July 23,
2001
© Darrell Noakes
A few weeks ago, a group of friends and I went on a short tour. Three of us rode north from Saskatoon, while a couple rode south from Prince Albert. We would meet in the middle, at Rosthern. The couple, John and Paulette had been a little pressed for time, not leaving home until after a round of golf in the mid-afternoon. They threw all their gear into a plastic tote and heaved it into the BOB trailer they were using for this trip. The first thing into the trailer was a plastic wrapped package they had just picked up at a local big box store. The package was labelled as containing two industrial tarpaulins, and that was as much as they knew about the contents.
The couple arrived in camp just after sunset. After they had set up their campsite, John stared into the bottom of the trailer. All that was left to unpack was the plastic wrapped package, an innocuous looking thing a little more than a foot by a foot-and-a-half and barely an inch thick. John pulled out the first tarp and began unfolding. The first two folds were pretty much as we expected, but the tarp just continued to unfold and unfold. Before long, the tarp was leaning over everyone's tents at one end of the campsite and lapping over the shrubs and grass at the opposite end, and still there was at least one more fold to go. By the time the tarp was completely unfolded, it could have covered our entire campsite - tents, bikes, picnic table, and even the fire pit at the far end of the site. It wasn't one of those cheap tarps you find at discount camping stores. This was a heavy, coated, plastic tarp such as you might find on a semitrailer or covering a house under construction. Every time John moved the tarp, it made a loud rustling noise, like warping sheet metal, that you could have heard throughout the campground.
John decided to fold the tarp so we could cover our bikes, the picnic table and our gear. This would keep the dew off overnight. Anyone who's ever tried to fold a map the way it was when they got it will understand what happened next. John couldn't match up his folding with the creases in the tarp. Although the tarp was folding, it wasn't getting any smaller. The surface area it was covering was less, but it wasn't lying flat, just getting higher and higher with each fold. In the fading daylight, John picked up the tarp in outstretched arms and began walking toward the end of the picnic table, where our bikes were leaning. The folded tarp was stiff enough to maintain shape, and John looked like a walking billboard as he headed for the bikes. We helped him tuck the stiff fabric around the bikes and the picnic table, then retired for the night. As we headed for our tents, John was standing looking at the tarp, wondering how he was going to get it back into the package in the morning.
Borealis
Outdoor Adventure
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