Miasmatic Review

Gathering at Macktown retrospective

We had a wonderful weekend. After receiving word that my mother was out of emergency surgery for her second heart attack, we headed to camp. Hey, mom told us to go! We were able to get set up in a soft drizzle with out any problems or issues. The new tent was a nice and easy set up for us. I'm really glad we decided to get it.

I did take some a lot of ribbing over the facial hair, not all the comments were as hateful on the ones left on my previous post. Some of you have a mean streak! Actually none of the comments bothered me, I figured that was going to happen. I just rolled with them.

The weather started off kind of crappy. Thursday when we set up it was drizzling a little with the occasional rain. Friday we had on and off rain through out the day. Sometime around 3:00 pm the weather started to get nasty. We had a severe thunderstorm blow through just south of us and the wind really started to pick up. At one point the rain was coming at us vertically. With winds gusting up to 30 mph we had some serious issues. Ktreva, the boys and I were standing under our friend Smokepoles 16 foot fly and the rain was coming so hard that my glasses were covered in rain as I stood at the other end.

Some of the campers that showed up late had to set up in the pouring rain. The wind never really died down all night. It blew hard and heavy all night long, which of course meant a lot of people didn't get much sleep. I have a hard time sleeping in high winds situation because I'm listening for ripping canvas and snapping poles. I know of at least 4 people that lost canvas that night.

Saturday morning a lot of campers just packed up in left, including some of the people that set up in the rain. We lost about 50% Saturday morning before the event even started. There was one well known individual trader going around telling people that the wind was going to get worse and we were going to get snow that night. A lot of people just took him at his word and started packing up. The booshway, event committee and staff kept telling people they were not canceling the event and encouraged people to stay.

Now I have a lot of re-enactors, living historians, etc that read this blog, so I'm not going to mention any individuals specifically, but I will say this. The bug out was really caused by one group of re-enactors that have absolutely nothing to do with the running of this event. I was surprised by the groups that did pull out.

Saturday after the event closed, even more people packed up and left. When we had the camp meeting I had been into my cups so when the topic of how to handle the situation in the future came up, I just started talking. I told them that I felt that anyone that left early with out a legitimate reason should not be invited back next year. I know a couple left because their ridge poles snapped and they couldn't fix it or their canvas was destroyed. Let them come back because they had a legitimate excuse for leaving. Most of the people still there agreed with me. Someone brought up that they needed those camps to demonstrate. I pointed out they weren't there anyways.

Since none of my friends in camp tackled me in the middle of the meeting I just kept shooting off my opinion. I did learn a valuable lesson this weekend. Never go to camp meetings half drunk. Definitely don't drink during the meeting. They are not asking me to be on the committee for this event. Yea, I told them no and that I didn't think it would be a good idea for me to join. I'd just be one more problem they had. Could you imagine my loud, opinionated self in a committee for something that I don't get paid to do? Yea, there's not enough sensitivity classes in the world to keep me from spouting off at every bad idea. I'm not a committee kind of guy.

The kicker to this whole thing is that the weather on Saturday was windy up until about 7:00 PM. Then it was just nice. We had no more high winds, no more rain. Sunday it was sunny and beautiful. All these people that packed up and left early, wasted their time. They missed a beautiful weekend.