April 28, 2003

  • I was reading another ‘blog, this one by an aspie in California. This entry in particular.

    I’ve had a similar experience, except that the night and the shadows flucuate between terrible and wonderous. Both at the same time, even, on occassion.

    I have this memory of camping alone in Utah. I was driving to Yellowstone to work there, and I stayed a night on the eastern edge of Canyonlands, a truly, truly inspiring landscape.

    I arrived at a remote, quiet campsite and pitched my tent next to the car. It was still light enough to climb around on some of the huge, smooth sandstone boulders sticking up out of the ground. The moon was full overhead, and looked huge even in the blue sky.

    The sun set, and the temperature dropped quickly, but I was ready. A wind started whipping across the plain. After a short while, though, it mostly died down except for the occassional breeze.

    The moon was full, but I swear I could see the milky way anyway. I was excited. I couldn’t sleep. I sat on the picnic table for a while.

    Far off in the east (and it’s a kind of far you really can’t understand unless you’ve been to desert Utah), the stars were being obscured by blackness. I watched as the blackness slowly swallowed bits of the sky. I began to see flashes of light that lit the darkness in patches. I heard the faintest rumble of thunder, rising out of and then back into the stillness.

    So the question became: What does this mean for me? Does it mean the storm is headed my direction? If I pack up my tent and sleep in the car, will I have been overreacting? Will I even be able to sleep?

    I decided that if the thunder got loud enough, it would wake me up. The campsite was on top of a hill, with no threat of flash flood. I could pack up the tent pretty quickly; I could just shove it in the back of the car if I needed to.

    I drank more water and zipped up the sleeping bag with me inside, and went to sleep far more quickly than I ever thought I could.

    What woke me up wasn’t thunder. It was scratching sounds. Something very small was scratching at the door of the tent, by my feet. Hopefully it was on the outside.

    I moved as slowly as I could to get my flashlight, but with the first shuffle of the sleeping bag the scratching stopped and I heard something scurry away. I switched positions, so my head was at the opening, and tried to get some more sleep.

    While I was drifting off, the scratching started again, this time on the side of the tent. I made a sharp motion with my leg and hoped whatever it was would run away to where I could see it. And it did.

    It was a tiny, nocturnal kangaroo rat. I was still feeling the effects of having been startled awake, so I thought of my campsite as belonging to me, and if only those stupid rodents wouldn’t go around waking people up.

    And then I thought, no. This is their darkness. They live here. The scratching, in fact, is a signal that there’s no storm coming. They’re telling me it’s OK to go back to sleep.

    I unzipped the tent to go pee. The night was clear and beautiful, and I found a nice bush to water by the light of the full moon. The storm was still rumbling far, far away.