Field Law Firm - August 2020

Field Law Firm - August 2020

August 2020

What Do You Do When an Unexpected Storm Hits? Improvise Notes FromThe Field FieldLawPC.com 818-369-7900

Back at the end of June, my brother Ed, Ed’s brother-in-law Toby, and I took our sons on a backpacking trip for the first time in the high Sierra, where we climbed up to 12,000 feet. For my son, Caleb, and Toby’s son, Sam, it was a first and a great experience and far more exciting than any of us could have predicted. The trip was a 5-mile hike into the backcountry, where we had to pump water out of the lake, while carrying everything we needed on our backs. We had our tents, sleeping bags, food, and even a couple small stoves, which we used to cook because we couldn’t have fires. It was quite the father-son adventure, and it was really fun for us dads to pass on activities we enjoyed when we were younger. Before we set out, though, we had some concerns. Five miles is a long way, especially when you’re hiking from 10,500 to 12,000 feet with 40 pounds on your back. There were a lot of times we wondered, “Can we do this?” But we didn’t let that stop us, especially once we began the long climb up. There came a point where it was too late to turn back, and we knew we just had to finish. As we started getting closer to the summit, we began to notice dark thunderclouds building not too far off in the distance, and we could hear thunder. Once we reached the top and started to hike down to our campsite near the

Eventually, the thunderstorm passed over us, and we spent the next couple of days up there really enjoying the outdoors. The weather was pretty much perfect. We went fly fishing, and the kids caught a ton of fish. Once it was time for us to leave, we gathered up all our things and hiked out. It was a really good time, and we now have amazing memories of backpacking together. Everyone has had this kind of experience in life. You start something you’re really excited about, and then it gets really hard. A perfectly beautiful day can suddenly turn dark with thunder and lightning, hailstorms, and leaky tents, and you might ask yourself whether you can actually do what you set out to do. You’re forced to improvise to make sure you can keep going. In life and in business, that’s really what it’s all about: never giving up and just taking that next step forward. In the end, you’ll look back and be proud of your accomplishment.

lake, it started to rain. The thunder was getting closer, and we could see lightning flashing up in the sky. We were so close to the storm at that point that lighting would strike and thunder would immediately follow. Being about 12,000 feet up the side of a mountain, we were a lot closer to the storm than we really wanted to be. It was nerve-wracking. When we finally got to the campsite, it started to rain even harder, and we rushed to put up our tents. Then marble-sized pieces of hail began to come down. They covered the ground and turned everything white. Now, I had borrowed the tent from my older son and, lo and behold, once we got it set up, we discovered that it leaked. There I was with Caleb, sitting in a leaking tent — so we improvised. We tied the emergency blankets we brought along with us on top of the rain fly. This successfully stopped the leaking, and fortunately everything stayed fairly dry. I remember Caleb looking at me and asking, “Dad, are we going to be able to use our sleeping bags?” And I just told him, “Yeah, bud, it’s going to be okay.”

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