Our Tent Was Moved Eight Feet While We Were Inside It

Two of us, an old tent, a gravel bar by a river, in country where the nearest road is a serious walk.

We pegged out on gravel, which is a nuisance, and it took us a while, and we joked about it.

In the morning the tent was eight feet from the pegs.

The pegs were still in the ground. In a perfect rectangle. Undisturbed, still angled the way we hammered them, each with its little loop of guy line lying slack beside it.

The tent — with us in it, with our packs in it — was eight feet to the west, sitting flat, upright, undamaged, on the same gravel.

The loops were not torn. The tent was not torn. The fabric had not been dragged, because gravel drags leave scars and there were none.

We did not wake up.

We sat there for a long time and then we did the only thing you can do, which is laugh, badly, and then not talk.

The river was low. There was no wind that night; the fire ash was undisturbed, and ash is the most honest witness there is.

I have run every explanation. Sleepwalking: two adults, simultaneously, lifting a pitched tent with our own bodies inside it. Prank: nobody within ten miles, and our stuff was untouched, and a prankster would have taken the beer. Wind: the ash.

Here is my note of doubt, and it is real: we were both very tired and it is possible we pegged out, moved the tent for some forgotten reason, and re-pegged in a way that our memories have tidied.

I do not believe that. My friend does not believe it either. But it is possible, and I promised myself I would say so.

What I actually think — and I have never written it down before — is that something picked it up, carefully, with us in it, and put it down again eight feet away, because it wanted us to know it could.

We walked out that day and we did not stop for lunch.