Past tents

A week in the wilderness can do wonders. That includes wondering why I went camping in the first place.   

I’ve never seen Buddhist monks pitch a tent and I think I know why. They know it would be too much for them to handle. It would make them way too angry.

After a few minutes of standing knee deep in wind-whipped nylon, they’d be telling Buddha himself to go jump. They’d be swearing and shouting and snapping tent poles over each others’ heads. Then they’d storm off to sit in a pub somewhere to smoke, drink and play the pokies. But that’s camping for you. It tests you. It’s heaven and hell all rolled into one crumpled, tangled three-man temporary shelter that hasn’t been used since two summers ago and might have been borrowed by a less-than-fastidious family member at some point and may or may not be missing crucial components. Like a roof.

But luckily, something in the human brain blocks out camping’s ugly side and so we keep on heading for the great outdoors, to recapture those brief moments of joy when the sun isn’t actually burning and the insects aren’t biting and the gas stove isn’t breathing its last and the inflatable mattress isn’t leaking and you aren’t stumbling around looking for that vital thingumajig that you had just a minute ago that you put down just over there but now can’t find because it got dark and that thingumajig is your torch and now you’re tripping over guy-ropes and stubbing your toes on tent pegs and someone’s telling you to be quiet and you’re trying to be quiet except that you’ve just walked into a huge spider web and stepped on a smouldering mosquito coil and fallen sideways, ripping open your tent roof, which you'd only just finished sticking back together using leeches.

Which is why it might be logical to dislike camping. But I for one do like it … once I’ve made it safely back to civilisation and thrown the rotten food out of the Esky and had someone ask me how my camping trip was and heard myself say: “It was a fantastic camping trip. I loved it.”

And as each camping trip slips into the distant past, I like each one more and more. I even like that stupid hike I did in Tasmania many years ago. Because, yes, it was many years ago. It was a 12-day hike and it rained for 11. In January. And when I say it rained, I mean we were pretty much underwater from day two.

Our skin pruned and we grew gills. Every night, I slid into a stinky, saturated tent and had nightmares about being trapped inside a giant pair of budgie smugglers. What food we had pretty much ran out half way through the hike. Except for a packet cheesecake that I had secreted in my first-aid kit and was guarding with my life.

During a break in the rain one evening, I snuck out of camp and prepared my secret cheesecake down by a creek. Delirious with greed and hunger, I loaded the ingredients into a billy and propped it on a submerged ledge to set.

To help pass the time, I plucked leeches from my gills. Meanwhile, the current gently lifted my cheesecake from its resting place. I could see it bobbing along in the moonlight as it disappeared downstream. Panic-stricken, I sprinted back to camp for a rope and came crashing back through the swampy scrub, hurling a hasty lasso out across the creek.

Incredibly, I managed to snare the billy. I started ever-so-lovingly reeling it in. When I finally lifted the lid, my cheesecake was gone. All that left was a billyful of cheesecake-tinged creek water. Which I drank. It was a fantastic camping trip. I loved it.

First published in The Big Issue.