dilapa-dome diaries: how many nights were you outside this year?

As I lay awake I counted up how many nights I slept outside this year.  Two in Joshua Tree, the coldest nights I've ever spent.  Four in Hueco Tanks, TX, where 45 mph winds turned one side of my tent permanently convex.  Will dubbed it the Dilapa-dome.  We mimed beta in our sleep and woke with burning hands.  I spent strings of nights on the road, steaming swamps in Louisiana and pine forest in North Carolina.  I mastered the pitch'n'ditch, pulling in late and lighting out before anyone came around to collect fees.  Should I be ashamed, or proud?  Neon and damp grass at Yogi Bear Mini Golf Camping, a lightning storm on the dark New Mexico horizon.  The bulk of nights I spent with Áine on a farm in Italy, where the tent's slope gave us two choices: crawl uphill while we slept, or rest in the damp crease of the downhill door.  It was worth it to look across the valley at the Dolomites every morning.  In the Whites I slept solo, every yawing tree a bear.

Thirty-two nights.  Not counting the nights in the Fun Finder trailer, or the ones in Zealand Falls Hut. Thirty-two nights in a tent.  None of them under the bare stars, none of them far from a car.  Thirty-two nights, a month of tent living.

I look forward to besting it next year.