Improvising the Eno HouseFly as a 1-person ground shelter

(Oh, hi, hello, yes, it's been a while. I am more active on Instagram these days, but I still write, and I've released a new chapbook called 'why don't we know each other'--it's available now.)

My first trips as an outdoor educator involved sharing shelters with my co-instructors, people with whom I spent several days getting to know before sharing such close quarters for any period of time. When I was hired to work with Dunn School, it was the first time I found myself in need of a 1-person shelter, as our orientation was short and I would be the primary wilderness instructor on the trip.

After trying out the REI Quarterdome 1 on the first trip, I returned the tent due to its weight, but moreso due to the expense. I wanted something simple, light, and not wildly expensive. Those who have the funds can acquire a sub-1-pound shelter made of cuben fiber for $300-500. Considering the wear I tend to put on my gear and my unpredictable work schedule, I couldn't stomach the expense.

The compromise I landed on was to use an Eno HouseFly Rain Tarp as a ground shelter. At 27 ounces without accounting for ground stakes, it's not the lightest solution, but since I was able to purchase one on sale for less than $100, it was a good compromise.

The tarp comes with quite a bit of cord and I've been able to shed a bit of weight by eliminating the plastic tensioners and connectors tying the lines directly to the straps on the tarp. 10 lines are included (6 for structure and 4 for the doors), and I tend to only carry 6 of the lines.

I set the tarp up with my trekking poles to create an A-frame shelter. I stake the corners directly into the ground for warmth and privacy, and create tension in the ridgeline using a truckers hitch from the trekking poles.

As you can see, there's no floor to this tent, so I have to bring my own. The nice thing about not having a floor is that I can pull my pack into the shelter without worry about dirtying the floor or crowding a vestibule. I sliced open a plastic contractor's trash bag for my floor, on which I place my sleeping pad. I am on the lookout for some discarded Tyvek for the next series of trips, as a lighter alternative.

These photos are from the test run of this set-up at Dunn School before the actual 4-day trip-- always good to practice beforehand! After first setting up the trekking poles handles down and tips through the loop, I decided to try them out handle-up. I like the way the doors sit this way better, though I worry about the force on the material.

What I learned during the trip is that since I am 4'11, I can comfortably sleep under the tarp with a trekking pole on only one end, and the other end staked down. I haven't yet had the pleasure of setting this up using trees. I imagine a taller person may want to create more headroom by staking out the corners with cord and having their trekking poles adjusted to be taller. There would be more airflow that way as well.

For those who worry about insects, well, I did find a scorpion underneath my ground tarp while camping in Big Sur that year, but we managed to stay well away from each other. The HouseFly has a few flaps of material that create a sort of barrier between the walls and the ground, but there are those doors. I'm somewhat concerned about mosquitos in my coming work season, but not quite enough to switch to a $200+ set up. Okay, to be honest, I'd probably worry less about the expense for a tent if I were not based in a place as expensive as the Bay Area. We'll see how long the streak can last.

Funnily, the nights that I've slept in my hammock so far have not required a tarp at all, so I've only ever set up this hammock shelter on the ground. There may be cheaper, lighter, and bug-netted options out there if I keep a better eye out for sales, but I've become attached to my improvised solution. And, why carry both trekking poles and tent poles?

"How was Alaska?"

Life is not what you alone make it. Life is the input of everyone who
touched your life and every experience that entered it.
We are all part of one another. - Yuri Kochiyama

Weighing in at more than half a pound, my Hydroflask was most certainly an impractical luxury item for the 28-day NOLS Alaskan Wilderness Backpacking trip on which I was recently an Instructor-in-Training. As someone who is 4'11" and under a hundred pounds, every ounce really counts, even if I don't want it to. I am of the mindset that I'd rather go slower with more weight, making due with what I have, rather than go for a newer, shinier, lighter item.

That ideal has to shift when backpacking in a professional capacity, I realize now, but I don't regret bringing the heavy thermos with me. Our 120-mile journey through the Southern Talkeetna Mountains year olds culminated in a cold, rainy all-night hike, and the hot sugary caffeinated concoction I had was well worth the extra weight.

Of course, I won't be bringing it on my next professional trip.

I've been putting off writing a post about Alaska. The task of compiling almost a month's worth of learning and experiences into a comprehensible blog post or trip report has been daunting.

Here's an attempt to sum it up:

We hiked up mountain passes and down into valleys and back up into passes, again and again and again. We walked through icy cold creeks and crossed rivers together in eddy lines. We made cornbread and pizza and cinnamon rolls from scratch. I made cheesy pancakes and oatmeal chocolate chip pancakes and cinnamon raisin pancakes and accidentally made pancake pizza.

I got bruises on my hips and blisters on my feet and sun bumps on my left ear and the climber's bumps on my heels peeled and peeled and peeled. I read Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. I read excerpts of writing about the construction of wilderness that challenged my existing notions of wilderness, wilderness education, access. I questioned what I was doing there, what I wanted from the experience, what I felt about being the only woman of color on the trip, what I felt about continuing to pursue work with NOLS.

The summer solstice came at the midpoint of our trip. We didn't pack headlamps. We went to the toe of the Chickaloon Glacier. We saw places on our map where glaciers that were there less than 10 years ago no longer exist. We saw caribou and moose and eagles, and some of us saw grizzlies. We ended our hike at the confluence of the Talkeetna River and Iron Creek, where jet boats picked us up for an exhilarating ride to the town of Talkeetna.

Before and after the course, I stayed at the NOLS Alaska base in the town of Palmer, where we grazed on beautiful salads from the garden and freshly baked bread daily. I lived for a few days in a canvas wall tent before the trip, and in a 3-person Kelty tent for the few days I was there afterward. My co-instructor Deev and I practiced acroyoga a few times.

And that was my June 9th to July 19th.

I flew back to Long Beach, read some poetry at Tuesday Night Cafe, performed a wedding ceremony for my good friends, then promptly returned to the Bay Area.

In a few weeks, I'll be out on another backpacking trip, this time as a wilderness instructor for Eagle Rock School. A 23-day trip rather than 28. Again with teenagers.

I plan to apply for a NOLS Instructor Course. If accepted, I'll go on the 35-day course next year. There's still a lot I'm mulling over. What it means to be a woman of color in a historically white male institution. The idea that wilderness conservation displaces indigenous peoples from a way of life intimately connected to nature, and the reality that my parents, who collect rain water and grow practically half of the food they consume, are potentially--likely?-- more in tune with nature than the majority of people who consume the outdoors.

Aparna, former Diversity and Inclusion Manager at NOLS, recently wrote:

It’s one thing to want to make people of color aware of a world of possibilities, to put outdoor adventure on their radar, or even to work to create an inclusive culture in the outdoors that is welcoming to everyone. But it’s quite another thing to presume that of all their choices, people will somehow feel compelled to leave the comfort of a roof over their heads to “rough it” in the woods. Camping, like stamp collecting or painting or driving fast cars or dancing, is not for everybody. And. That. Is. Okay.

I have been thinking a lot about how I've bought into a particular way of consuming the outdoors, consuming wilderness, as a rock climber, as a backpacker, as an outdoor educator. And that there are experiences that I want to pursue that bring up contradictions that are difficult to reconcile. And that I can play a role in the pursuit of a more equitable world even from a place of contradiction. That life is a series of reconciliations.

I started this post with my thermos. The heavy, bright orange vessel made it through the 28-day trip without a scratch. Between the jet boat ride out and the present, however, it's gained some small dents and chips. The latest was a couple of days ago, when I knocked it off the driver seat of my car and onto asphalt as I was loading things. It occurred to me then that all of the dents came after what most would consider a more trying environment for keeping things new. But while I was backpacking, I took better care of it. I usually did only one thing at once. I knew that I had to "go slow to go fast," as my WFR instructor Mazie was fond of saying. I took care of things well. And since I've returned, I've caught myself many times trying to go too fast, doing things while distracted, being less than present.

The outdoors gets sold as a place to get away from it all, to leave the distractions of daily life, the leave the necessary frazzled-ness behind. We talk about how nature allows us to be more in touch with ourselves, so we must preserve these "pristine" areas so that we can go and rejuvenate ourselves and thus perform better in the society as it stands. But the wilderness reminds me that there are so many parts of society that need to change, that need to be calmer, that need to be less fixated on more, newer, faster.

In a few weeks, I'll be trekking through the Gila Wilderness with teenage students. I'll be sharing with them the values that I've reinforced through being outdoors and the skills that I've learned through NOLS and GirlVentures and my personal experience. I'll continue to be perplexed by the complications and contradictions of identity, politics, conservation, consumption, capitalism.

And that's it. There's not really any way to wrap a bow around it. 

Walking Past Rattlesnakes

The rattlesnake lay partially coiled on the right side of the trail, still making faint sounds of wariness and irritation when Miho started hiking again. "Do you want me to go first?" Elizabeth asked as I hesitated.  I looked up at her, then promptly turned and walked past the snake as it slowly slid around the small boulder and descended the hill, making its way out of sight.

We were about halfway through our 5-day backpacking trip along the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. We had started from White Wolf and would finish at Tuolumne Meadows. It was late July. It was hot. It was rattlesnake season. The El Portal Fire was still burning through thousands of acres though we didn't see much evidence of it in the sky. We were a group of eleven women of color from age 22 to 53, brought together by Balanced Rock Foundation for this backcountry journey, on the tenth anniversary of these women of color trips. The claim is that it is the only trip of its kind in the country.

I know that there are women of color leading other women of color on trips in the backcountry in the United States, but it seems that the Balanced Rock trip is indeed the only institutionally-led and supported one.

Maybe it's because I grew up in an immigrant household-- not only an immigrant household, but a refugee household-- that I had not considered working in the outdoors, or even backpacking recreationally. It was never in my range of vision. I didn't see it as a possibility for me. From outdoor exploration camp in sixth grade to team-building high ropes courses through college and beyond, I cannot recall a single counselor or instructor who was a woman of color.

That's not unusual, of course. Everyone has different interests, different vocations, different ways that they recreate, different places they want to spend their leisure time. The practice of carrying 30-40% of your bodyweight across long distances in remote places is understandably not commonly appealing across any demographic. And taking such journeys is far from the only way to recreate outside, nor is it necessarily a more valid way of experiencing nature than to spend an afternoon in a regional park.

I don't think everyone should go backpacking. I don't think everyone needs to try rock climbing. But what I recognize now that I think about my journey into outdoor education is that these activities were on the edge of my subconscious. Like the students I watched walk back and forth in front of the LGBT Resource Center office at UC Irvine, apprehensive about walking in. But I knew that I could walk into the LGBTRC. I saw people like me in there. And for most of my life, I didn't see people like me backpacking, I didn't see people who looked like me climbing.

The journey to finding these things that are so important now (camping, climbing, outdoor education) happened in small increments. I could say it began with a roommate in college who instigated a camping trip. She was Vietnamese American, and really really into camping. Her excitement was contagious. A bunch of us went car camping somewhere south of Orange County, along a river. We slept under the stars, cooked over fire, and, because we were in college, drank quite a bit. And though I didn't do much camping until years after that, I think of that experience as the first time I realized that camping was not just a white american thing. (There's a lot to unpack there about growing up perceiving myself as not ah-khaing, not American, associated with this as well.)

Despite a lifetime of exposure to American ideals about individualism and following bliss and doing what the heart truly desires, I am coming to understand how the smallest spark of encouragement, the smallest invitation, has a profound effect on expanding what I believe is possible for myself.

(To be continued.)