That MEC Tarn 3 Tent is a piece of s**t

Camping in Brazil with a trusted tent

Oh, I forgot to mention -but haven’t forgotten the cold damp feeling- that the tent I got from MEC is a f*****g piece of s**t.

It was winter in Brazil, and so I set off on a camping trip to the mountains of Matutu with my trusting, innocent family.  A six year old looked up at me with big brown wet eyes and said something like “Papi!  Are we really going camping?!?”  Yes son, and I have this tent all the way from Canada, where they know the nature of the wild lands and have made this tent, this tent that I hold in my hands before you right now, to protect us from the harsh elements that are just a millimetre of nylon away from taking your sweet, precious, young life.  Now be a good boy and play with the snakes in the yard while I pack the car.  That’a boy, go on now.  Go.  Go on and rustle up some of those vipers in the garden and be safe.

And there we were, perched on top of a mountain and safely inside our tent just as an unexpected and particularly vicious electrical storm rained down liquid fire around us in one of the most fearsome displays of thunder and brimstone I have ever seen.  And Brazil, I can tell you, is a place where you can see one mother of a tropical storm.  One horribly cross, terrible lady with designs of malice and vengeance.  But this tent, I say to you again my tiny trembling son, will do us right.

“What do you mean your lion has peed it’s pants?”  What the f**k is that supposed to mean anyway?  Has he pissed himself?  Jesus.  Not now.  No, not now indeed.  That is water, clearly rising from the bottom of the tent.  And not in some tear on a seam.  From everywhere.  It was literally seeping through every inch of floor and began to form stuffed animal sized lakes on the floor;  soaking pillows, sleeping bags and little stuffed lions with their little whiskers and soft noses.

So I did what any able father would do.  I took off my shirt, unzipped the tent and surged outside to dig a trench and end this madness.  Lightning seared the air around me on the mountain top that was sparsely vegetated by the five foot tall trees and shrubs that were offering no protection at all.  Screams from the tent of “Papi!  Papi come back!” squealed out from between ear drum bursting booms of terrible thunder that shook the wet ground and sent mud skyward in great clumps of terror.  I dug like a madman, trying to save my family from the deluge, trying in vain to keep them safe and warm from the wayward dark cloud of a winter’s doom that rained down ice water in sheets of horror.

With raw nubs for fingers after my digging stick broke and I was forced to resort to bare hand trenching, I had a serviceable trench that was finally directing water away from the tent and downward to the raging river that was now surging from the fire-storm’s fluvial fecundity.  I unzipped the tent, eager to see the relief on my young son’s face from seeing his father return triumphant, manly and half naked, mud splattered and knackered, but still chugging on strong.  

I unzipped that tent to see a goose pimpled and shaking boy.  A six year old innocent boy, soaked head down to his little brown toes from rain pouring in through the mesh and streaming down from the pond that formed on the small nylon patch in the centre, beneath the “rain fly”.  Sodden from above, sodden from below, I called out above the pounding thunder to abandon ship and make our dash down to the rustically built shack inhabited by dubious looking hippie types we passed by a kilometre or two before.  Darkness was falling, but it was clear we couldn’t stay here.  MEC.  Canada itself, had failed us all.

I picked up my son in my arms and took my wife by the hand as we began our refugee trek down the trail in an absolute darkness punctuated by searing beams of death from above that could come crashing down on our upstart family at any second and end it all.

We arrived at the shack that was firmly shuttered against the battering storm and I hammered on the door.  Some minutes passed, I hammered and yelled some more.  A cloud of smoke poured out of the crack in the door and a bearded, bloodshot eyed face peered out into the darkness with currents of strong weed swirling around his bemused head.  Hippies.  Hippies goddamn it.  And a six year old boy looking for a place to rest his weary wet head.

We were given shelter in the loft.  A mattress spread on the floor with some blankets rustled up from under a pregnant dog’s arse thrown on top.  The room was separated by the next with a sheet bearing the figure of Kali on it, with her collection of severed heads and protruding tongue that suggested strange, unthinkable things could happen here.  A real nice image to give a young boy, of six years old, as he looks for a safe place to rest his head of curly soft hair and innocence.

The roof was unfinished and an arctic wind blew through the rafters at the edges, lifting the sheets from our bed as we tried to sleep, curled into a ball of three and wondering if this hippie built, misshapen shelter would be lifted off from the mountain side and tossed into the waterfall that lay turbulent and taunting below.

That tent is a f*****g piece of s**t.  If it wouldn’t cause further damage to our assaulted environment by torching something so obviously toxic to both physical and spiritual senses, I would have pissed on it and set fire to the pile of scrap that I have no doubt would act as a fire accelerant if its waterproofing claims are any indication of what you could reasonably expect it’s fire safety rating to be.

And that’s all I have to say about a MEC Tarn 3.  May you rot in hell.