thedesertdawn

Recently there was an article about a boulder that crashed into a home in St. George, Utah.  This struck me as an excellent example of a lesson in campsite selection.

Hiking to a new camp in the desert.
Photo courtesy of Paul Bojan.

When hiking the trail and looking for a “home” for the night we look for a few things.  Water for drinking, cooking and washing is nice.  Wood for fire and shelter is good to have as well.  We pay attention to the weather to determine if we will be challenged by the weather at night.   We look for “wigglies,” which is anything that may squirm into bed with you – whether as small as an ant or large as a bear – for we do not want unwelcome visitors to our little nest.  Finally, but most important of which, we look for “widow makers.”  It is the widow makers that the article brought to mind.

Widow makers are anything that will bring an untimely demise to a spouse – the spouse who is camping.  Boulders rolling off ledges fall into this category.  Likewise falling trees or branches, flash floods and lightning fit into this category.  The lesson is that before making a nest in which to slumber comfortably, look around, look up, look down.  Look with a critical eye.  Look for the newspaper article headlines “Camper Dies in Sleep, Crushed by …”

When I was young in the outdoor education industry I followed the leader.  The school where I worked had a base camp at which there was this great ponderosa pine that made an exquisite location for a nightly nest.  The senior instructors always went to this tree to set up camp and I followed.  We called this tree “the Penthouse.”  I slept snuggly under this tree for many a night until one day I realized that it went absolutely contrary to the most important criteria  of campsite selection.  It was a widow maker.  It was a lightening rod.  It was in the middle of an open field and it was the tallest thing in the vicinity.   Without too much scrutiny, it was easy to discern from the thin strip of bark that was removed in a pattern that spiraled around the trunk from top to bottom that it had indeed been hit by lightening before, probably more than once.  I have never slept under that tree again.  I found that I also sleep better when my mind is not on the things that might kill me at night.

Yes, it is nice to have water and wood and protection from weather and no little insects to bother you in the night.  But, it is critical not to sleep in the position of a widow maker.  Remember it may be easy to react to something when awake, however, when deep in slumber reflexes are significantly hampered and reaction time is somewhat nonexistent.   Make the determination of where to sleep for yourself and do not follow the leader or be cajoled into camping in an unsafe location.  To modify an age old saying, “It is good to look before you sleep.”  Sleep Well.

Shelter Craft Workshop

Spending time in nature with our children, priceless!

My daughter knows that when I go to “work” I go to the mountains that are visible from our home.  She occasionally comes to visit me at my office and we go for walks or just lie around looking at nature.  What a great office for our children to visit.  They can pick up pretty much anything they want and look at it and be curious about it as is their nature.  I look forward to the times when she will be able to join me at work not just for a visit but for a day or a week.   To her this is my office.

My daughter also knows I have another office, the one I go to more regularly during the offseason.  This office is wonderful for her as well because she is able to spend more time with me throughout the day.  There has been a good deal of talk lately about my work in the home office as we work hard to get Desert DAWN started.  As I write for the Desert DAWN website, I share with her and my wife the topics of the pages I wrote that day.  She has not yet been introduced to the World Wide Web but she does know that my work involves something called a “website”.

Today, she did one of those magical things that our children do to make us smile and completely forget the last challenging hour.  She went outside, picked up a rock that she had painted and proudly brought it to me with the statement, “here papa, this is for your website.”  How can we resist this offer to help in our work, we can’t.  So here is my daughters contribution to Desert DAWN.  (Though her contribution is far grander than a piece of sandstone she painted, since sharing nature with her as a child is part of the inspiration for starting the school.)

The rock my daughter offered for my website to lend her support to my efforts.