Our first year here, we had spent two months in a 10×10 nylon tent. The sleeping arrangements were just sufficient and the tent was always damp inside. There was even that delightful morning that we all woke up in a puddle. The location of the tent on the property was also the part that floods with every rain. Needless to say, I began to dread the rain.

The worst kind of rain was the storms that would come at night. It was storm season for the time we stayed in that tent, so there were many horrible nights. We would stay awake, watching the weather, waiting for the storm to pass. Watching to see if we were safe to stay or if torrential downpours and lightning were headed this way. As we would hear the thunder off in the distance creeping closer and closer, we would load up the weather channel on our phone. It would come up painfully slowly and then we saw the nasty storms in red and orange heading right for us. We would run to the car and drive to town waiting for the storm to pass. Sitting in the parking lot in town we could watch, from a safe distance, the fiery lightning bolts of red and orange shoot down into the trees not far from our little tent.

It has been almost a year since we got out of the little tent, but the dread had carried over to our home in the large tent. We were no longer on a little hill in the middle of a flood zone and there were far fewer trees that were close enough to the tent to potentially fall on it. Laying awake in my bed, staring at the “ceiling” in the tent, I would listen to the sounds of the wind and rain. Listening to the sound of the wind whipping the leaves and waiting to hear the cracks of a breaking branch that could tear a hole through our roof.

I am happy to say that living in a cabin with a solid roof has resolved my fear of the rain. Now that I don’t have to worry about the tent blowing away with us in it, the gentle tap-tap-tap of the gentle showers is actually rather soothing. The sound of the rain on the roof always brings me to a warm summer afternoon with a refreshing, cool rain coming down and cooling us off. Sitting next to an open window, feeling the cool breeze on my face with not a care in the world. Even being a kid on a camping trip, going to sleep at night to the sound of a gentle rain tapping on my tent. I am looking forward to summer when I can sit near an open window, listening to the rain on our metal roof, tap-tap-tap, and feel that cool breeze on my face…

Speaking of a metal roof, we don’t even have a roof. This will be yet another upcoming project…