When the air was metallic with cold and my eyes strained to see in the dark, I started to cry. Crap. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like someone who was ready to leave home and start college.
I felt like a lost little kid.
Completely alone. Without the cocoon that was always there—suffocating, yes, but warm, too. Protective. I sat down on a felled oak tree and rubbed my arms for warmth, tears stinging my eyes. I feared death by bear, but mostly I feared the loneliness.
Who knew if it was seconds or minutes or hours that ticked by—but suddenly I heard a voice and saw a beam of light. A flashlight.
I stood up and started yelling. “HERE! I’m here!”
The voices grew closer, the lights brighter, and then suddenly I was surrounded by rangers and my family. Relief seared through me and I let my mom hug me, hard and fierce.
“You almost killed me,” she said, her voice high-pitched and furious.
My face was crushed into her shoulder. “I know. Sorry.” And I think she knew what I meant. That was the thing with my family. We didn’t talk about our feelings because, sometimes, it was completely unnecessary. Our emotions were plugged into each other, for better or worse.
The next morning, after a night of relieved eating and campfire dumbassery, our tent was shaking so hard even Ron woke up early.
When I opened the tent flap, a wall of dust whooshed by. I closed my eyes and tried to zip the flap shut. “Oh, my God. It’s so windy.”
My mom gasped. “Oh no, we left a lot of stuff out!” She started to scramble out of her sleeping bag, knocking into everyone. My dad turned to his side and continued to sleep.
I resisted the urge to be annoyed by my mom’s overreaction and instead said, “I’ll help you.” My mom paused and looked at me, satisfaction flickering across her features.
Ron plopped back into his sleeping back. I kicked him. “If I’m getting up, you are too.” He grabbed my ankle with older-brother speed and I fell over, slamming my elbows into him. My dad woke up at that point.
A few minutes later we were all outside, bleary-eyed and covering our faces with our sweatshirts as the wind continued to kick up dirt.
My family members were scrambling—grabbing chairs that were knocked over, stuffing paper plates and cups into coolers, picking up errant jackets and boots.
The wind didn’t let up all day. Our usual breakfast of ramen cooked with egg was nixed because the portable stove couldn’t keep a flame. We decided to head back home a day early, and I was relieved. We were the last family to get our stuff together, and we agreed to meet our relatives at the nearest Denny’s.
While loading the trunk, with our tent half packed up, the wind got brutal, and I dove into our car. Everyone else in my family seemed to have the same idea. One by one, they opened the doors and joined me.
“Wow, this is so exciting huh?” my dad said, slapping his hands on the steering wheel. Any force of nature excited my father. Needing to use survival skills gave him life. He loved going to Costco to stock up on “rations,” getting sandbags from the fire department, handing out flashlights. I felt a genuine gladness for him then. That he was able to have this moment on his camping trip.
My mom’s brow furrowed. “There’s going to be dirt in all of our stuff.” An eternity-long list of worries was no doubt unrolling in her mind.
But before she could start spiraling, Ron tapped his hand on the window. “Wait. Is our tent...moving?”
I glanced out at the orange blob. It was, in fact, moving. One of the corners was pivoting—the stake must have come out.
“Omo.” My mom gasped.
Another stake came out. The tent was tilting to one side now.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
We all bolted out of the car. But before any of us could reach the tent, it was lifted high up into the air in one jerky movement.
“Um.” Ron froze next to me.
The tent was flying.
A small orange dome, levitating as flurries of leaves swirled around it. Bouncing gently from left to right. Moving a little higher with each passing second.
We were standing in a line, heads tilted back. Quiet as we watched the tent get swept up higher and higher.
The sky was bright blue and endless. That scrap of orange had so much freedom now. It wasn’t tethered by flimsy stakes. Filled with our things—my family’s things—it could go anywhere.
I watched the tent and felt my throat tighten. Blinked hard and rapidly.
And then the tent flew into the branches of a pine tree, just as the wind died down, leaving it trapped up there.
We groaned.
“Who’s going to get it?” Mom asked, hands on her hips. It was so high up that we would never be able to reach it with a branch or something.
Ron cracked his knuckles and declared, “I can do it.”
We laughed, watching him scramble up the trunk of the pine, the brittle bark peeling under his fingernails and the toes of his Nikes.
“Get down,” my mom scolded, hitting his back when he slid all the way down.
He looked at me. “Wait. I can boost you up.”
“Pardon?”
Ron raised his eyebrows. “Too scared?”
I grumbled and rolled up my flannel sleeves. “Fine. If you kill me, I’m going to haunt you forever. Like, in a truly horrifying way.”
“I can help,” my dad offered, squatting in anticipation.
“Yah!” my mom yelled. “Do you want to get another back surgery? Stop that and let the kids do it.”
So Ron made a stirrup out of his hands and I stepped onto it, balancing with a wobble. I clutched his shoulder, digging my fingers in a little harder than was necessary. He grunted, but I was able to hoist myself up to one of the larger branches and swing my leg over it so that I was balanced
