TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

If Dante had gone camping in the western Sierra last weekend, he might have wanted to revise his nine circles of hell.

I, however, did pitch my tent in the Tulare County mountains, and I'm here to tell you: I now understand why February is not National Camping Month.

My teenage son Ben and I, and my friend Dave and his teenage son Mike, spent 2-1/2 days in a perpetual state of dampness: In defiance of all forecasts, the skies 10 miles above Springville opened up and let us have it. We cooked in the rain, played cards in the rain, toasted marshmallows in the rain. Our tarpaulin shelter helped -- just not enough.

We pulled into a dark, quiet state campground Friday night and found a site against the gurgling Tule River. The campground was empty except for a group in the next campsite; we couldn't see much more than their fire, a tiny flicker in the distance.

Then, at 1 a.m., the tumult began. It was a convoy of stunning proportion: Cars and trucks, bumper to bumper, as if the football game had just ended and the stadium was emptying into the parking lot. Six hours later, in the morning's gray mist, we sized up the new neighbors: a charismatic religious group given to noisy and frequent expressions of praise. At all hours.

That was our weekend: Surrounded by 200 strangely glum worshippers, nearly all of them in green camouflage -- soldiers of God, they said they were -- shouting into the gray skies, "Vette diablo!"

We had something in common with the group in the next campsite, therefore: We were the only weekenders at Camp Wishon not specifically intent on casting out the devil. That's not to say we were inviting him in, either. We just had other priorities, like staying dry.

Our neighbors had also driven up from Bakersfield for the soggy weekend. Billy Blackwood was spending some time with three of his boys -- two of whom are set to go to Afghanistan as soon as they complete pre-deployment training in Texas. They leave in late March.

Stephen Blackwood, who turns 23 next month, will be going back for his second tour with the Army National Guard. Dylan Blackwood, 20, will be embarking on his first. That'll leave Jessee Blackwood, who turns 16 next month, the only boy at home.

Stephen and Dylan are military police -- the front license plate of Stephen's white truck announced as much -- and their duties will likely put them in harm's way.

"They're going be security detail, helping convoys move around," Billy said. "It's scary with those roadside bombs."

Billy was not in the military himself, but he grew up in a military family and managed to pass along that sense of greater responsibility -- and opportunity -- to his boys.

"They signed up for a lot of reasons," Billy said. "They wanted to do something worthwhile, and they wanted to get their educations. I wanted them to serve their country, and I knew I couldn't pay for college."

Enlisting achieves both. But Afghanistan? That's a lot of courage for one family -- courage on the part of Dad and Mom, too. They've already lost one son, the youngest of their five, who died four years ago at age 3.

Billy believes service is just something you do.

"That's why we live in a great country and we have the life we have, because people make sacrifices like this," he said.

There was a lot of faith in the campground that weekend. The loud, demonstrative kind unleashed by the soldiers of God. And the quiet, confident faith of purpose in the campsite next to ours. I almost felt guilty confining my faith to a more trivial matter: The earnest belief that the rain would eventually stop. My faith was rewarded. I pray Billy's is too.

Email Editorial Page Editor Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com.