I wish you could have shared my camping experience at Roaring River the last weekend in March.
If you'll use your imagination, perhaps you can at least get a feel for it.
Do this:
Close your eyes and envision yourself in a nice warm cocoon in the darkness .
You are very tired and the warmth is so comforting.
Now imagine that your head is stuck in the deep freeze, and your stomach is swelling because a single hot dog rarely agrees with you, and you ate two at the campfire in the great outdoors earlier.
Are you getting there?
Okay, good.
Now imagine that someone is rustling a potato chip bag right next to your right ear and someone else is sawing wood right next to your left ear.
The sounds just a little further off include a constant clang, clang, clang and some significant roaring and howling.
Are you with me?
Stay in this imaginary state until you really, really, really have to go to the bathroom.
Now, picture yourself crawling out of your warm cocoon and immersing your entire body into the deep freeze.
But it's a big, walk-in freezer...and you walk in it.
When you've gotten some relief, you get back into your warm cocoon, pull the hood of your sweatshirt up around most of your face and move yourself about four feet away from the crinkling potato chip bag.
Now you have some relief from the cold air of the deep freeze and the noise of the chip bag.
You doze off.
Moments later, you see flashes of light, the roaring increases, and the potato chip bag lands on top of your face.
Then it flies up in the air and comes back down on your head.
Several times.
And someone starts spitting very cold water at you.
Can you feel it?
Can you see my side of the air mattress shoved up against the nylon tent which is being blown by winds so fierce that it is constantly crinkling in my right ear?
Can you hear the thunder and see the lightning and feel the temperature drop into the 30's?
Can you see (and hear) the Prince, busily sawing logs on my left?
Can you feel the intensity of the storm increase and the tent cave in on my face?
It's time to get out of there.
It's time to walk to the car in the driving rain and turn on the motor, and then the heater, and thaw yourself out.
It's time to watch the day break, rainy and gray, and to say to yourself...
...at least we had some good laughs around the campfire last night.