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The cliche “when it rains, it pours,” can often seem true, whether discussing bad luck or actual rain. In the last few weeks, I have been left with only thinking about fishing or camping, as every free moment of my time seemed filled with downpours. Of course, camping or fishing in the rain is by no means a foreign concept to me. 

One of my favorite outdoor writers, Patrick F. McManus once wrote about breaking a drought in his town by purposefully heading out on a long camping trip with his friend. The townsfolk lined the streets and waved, crying tears of joy as they watched the pair leave and stormclouds roll in. McManus wrote humor, but the idea could be plausible in my family.

My brother once spent two days on a boat-camping trip with his boat tied to a support under a bridge during a pounding thunderstorm. 

I once sat in a sailboat cockpit pretending that I meant to get wet, while a storm raged and I hoped lightning wouldn’t find the mast.

More than once I’ve struck out onto a trail with my backpack filled with days worth of camping supplies for a deep-woods trek when the bottom fell out of a previously sunny sky. Once, it began to drizzle as I put my boot on the trail, and the eventual torrents didn’t stop until I put that same boot on concrete in the parking lot the next day. 

Indeed, it happens so often that the people who marry into my family began to recognize it, and after years of the torture start to flinch when the word camping is mentioned.

“I don’t want to go sit in the rain.”

“But, it’s supposed to be clear and sunny this weekend. Perfect weather!”

“Yeah, but that’s before a Crowson decides to go into the woods with a tent.”

You can practically hear the eye roll.

On the Cahaba River, years ago, my brother and I along with two cousins and my nephew set out in two canoes for a simple overnight trip. Had it not been for my cousins flipping their canoe and losing half their equipment within 300 yards of launching, we would have been on the riverbank in tents when a massive thunderstorm rolled in out of nowhere.

Then, in the fall of 2004, I took one of those same cousins on his first backpacking trip. We knew there was a hurricane in the gulf. We would be out of the woods days before it got there, though. Why worry?

“Where’s the trail?” Jason yelled through the rain.

“It’s back that way,” I yelled back, pointing into the darkness past the jumbled pile of downed trees that had blocked the trail and driven us to orienteering in the dark as the hurricane showed up two days early.

“I can’t go any farther,” he said, plopping down on a log.

“I know. I’ll set up the tent in that clear spot over there.” I lay in my sleeping bag that night wondering if one of the giant dead trees around us would fall on us as we slept. They didn’t. 

The next morning I was glad to discover that I had somehow kept track of where we were using map and compass in the dark during a hurricane, and led us to the trailhead parking lot. 

We drove straight to Jack’s and devoured breakfast. As we ate, it was one of the many times it has occurred to me that I don’t really mind being wet and dirty, maybe even cold. It feels normal, eventually, if you get used to it enough. You’ve just got to be out there when it rains.

 

Jeremy Crowson is a staff writer for the Demopolis Times. He can be reached at jeremy.crowson@demopolistimes.com.