rain bucket

my brother in law has a knack for buying me gifts that when i open them i feel lukewarm about because i cannot imagine how such a thing will be useful, but then later on it turns out to be just the thing i needed and when i say to myself "i wish i had a ...", it turns out i already have one.

such was the case with this bucket. the first time i used it, in august, i figured you needed something to hold it up by its handles. you know, because it has handles.

but no. you can just fill it up and it just sits there and holds ten liters of water for you. the surface you put it on doesn't even need to be all that level or smooth.

when i was living on casa quince i filled it every day with stream water for washing with, which is nicer than lake water, especially if it hasn't rained in a while.

more recently i was staying on site 20, which has no conveniently situated brook at the back of it. i wondered if the bucket only works if you fill it and then schlepp it to where you're going (the convenient carry handles let you carry it like a briefcase), or if you can just leave it empty to catch rainwater.

luckily i had an opportunity to test this on my second full day in camp, when the sky opened up and rained buckets and buckets of rain, so i stuck the bucket underneath the downspout of my tarps and in twenty minutes i had ten liters of nice fresh rainwater.

it's kind of magical the way it just fills up and plumps itself into shape. i sort of want to know what genius mechanical engineer figured out what shape to make this thing.

empty

fifteen minutes later