Rafting Trip Tent
I was asked as scout committee member to accompany a group of scouts on a river rafting trip in the Texas hill country. We were to camp on a Friday night and then spend all day Saturday on the river. Upon arrival, three other adult leaders and I started setting up the tent we had borrowed. No instructions were included, but since our group consisted of two men holding master’s degrees, one with a dental degree and one a Ph.D., we weren’t worried. We soon discovered that the tent we had borrowed was undoubtedly defective. After all, if we couldn’t figure out how to put it together, something must be wrong with it. We were somewhat puzzled, however, since all the pieces appeared to be included, and the tent looked almost new.
For the next two hours we tried everything possible to get that tent set up–without success. Finally, in total frustration, one of the leaders got out ropes and tied the tent off to several nearby trees. However, it hardly even resembled a tent. When the scouts came back from a short hike, they laughed and laughed at the mangled looking thing draped between two trees. It was a very embarrassing situation for the leaders. While most of the boys slept out under the stars that night, the leaders decided to appear united and sleep in their makeshift tent. During the middle of the night, one side of the tent collapsed–on top of me. After crawling out, I attempted to sleep in my car the rest of the night. It was then that I saw another leader sleeping in the back of a pick-up truck.
When morning dawned, we found ourselves miserable because of lack of sleep. To make matters the boys continued to laugh at us.
As we prepared to put the raft into the river, two college-aged girls drove up to a camping spot directly beside ours and unloaded several items from their car. I watched as they brought a fairly large tent out of the trunk. What a coincidence! The tent appeared to be almost exactly like the one we had borrowed. Shortly before they drove up, we had untied our tent from the trees and put it back in the van. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself, as we watched the girls prepare to assemble their tent. I knew there was no way they could put it up. I watched as they pulled out what looked like a little book of instructions. They studied it for a moment then quickly organized the different pieces into groups. Clearly they had never put the tent up before, because they constantly looked back and forth at the instructions. Once the pieces were in place, they spread the tent out and within fifteen minutes had it completely put together and their camping gear moved in.
I was hoping we could leave before our scouts noticed the girl’s nearly identical tent, but it was too late. We took their taunts and teasing like men. However because we were miserable from lack of sleep, we couldn’t really enjoy the river trip. I found myself wishing that the girls had arrived prior to our “tent problem” so that we could have borrowed their instruction book. I have found over time that life goes a lot smoother when we have an instruction book to follow. I have also noticed over the years that it is the nature and disposition of most men to not read instructions even when they are readily available. But they do no good unless we pull them out and follow them.
