I’m awakened from a sound sleep by a mighty crash.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Chris said, leaping out of bed. “But it doesn’t sound good.”

The wind had come up suddenly in the night. Nothing had been forecast, but by midnight gale-force winds were howling around the boat. The land boat, fortunately. We are back at Meadowlark now, the boat we’ve built in a field on the family farm south of Owen Sound. No danger of dragging anchor, but clearly something was going on out there.

We jumped into our clothes, bundled up—coats, mitts, hats (spring still hasn’t come to this part of Ontario)—grabbed a flashlight and headed out into the night.

“I think it’s the garage,” Chris said. We’ve put up one of those curved plastic shelters meant for cars which we’re using as a temporary workshop while we’re finishing the trim work on Meadowlark.

“Or at least it was the garage. It’s gone.”

Sure enough, the garage has disappeared, and the sawhorses piled with baseboards have blown over—hence the loud crash. Chris shone the flashlight around the meadow, then up into the sky, thinking perhaps of the Wizard of Oz. Nothing.

“Come on,” he said, heading out into the meadow, scanning for any sign of it.

We found it wedged in the treeline just over the crest of the hill, flapping wildly in the wind. It was intact, surprisingly. It must have just come loose and rolled across the grass. Though we both pulled with all our strength, we couldn’t dislodge it.

“I’ll go get the Argo. You hang onto it in case it suddenly works itself free.”

Now this sounded like a good plan… until Chris disappeared over the hill with the flashlight. It was some black out there, on the edge of the thick cedar swamp where… uh oh… the coyotes have their dens. We haven’t heard them yet this year, they’re probably busy with their pups, but I peered around nervously.

Then I realized that no self-respecting creature would come anywhere near this loud flapping. I relaxed a little, at least as much as you can when you’re struggling to keep a garage from getting away from you, looked up at the stars. There’s the big dipper, and other constellations I keep meaning to learn the names of.

Before long the lights of the Argo appeared over the crest of the hill and the rescue operation resumed. We tied a big rope around the two front legs of the garage, secured it to the Argo, and while I tried to keep the thing more or less upside down so the feet wouldn’t dig in, Chris backed slowly across the field.

An hour later we had it right-side-up and secured again, this time tied to a couple of trees for good measure, with all the wood re-stacked on sawhorses inside. It was three in the morning by the time we trudged back to the boat, tired but glad to have our shed back.

“Geez I wish I’d installed those anchors,” Chris admitted.

As we snuggled back into bed, I thought how much worse the night would have been on our other boat, pounding through the waves or hove-to while we waited it out, wondering how much worse things were going to get.

Give me a gale on land over a gale at sea any time.