I went on my first camping trip as an adult in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. I went with another person who was also car-camping for the first time. We were ill-prepared actually. We brought too much food to cook over too little of a propane-fueled fire. We brought a huge stump from a neighbor’s sidewalk stash of unseasoned wood and tried our best to set it on fire. As the evening progressed, we thought we would honor nature with rhythm, song, and Tibetan incense gifts at every cardinal direction on the Native American medicine wheel. The only song we knew was a devotional song to Yemaya of Yorubaland, the African embodiment of the vast ocean. As we sang, we played drums from Morocco and Nigeria and clave from Afro-Cuba. So here we were merging four continents’ traditions in one evening. The next morning, it was as if the ocean responded—it started raining! We had no rain gear. The hikes in the fresh clean crisp air were beautiful, though, and have stayed a dear memory.