The Night the Tent Fell Down

The Mendoza family had never been camping before. But Dad had bought a big green tent, Mom had packed enough sandwiches for a small army, and Sofia and her brother Mateo had each packed a flashlight and a book about stars.

"How hard can it be?" said Dad, as they drove into the campground.

It turned out to be quite hard.

First, the tent came in a bag with forty-two pieces and instructions in very small writing. Dad read them upside down for ten minutes before Sofia pointed it out.

Then there were the poles. Some were long and some were short, and they all looked exactly the same. "This one goes here," said Mom. "No, it goes there," said Dad. "I think that one's a tent peg," said Mateo.

After an hour, the tent was standing. It leaned to the left a bit, like it was tired. But it was standing. Everyone cheered.

Then a gust of wind came, and the whole tent slowly folded over and lay down on the grass, like a big green cow taking a nap.

For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Mateo started to giggle. Then Sofia. Then Mom. And then Dad laughed so hard he had to sit down on the cooler.

A woman from the next campsite walked over. "First time?" she asked with a smile. Her name was Mrs. Chen, and she had been camping for thirty years.

"Could you show us what we're doing wrong?" asked Mom.

"Of course," said Mrs. Chen. "The secret is teamwork. One person holds each corner, and you peg it down before you put the poles up. That way, the wind can't take it."

So they tried again, the right way this time. Sofia held one corner. Mateo held another. Mom and Dad took the other two. Dad tapped in the pegs. Mom fed the poles through the loops. And this time, the tent stood up tall and straight and didn't fall over at all.

By then, the sun was setting. Mrs. Chen showed Dad how to build a small fire in the metal fire ring, with dry sticks and small logs, and how to keep a bucket of water next to it. "A fire always needs a grown-up watching it," she said. "And when you go to bed, you drown it with water until it's completely cold."

They toasted bread on long sticks over the flames, and Mrs. Chen came over with her guitar and played songs. Mateo burned his first piece of toast completely black, and declared it was the best toast he had ever eaten.

When it was fully dark, Mom said, "Turn off your flashlights. Look up."

Sofia gasped. The sky was full of stars, more than she had ever seen at home, where the streetlights made the sky glow orange. There was a hazy, milky stripe right across the middle.

"That's the Milky Way," said Mom. "It's our galaxy. All those stars are part of it, and so is our sun."

Mateo got out his star book and a red flashlight, and they found the Big Dipper and the North Star.

Later, all four of them squeezed into the tent. It was a bit lumpy, there was a rock under Dad's sleeping bag, and something hooted in the trees. "An owl," whispered Mom.

"Best day ever," said Mateo sleepily. "Even the falling-down part."

"Especially the falling-down part," said Sofia. And the tent, held down by four sets of pegs and a lot of teamwork, stayed up all night long.

⭐ The End ⭐