Sometimes a small burden now, protects you from an even greater burden in the future.
The summer after my Senior Year of High School, I went on a backpacking trip through the Northern Talkeetna Mountains in Southcentral Alaska. Prior to this trek, my only camping experience was when I was five years old, and my mom set a tent up for me in our backyard. Throughout this trip, I learned about overcoming adversity, managing difficult interpersonal relationships, and risk management. But more than all of those things, I learned about the importance of being prepared.
Alaska's weather is unpredictable, to say the least. One of the first days that I was there, my tent group and I were exhausted after a long day of hiking. We quickly set the tent up, not bothering to attach the rainfly since the sky had been clear all day. Content with our shelter, we then went off to swim in a nearby river.
Suddenly, and without warning, clouds rolled in, the sky went black. Within 5 minutes we were engulfed in a torrential downpour. We ran back to our tent, but it was too late. It was filled with water, and our backpacks were completely drenched from the rain.
We were unprepared for the storm. We saw the clear skies ahead, and we were optimistic, so optimistic that when the rain came, we had nothing to protect us. It would have taken an extra two minutes to set up the rainfly. Those two minutes would have protected our tent and our belongings from even the slightest possibility of rain. If we had taken our time and set the tent up correctly in the first place, we would have never had this problem. But we chose to gamble. We did not protect ourselves because we did not consider the potential risk. We wanted a quick and easy solution so we could go on to more fun things.
Spending the night in a soaking wet sleeping bag taught me an invaluable lesson about the importance of doing things the right way, the first time. It is easy to rush through things. To skip over seemingly unnecessary steps so that you can get on to the more interesting prospects that lie ahead. It seemed innocuous to leave the tent without a rainfly. But that small initial burden would have saved us from a much worse fate.
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