At Home in the Back Woods of Quehanna

It's springtime, and it's been time to go to the woods for a while now. My husband and I often get out on our first backpack of spring sometime in March. But two weekends ago, when I suggested we go, my husband was sick as a dog.

And so, instead of heading off to the Hammersley or some other wild destination, he spent that weekend on the couch. And then I got sick too. We were both really sick for going on two weeks. But finally, we are better, and so at last, it is time to go to the woods!

We thought we would leave on Friday morning, but the forecast was calling for a bit of rain that evening. So on Friday, we hiked locally. And we packed up our gear and put most of it in the car. First thing Saturday morning, we finished packing, made a half-dozen ham and cheese sandwiches, and headed for the Quehanna Wild Area.

We left our house around 9 a.m., and arrived in our back-country site shortly after noon. This is a picture of me, hanging out in my Quehanna campsite. I am always at home in the woods and waters of wild Pennsylvania! So there is my Kelty retro external frame pack, my Alps Mountaineering tent, and my pals Tiny Tiger and Alex the Alligator hanging out in a nearby tree.

We spent much of the afternoon sitting on a rock overlooking the Valley of the Elk. And then, as dusk fell, we moved back into our campsite. I had checked out the weather radar before we left, and once again, there was the possibility of showers, first thing in the morning.

I don't usually put the fly on my tent, but I decided to play it safe and do just that. It was very easy to do; there are Fastex buckles - you just slide the fly on, and clip the buckles at each corner of the tent. So easy! I laughed to see my tent looking so different - with the fly on, it looked like the mother ship! (You may see the tent, with fly on, in the extras.)

I left the one side unzipped so that I could get in and out, and I placed my backpack in that spot for easy access. And oh yes, when I woke up the next morning to hear tiny raindrops on my tent, I smiled to myself, feeling quite prepared indeed. I put my backpack down onto a mini ground sheet just outside my tent, zipped the fly closed around it, and settled back in, quite happily, to nap a little and listen to music inside my cozy tent.

My pink iPod shuffle has a partial selection of the Music2SaveMyLife playlist on it - the full list won't fit - and this was one of the songs I enjoyed inside my tent, in the gentle morning rain (with me smiling especially when we got to the part about "I slept out in the rain"): John Denver, with Poems, Prayers, and Promises.