It lasted pretty well but for the many tiny holes (apathetic moths, or just decay?). Neither abused nor abandoned (though not coddled or conserved), this tent was but one frustratingly bug-bit and down-poured summer short of collapse. Had I pushed it, this failing portabode would have suffered indignity or wrath, and so instead I enjoyed a last night in it, and put it down.
A last night featuring a waxing moon, that first night when sliver slithers off, extinguished by a swelling mama moon spilling silver about all the waters of the earth. In this instance, the glimmering Hood Canal fjord in Twano Country. Twano (said by some to be the name of the people along here before reservations clung to the bare skeletons of Indian Country) sounds curiously like Toano, a place less than an hour from where I grew up, named for some Indian thing but famous in my generation as location of the Williamsburg Pottery, an outlet of the old guard, a roadside sprawl in honor of the whore-goddess Commercia.
An end to a tent that somehow fell short of my many and celebrated boot interrments: No lava tube (boots tend to bite the dust at the island closest to the jaggedest volcanic upwelling). No psychotropic farewell. No eulogy or euphony or euphoreal. No blaze, no glory. Not even a last-ditch rationalization for saving the fabric or fittings. Just a sudden breakdown of the camp, deflation of the tent airspace, a stiff-legged pace to the dumpster, and done.
So I bid "Aloha" to the tent that visited: Nu'alolo many a time (less so in later years as I developed a taste for beach-seeping), Kaluako'i (ith its poachers and akualele), Ulupalakua with it's camphor and cool), Turtle Bay (with its early morning catch of ulua fry), Ha'ena (with it's Makana), Hanakapi'ai (with its UFOs), Kalalau (with its hippies and their nene dance), Miloli'i (with it's cabin-full of softer folk), Barking Sands (with it's wee-hour missile launches), Hokukano (with its brooding blowhole), back yards in VA and WA (with their kids who like to camp with dad), rivers (with their eastward or westward flows), and wherever else it is that I forget at the moment.
Adios to the tent that held: an air mattress, a ceiling net full o stuff, corner rocks (I almost never used stakes), a snoring archaeologist, a Kelty Redwing (pack of choice for all the best field people), upward views of the cosmos (and a only few fewer rain-fly protected nights than rainy nights), and far fewer mosquitoes than my complaint threshold would respond to.
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