Friday the 13th

First, I am not a superstitious guy. Give me logic and science every time. So, the fact that it was Friday the 13th did not dissuade me from my plans in the least. The sky was blue, and the few cumulus clouds meandering overhead were unperturbed by the 82 degrees and 80% humidity below. It was April 13th, 2007, which happened to fall on a Friday and it was a perfect, if muggy, day.

I was headed out to Hill Country SNA to go camping and try out a new tenting arrangement. Roughly 60 miles NW of San Antonio, TX, the park is a favorite of mountain bikers and horse riders, with a few hikers here and there.

I drove through the low-water crossing (as in driving across a flowing creek) near the park office at 3:30 and was able to snag one of the few backcountry campsites. I got one of my favorites, Butterfly Springs, for two nights.

Because of heavy rains during the week, several of the lowland trails were closed due to mud. This meant I had to take a more circuitous route to my campsite, making the hike about four miles instead of two. Hey, it was Friday the 13th. So I took my time and arrived about 5:30, set up my cape/tent, and went about trying to arrange my mosquito netting.

The ultralight cape/tent can be worn as a rain poncho or pitched as a tent, a small tent, but a tent nonetheless. The problem is that it lacks mosquito netting. Remember the heavy rains during the week and the high temperature and humidity; well, let’s just say mosquito netting was de rigueur.

I had sewn up a prototype mosquito net for this tent earlier in the week, and so this was the perfect opportunity to try it out. That grayish-purple fabric to the right of the purple bag is the netting. After proudly deploying the net and leaning back to admire my handiwork, I found it was less than perfect. The mosquitoes did not seem to be bothered by or even slowed down by it. I decided to have dinner and think about it a little.

I boiled some water and mixed it with the contents of my homemade zip-lock bag meal. I had “Couscous with Freeze-dried Chicken and Cranberries.” This was a variation on another Freezer Bag Meal called “Rice with Freeze-dried Chicken and Cranberries,” which is excellent. The only difference with this meal was that I substituted couscous for the instant rice. Big Mistake! The meal was edible, but kind of gummy and really pretty terrible. At least I had a bar of chocolate for dessert. Wrong! The chocolate was infested with beetle larvae that I discovered after my first bite. Ok, so it was Friday the 13th.

Well, I went back to the tent and knelt down in front of it to see if I could fix the mosquito netting somehow. As I did, I got that uncanny feeling that someone (or something) is looking over your shoulder. I turned slowly and saw what it was. A huge wall of thunderclouds loomed in the north, encompassing the entire horizon. This was not really a turn for the better. It was about 7:30 p.m. I was hungry, the mosquito netting was not working out, and this big storm was moving pretty rapidly toward me. Friday the 13th?

Trying to weather a heavy storm in my admittedly gossamer-light tent was probably foolhardy, so I decided to break camp and hoof it out to the car in the fading light. I figured I had about half an hour to make it back. I covered the distance partly walking, but mostly running, with a full pack, and arrived out of breath at the Prius 35 minutes later, as the first fat raindrops were coming down.

I hopped in the car, but it was not over yet. It was still the 13th. Remember the low-water crossing by the office? I was not wild about seeing if a Prius could float, but it was time to find out. Flash floods are common in this part of Texas. I eased onto the dirt exit road and drove over to the creek as the rain picked up. Fortunately, the crossing was still passable when I got there, so I moved into the creek bottom and right across and up and out. Then it was seven more miles of dirt-road-turning-to-mud before I got to pavement.

It was a huge storm, and it was moving fast. I raced the storm back home, staying ahead of the rain. It slammed into San Antonio with high winds and torrential rain about an hour after I got back to the house. It was gone an hour after that, leaving behind much cooler weather and an inch of rain.

So all in all, Friday the 13th was my lucky day. Sure, I had to hike a couple of extra miles, and my tent netting didn’t work. Also, I didn’t get much to eat because my food was bad, and I didn’t even get to camp because of the storm. Of course, I also had to run all the way back to the car.

But I didn’t get eaten alive by mosquitoes, I did make it back to the car before the real rain started, and I got across the creek on the way out without being washed away. Why, I even beat the storm back home. So I would say, without exaggeration, I was pretty lucky.