Great literature is born of great adversity, is it not?  I turned this past week's great adversity into...well...I'm not sure you'd call it great literature exactly, but...here goes.

Hell's is not a dry heat.  It is a heat stoked to unbearable intensity by 150% humidity.  Hell's heat is like Florida in August, or like Mississippi eleven months of the year.  With that for comparison, it would seem foolish to put Wisconsin on the list for such devilish weather, but if we allow for a little relativity (and isn't that what we do these days?), it felt equally hot at camp this last week.  And, let me tell you, hell hath no fury like a woman with four kids in a filthy cabin/hovel in high heat and intense humidity.  I try not to be a complainer (with mixed success, as John will tell you) but that much unremitting heat and humidity and chaos resulted in lowering my inhibitions to a dangerous degree.  Within hours of arriving at camp, I became a weepy, snappish fishwife.  Everything was damp: clothes in the suitcases, towels folded innocently on the bed, even the paper on which I originally wrote this wilted like a used dish cloth.  When we finally dropped into bed that first ngiht, limp with exhaustion, the sheets clung to us in  damp desperation, like soggy beggars bearing us down, stripping us of our dignity.  We lay in an oozing fog of sweat, and something woodsy, mold perhaps.  It stormed in the night, making us thankful for a solid roof over our heads.  I'm certain our cabin-mates - four Daddy-long-legs, two small brown spiders, and a large, black ant - appreciated it too; the small, black bundles in the spider webs were beyond caring.    John and I listened to the thunder and pounding rain in hope, a hope that by morning, the air would sparkle and we could fill our lungs without fear of drowning.  It was, alas, a vain hope.  We woke to fierce sunshine, warming and expanding the particles of water which were nearly visible in the leaden air. 

Okay, melodramatic, perhaps.  But it's true that I was rotten at dealing with the elements!  Monday and Tuesday were the worst.  Wednesday cooled off a little.  Thursday was bearable, although by evening, the humidity was back up to the swimming point.  I admit it - I am spoiled by the comfort and convenience of air conditioning.  Praise the Lord for His mercies to modern man. 

Posted by 40winkzzz

I was bombing around the "Recent Posts" on HSB homepage (while I am supposed to be doing something else, of course) and found yours. I thoroughly enjoyed your descriptive writing!

It was hot here in West Michigan last week too, but dry (as it has been all summer), and only a tad less hot and considerably muggier this week. I am VERY thankful for central a/c, but got a little stir-crazy when it was too hot to even step outside for days on end!

Posted by Mom

You must be going to the wrong camps!!! I was at three this summer--two had air conditioned rooms and the other was at 8000 ft elevation in the Rocky Mountains. I know that rustic is supposedly romantic, but at my age I am perfectly happy to settle for comfort. Sorry you had to endure the heat and bugs and humidity. Makes home seem a little more like heaven, doesn't it?

Posted by bob the musicologist

Yes indeed! Jane Austin, I'm sure, would be proud. Even Willa Cather might not look askance. Once, in my dim, distant boyhood, she put her arm on my shoulder as we gazed at the wide sweep of the prairie on The Divide, and said to me, "Some day, my child, another, nobler voice will arise to limn the glories of the infinite grasslands waving before you." I am honored and awed to behold that voice.

Posted by floridasnowflakes

Being a Florida resident and current Pres. of the "I detest Florida club" I can heartily agree with your analysis of Florida weather. That anyone ever lived here prior to the invention of Air Conditioning is completely beyond me.

I enjoyed and empathized with your writings. :) Glad I stumbled in.

Have a good day!