It’s Sunday night and I’m fresh from the bath, with face, hair and feel all scrubbed and made soft after feeling like a disgusting camp goblin for the last few days and I’m so much more chilled and calm than the creature who loaded up a small car and set off on Friday. I have no idea what day this is scheduled for – the date is nearly two months from this evening and no doubt it’ll move before it’s actually published but in real time it’s the middle of June and I’ve had a stressful time.
That’s partly work (a binfire of a bit of research work promised in four weeks, done in under two – starting the afternoon before it was actually due and therefore under a lot of pressure and haste) and partly Guiding (I wish I’d never started my camp licence) and a tiny bit having five Rebel badges to finish before the end of the month) and all in all, I needed a break.
I’ve not yet put my finger on what I like about camping because it’s certainly not the sleeping-in-a-tent bit. I’ve never yet come home without feeling I discovered a new mortal enemy in my field and I haven’t mastered the camp menu, which means I have permanent heartburn. The tent won’t fit back into its bag and wouldn’t even if the bag was three times the size it actually is. I wake up early because I’m too hot in my little plastic house and the nylon walls don’t keep the sunrise out. People bring children to campsites and they often play awful music from awful speakers (mercifully against the rules of the campsite at which I spent this weekend). Point is, there’s far more I don’t enjoy about camping than I do and yet I feel like my soul has been cleansed as thoroughly as my hair has just been (seriously, it was gross).
I only went half an hour or so down the road. Camping isn’t about exploring new places or doing new things. It’s about taking time out of my life to sit outside and read a book and have hot chocolate before bed, heartburn be damned, and I can do that without sitting for four or five hours in an un-air-conditioned car. So that’s what I did. I stayed local, I wrestled with a tarp that needs two people to pitch without losing their temper and I sat outside in the shade and read books. Sewed seven badges on my camp blanket. Started writing a blog post in pen in my notebook before realising three paragraphs in that there was nothing more to say on whatever subject it was. I’ve got four paragraphs into this one and although there isn’t much more to say, I reckon I’m not done yet.
Is it about taking time out of my life or is it about sitting outside reading? It’s probably more the latter because I have an uncomfortable conviction I wouldn’t feel so cleansed if I’d spent the weekend reading in a Premier Inn. I’d maybe have slept more and not eaten so many Babybels but I don’t think last week would be so thoroughly washed away. Plus, my weekend away may have cost a lot of sweat in finding and packing my stuff, pitching and then striking camp, unpacking and putting it all away but all it cost in cold hard cash was £40 – and the toilets were clean, there were showers and hot water in the inside washing-up area, to say nothing of washing-up liquid, a draining rack and a flock of goats.
Right now, with a month to pack in the rest of my camp licence and assorted evenings randomly filled with boat club and other Guiding events, the idea of going off in my tent again in less than three weeks is filling me with the kind of dread that comes of just not having enough time for this which I’m trying to balance with “and then the week of Ranger camp you’ll be coming home and starting the week feeling like you do right now, it’ll be great”. That’ll be a very different camp – I have things to do on it which may not leave a whole lot of time for reading in the sun but I think that camp will deserve its own post. Goodness knows where it’ll fit into the blog schedule, though.
