Though I’m still in the honeymoon stage of this experience, it’s not all romantic in the woods. For example, one day I made the rookie mistake of not zipping my tent entirely closed, leaving a couple inches of zipper teeth separated. When we returned from a day of work I unzipped my tent to find the book I was reading (Pope Joan) had been nibbled all along the edges and there was a faint smell of what I grew-up knowing as ‘hamster cage’ fragrance – unpleasant indeed! After disinfecting some items and trash-bagging others, I nestled into my sleeping bag for the night. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of rustling… coming from inside of my tent… scurrying from one corner of my tent to the next… to the next. (Photo: view from my tent)
Frantically I reached for my flashlight, which I soon discovered had a dead bulb – no amount of new AA batteries could save it. Still listening to the scurrying in the darkness, totally defeated, I zipped myself back into my sleeping bag, cinched the top as tightly around my head as possible, and forced myself to close my eyes and rest peacefully… one with nature. On the bright side, my new furry roommate didn’t chew a hole through my tent. I kicked him out the next day.
We’ve come to find that mice are our biggest problem in the wilderness – not bears, wolves, coyotes, elk, moose – no. Tiny, surprisingly destructive mice. At night, we watch their tiny little shadows crawling over the tops of our tents in the moonlight. When they are outside, I don’t mind them. In fact, their miniature outlines on my tent are almost cute… in a Disney Princess kind of way.
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