as artichoke and endive, their healing kin Echinacea and Arnica.

Really, though, wouldn't you want to know Henry VIII ate daisies to relieve ulcer pain? I, frankly, am glad he suffered something for his ill treatment of Anne, and wish he'd also drunk crushed daisies steeped in wine - an ancient cure for insanity.

My Day's Eyes were not historians. Daisies with sense might have bragged of stems and leaves, colors or varieties, dispersion. Mine were an intuitive lot. They gave me the finger, said Screw with me if you dare, declined to be members of a simpering bouquet, and pled For God's sake / do-not-tear-me-apart-piece-by-piece / to find out if you're loved.

Framing

I examine a completed canvas in my art teacher's studio, surprised to see what happens when she holds a frame around it. Covering the four sides, instead of enclosing the scene, gives the illusion that this is a moment of a larger view. Imagination tells us the field, the flowers, the hills and trees in the distances are real, part of something living beyond the compass of our eyes.

This is why a cut camellia on the judge's table of prize winners will be seen only for its singularity, remarkable to the observer's mind like a queen elegantly gowned but without a cathedra, or scepter.

The same blossom sitting on the throne of its branch, the branch on its trunk, and the whole flowering bush, will always bring a catch to the breath. Because the heart has heard a companion rhythm, the soul of the flower's beauty part of something bigger, a living reminder of all creation.

Repast

Because my Dad was in the military, I was a gypsy child, moving from South Texas to Alabama, to Virginia, and then to points around the world. But our eating habits followed us like ghosts.

"Fish" meant catfish rolled in cornmeal and fried in bacon grease. With scary foods we encountered in our travels, like fish-eye soup in Tokyo, I mulishly refused to eat anything new. In Paris, the dreaded special was Escargot — no matter how much butter and garlic, they were still snails to me.

At 18 I left home for college. Invited to stay with a classmate over Thanksgiving, I was undone by her mother's announcement that we'd have swordfish steak for dinner. I imagined the fish's long, wide snout and bill displayed in the marine version of a suckling pig, with God knows what in its mouth instead of an apple. But I'd been taught to be polite and knew I'd have to eat and smile simultaneously.

Its divine texture and flavors changed my life.

I know now that much of taste depends on smell, that beyond sweet, sour, salt, and bitter, "flavor" is really "odor." Small wonder that as I stand by the ocean my scent-memories awaken a souped-up palate.

Improvisation

I was living a Young Frankenstein existence, experimenting with a new life form after my first divorce. My Igor, however, was feline.

Marty was rescued by my son Dylan from a litter born outdoors on my first husband's property — the new wife wouldn't let cats in the house. 

Marty Feldman had recently died, so when Dylan said the kitten's pop eyes reminded him of Feldman's, we agreed that naming the kitten after our favorite comedian would be a fitting tribute.

When my son left home, Marty stayed with me. My apartment at the time was in downtown Cincinnati and I became a regular at Joe's Bar on the next street, where I made friends with Mike, a jazz promoter. I traveled for my work, and Mike didn't have a car, so we struck a deal: if he drove me to and from the airport and took care of the cat, he could use my Honda Prelude while I was out of town.

When anyone asked where he got the Prelude, Mike would say, with no further explanation, "Oh, Mary lets me use her car in exchange for feeding Marty Feldman."

Ursus Minor

Dick padded to the window to look at the rain, his feet and toes oddly graceful for such a stocky body.

"Were you a dancer?" I asked.

Grey eyes narrowed in his Irish face. It was the morning after our first night together, however, and he knew I wouldn't take him for a sissy. "No," he finally answered, obviously holding something back.

Later, when he knew he could trust me to keep my mouth shut, he told me he'd been a mercenary: "My wife took our three kids and ran off with a neighbor. Didn't see it coming. Not much to live for. Lost thirty pounds. Then took up taekwondo. Got pretty good at throwing knives. Hung out with some tough guys. I still watch my back."

"Seriously? Somebody might still be after you?"

"It's not easy to walk away from that line of work. We were going after some bad people. Guys like us... we knew too much."

"How did that end?" I asked.

He looked out the window. "Couple of years later I was walking down a narrow street with a woman, past a bunch of teenagers goofing off. One of 'em reached out and touched her. Basically harmless. But without thinking I backhanded him hard in the face, grabbed the woman's arm and kept walking. Didn't kill the kid but might've broken some bones. I knew then something in me was becoming damaged. Asked myself who I'd be if I kept on that path. No one I could live with." 

Sure, he was playing a Mickey Spillane character — and as Spillane said of his own stories, yes it was garbage, but it was prime garbage. I was approaching fifty, dreading another date with a "nice" guy. Dick would be a good antidote.

The night he moved in with me he looked through the newspaper for TV shows. "Return of the Living Dead! We've got to see this." I was game and set the alarm for 2 am. We necked, ate popcorn, and poked fun at the movie. "They're back... They're hungry... And they're NOT vegetarian!"

After the movie I slept like a baby. Dick snored fiercely but I didn't mind. It was like finding refuge and warmth next to a grizzly.

The next morning we talked for hours. As if our brains had to wake up together before lumbering out of bed. He brought up Jerzy Kosinski. Not his novel Being There, not even the controversy over his possibly having plagiarized, but because of what Kosinski said before he committed suicide: "I'm going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual."

"Why did that stick with you?" I asked.

"Because he knew when it was time to go. If I'm ever incapacitated, just push my wheelchair over a cliff and walk away."

It ended a different way, and we were nowhere near a cliff...

Dick Doc

I wanted Dick to myself. But he was a charmer, a storyteller, and there was always someone else around. So when he suggested we go camping, just the two of us, I was thrilled, even though it was October in Ohio. We’d had a long Indian summer, with every reason to believe we’d have at least one more weekend of warm weather. Anyway, he assured me his tent was waterproof.

There weren’t many people at the campground, and none where he and I decided to park our gear. We grilled hamburgers in the barbecue pit, heated beans, and were enjoying some Peach Schnapps straight from the bottle when it started to sprinkle.

“Not a problem,” Dick grinned. “We’ll get the tent up and be dry as toast.” Let me digress here for a moment. For all his seductive storytelling abilities, Dick was a sucker for clichés. If he found a woman attractive, she was “cute as a button.” But I didn’t know then that “dry as toast” meant “at least we’ll be out of the rain.”

It was beginning to get dark, so we hurried about our tasks and had the tent up and our sleeping bags zipped together over a spongy pad when the storm hit, one of those Midwestern thunderstorms, “a thing of ragged violence,” I’ve since read.

I was delighted, the same cozy feeling I remembered as a child listening to the rain on the tin roof of my grandmother’s porch. The temperature had dropped abruptly so we’d kept on our clothes, but my warmth of contentment and his satisfaction at having provided a safe den from the rain outside had us laughing and talking into the night.

Until I noticed a squishy sound beneath me. I turned a bit, slipped a hand out from the sleeping bag, pressed down on the mat beneath us, and felt water oozing up through my fingers.

“Uh, Dick, I think maybe the tent is leaking.” It was midnight now, getting colder by the minute. But it was still pouring rain, no moon, pitch-black outside, so we couldn’t take the tent down and leave. Ever the resourceful hunter, Dick pulled a poncho from his gear bag, which we smoothed out between the mat and our sleeping bags. The poncho was round and about five feet in diameter, so we had a small circle in the middle where we could keep relatively dry.

It was the best time I’ve ever had in a tent.