a A farmer went to see his neighbor during a terrible rain storm. The neighbor invited him in but apologized that there was no place to sit down. Every table, chair and cupboard had a pot sitting on it. The man’s room leaked like a sieve.
“Why don’t you fix your roof?”
“I can’t. It’s raining too hard.”The men visited briefly and the man left. The next day dawned bright and clear. The man went again to see his neighbor. He was surprised to see him sitting in the shade enjoying a cup of tea.
“Why don’t you fix your roof today?”
“I don’t need to. It’s not leaking today.”
Today I found myself about 40 miles Southwest of Pleasant Grove, down a lovely little side branch of a Spanish Fork Canyon, at the Bennion Creek campground. I along with several other men from our troop, am shepherding a group of a dozen boy scouts in our biannual scout camp.
We’ve been planning this camp for the past two years. Unfortunately the closer the date got the busier my schedule got. And more and more of the planning and preparation fell on the other leaders. We are one of four troops.
Last week, the week right before the camp, I was on a cruise of all things. It’s really hard to garner any sympathy from my friends when my excuse was, “Oh, I’m sorry, we were whale watching in Sitka, Alaska that day.”
Fortunately, they like me and I’ll make up for it now that we are in camp. Because we’ll be here a week, I brought our “big” tent. It can comfortably sleep 10. My son and I are the only occupants.
Last summer, my family went to Yellowstone National Park on vacation. Since we were taking a bunch of kids, we took the big tent and a couple of small tents. We were joined by my wife’s family from Washington.
It rained buckets on us.
Every “Utah” tent get wet inside. Every “Washington” tent stayed dry. I’ve taken our tent on dozens of campouts. I didn’t realize it leaked. It never came up. . .because we never camped in the rain.
Growing up in Western Washington, every campout was in the rain. If your tent leaked, you got it fixed or you got a new tent.
July is normally not a rainy month in Utah. But, with the hot weather, we get some afternoon thunderstorms. They came through this evening while I was away from camp. When I returned to my tent, sure enough it was wet inside. Not totally drenched like last summer, but the rain wasn’t as severe.
I can’t really say I prepared for this possibility, but I do have to admit that I’m the farmer with the leaky roof. Why haven’t I fixed it? Because it’s normally sunny and not leaking.
I’m just glad we decided to bring cots. Because, I can’t fix it right now. . .It’s raining.
?Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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