Leaving Town and Taking Down Tents

It became real when I drove out of town with my car loaded with all of my worldly possessions. Up until that point, it was like I was on break or sabbatical. But driving out of town realizing that I would never be back, that was hard, real hard. Perhaps the hardest thing I've ever done. It reminds me of when I left Chicago, but that's a long story and one I don't want to tell, but it was the last time I remember feeling this lost. Then it was also a leap into the dark, and the jury is still out on how that turned out. In any case, I think it is going to take some time to recover my bearings.

In the meantime, here is a desciption of one of the activities performed while at the retreat center. The 9-5 physical labor I engaged in there was a nice break from the mental torture I had been feeling for the previous months and it is a simplicity I find myself longing for now.

Taking down tents
One of my favorite things to do was to take down tents. The process required two, and preferably three, people. These were big canvass tents that were constructed for two people to live in comfortably, or at least as comfortably as one can live in a tent. The first thing you had to do was to inspect the tents to make sure that people were no longer living in them. Once this was verified, you had to empty the tent of its furniture, which usually consisted of two wooden bed frames, foam mattresses, wooden clothes racks and book shelves. The clothes racks and book shelves were stuffed under the platforms on which the tents were situated, to be pulled out the following spring. The mattresses and frames were carried off to a separate location to be stored for pick up later. Once this preliminary work was done, one person on the crew used a drill to unscrew the tent from the various places were it was screwed into the platform, making sure to leave it screwed in, however, in one place at each of the four corners. Next (or actually usually at the same time) another person on the crew went into the tent and untied the ties that bound the tent to the metal poles on the inside. Also, this person had to make sure the flaps over the windows were rolled down. At this point, the deconstruction of the tent could begin. Two people went inside the tent and first each person kicked a metal pole at the front of the ten from where it had been wedged as part of the frame. As that collapsed from each side, the person holding the pole pulled (or usually kicked) the pole into sections and tossed the sections outside the tent. Next, each person did the same with the framing at the back of the tent. Finally it was time to take down the center frame which was high above the head. The two people had to agree which way to kick the pole. Then as it fell each person had to untie the tent from where it had been tied to the center pole. At this point, the tent would be collapsing upon itself, so it was usually up to the person in the back of the tent to work his way through the falling tent while the person at the front held part of the tent open for him to escape. Once they were both out, the metal poles would then be stuffed under the wooden platform, to be utilized the following spring. At this point, the tent was completely collapsed onto the frame and had to be folded neatly up, a process which because of the size of the tent was better done with three rather than two people. But before this could be accomplished the four screws at the corners had to be unscrewed. When the tent was neatly folded and properly bound, it was hauled to another location with other tents to be picked up by a truck and stored in the trailer of an old truck that was now used for storage. Repeat process.