Well, having decided, and upon the advice of friends (see comments to yesterday's post), to indulge my inner child, Lana and I camped out in our back yard last night. We pitched our tent behind and to the right of where the fire bowl is in the accompanying picture. We had a fire first, of course. And the weather was so nice that we left off the tent cover so that both sides, the roof, and most of the back were open to the sky. There's a mesh, of course, to keep out the mosquitoes.
It was perfect sleeping weather, just cool enough to need a light blanket so that we could feel all cuddly warm, but with only a little wind. Camp cots were our one concession to semi-adulthood. These are wire mesh cots that we bought, and slept on, for several months during the Katrina evacuation. They fit our tent perfectly and, young as my inner child might be, his outer hips are still those of a 48 year old man and hurt when he has to sleep on the ground.
The whippoorwills serenaded us all night, and there were several other night birds in action, as well as a number of tree frogs. I was hoping to hear coyotes howling but they didn't seem to be indulging their inner wolf last night. I heard a variety of dogs bark, and I figured that many of those barks were directed at wild things passing through in the woods. I heard a few rustlings in our own woods but didn't catch a glimpse of anything.
All in all, a night well spent. I'm thinking of doing it again tonight.
