Autumn camping
Slowly I open my eyes. My down sleeping bag hugging me. The cold carresing my face. An owl barking in the distance. The cosiness of warmth surrounded by the icecold night. A sensation that makes me enjoy lying awake at night. A feeling of pureness. I close my eyes again and listen to the wind singing among the pine trees. The smell of moss and wet leaves on the grass. Oh, how I love sleeping in a tent!
When I wake up in the night at home I worry and I toss and turn. Now I enjoy every sensation till I fall back in the embrace of sleep. Often life is at its most beautiful when things are simple. I thrive when luxury is replaced by basics. I sleep better, I am more awake during the day, I laugh more and I complain less. Evenings are long and cold, but it doesn’t matter because they are accompanied by a steaming cup of tea and a warm campfire. A campfire that takes quite some time to get going, but that doesn’t matter, because there is no distraction by computers or TV’s and too much darkness to try and read a book. All there is left to do is enjoy the six layers of clothes wrapped around my skin and watch the flames dance and flicker as if they will never disappear while remembering all the good stuff that happened the past few days.
It’s a contradiction really. On the on hand I easily get chilled to the bone and warming myself up again can be a monstrous task, yet when I think about it, almost all the things I love are somewhat related to the cold. Sleeping in a tent at the strangest time of the year, hiking in Scotland, taking cold showers and riding my motorbike through wind and rain. The cold can be hard and the circumstances challenging, but at least it reminds me that we are all capable of much more than we give ourselves credit for.
