“The place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilisation to you: Home is home, be it never so homely.” (Henry David Thoreau, 1817 – 1862, US philosopher, author, naturalist).
When I tell people that I enjoy wild camping, I am often met with bemused looks and bewildered attitudes. Why would someone choose to head off into the wilds for a few days and nights with a heavy backpack? It’s not surprising that the potential effort and discomfort involved combined with an unpredictable UK climate should illicit an unfavourable response.
It seems so clichéd to say that our lives are full of meaningless distractions which manifest themselves in materialism, consumerism, Z-list celebrity worship and so on but maybe there is some mileage in the cliché.
Here I am, for example, chained to a laptop computer that rules my life because I allow it to. I’m also submitted to a daily onslaught of media mumbo-jumbo and that’s before I’ve read a newspaper or switched on the TV. Add to the equation messages via mobile phone, email, Facebook (I draw the line at twittering – it’s what birds do) that require action plus the deluge of information about what I should have in my home/eat/wear/look like/think/ blah, blah, blah. And how many hours do we all waste forced to be in the company of those people who, quite frankly, drive us to distraction?
However, this is not a rant against society as I freely choose to engage in all the above. Let’s face it, there are currently far worse issues in this world which I can honestly say, hand on heart, I am not solely responsible for – global economic meltdown, the destruction and plundering of the planet, horrendous natural disasters, mass poverty, to name but a few. But how does camping in the wild fit into this extraordinary jigsaw?
Wild camping allows me to re-connect with nature, our true habitat. We recently spent two nights at Sandwood Bay, that wonderful stretch of beach on the north-west coast offering majesty, grandeur and seclusion. Arriving at the bay after a 4 mile walk, a suitable site was located for a temporary home and the camp set up.
Gradually we were absorbed by the beauty of the surroundings plus the fact that there were no obvious signs of mans’ presence – no fencing, walls, telegraph poles, pylons, turbines, buildings, shops, cars, signage, just fragmented flotsam and jetsam presented by the tide. On the water, gannets and cormorants displayed their unique fishing skills. Slowly, one’s senses started to tune into sounds – the music of the inevitable ebb and flow of the sea, a gentle breeze sighing amongst the sand dunes and machair, the cry of oystercatchers and seagulls at the water’s edge and gossiping stonechats perched on grassy hillocks. Then one noticed the kaleidoscopic light display on the ancient Torridonian rock and Lewissian gneiss as the pink-red-orange sun lowered itself below the horizon.
Night didn’t fall but instead we were shrouded by summer’s half-light. By morning, we were a tiny part of this wild place, our alarm call replaced by the continuous song of ascending larks and the relentless North Atlantic Sea.
Wild camping also highlights how little we require materialistically to comfortably exist on this planet. In July we walked Wainwright’s Coast to Coast from west to east, dipping our boots first in the Irish Sea and twelve days later in the North Sea. We camped in a different location every evening, having covered sixteen miles each day.
One soon appreciates the simple necessities: a waterproof shelter, warm, dry clothes and sleeping bag, a good book, pencil and paper to write/sketch with, a lightweight stove to cook and brew hot drinks on and some basic cooking utensils. As for food, a one-pot pasta meal followed by a mug of tea and a bar of chocolate tastes like cordon bleu Michelin-star cooking after a long day’s walk carrying the equivalent of a small child on your back. This nomadic lifestyle dispenses with the physical and mental clutter we amass and carry around with us from one day to the next and there is soon a realisation that so much extraneous stuff in life is really of little consequence.
Different wild camping sites also offer situations that we wouldn’t experience in our permanent home. This year alone we have camped in the snow-covered Fannichs at 2500 ft above sea-level, next to the large, remote Haweswater reservoir in the Lake District, amongst the heather-clad Yorkshire moors, overrun with grouse, in the shadow of a 17th century stone bridge that once serviced a bustling but now disused leadmine and in forests and fields, by rivers and lochs. From within the tent I’ve witnessed all manner of weather conditions and listened to rain and wind lashing at its protective shell.
I’ve seen extraordinary skies, shooting stars and sharp crescent moons. I’ve watched a mole dig a hole 2 feet from the tent, a gaggle of geese take their evening constitutional on a lochan, a large flock of starlings darken the evening sky, admired the graceful leap of a roe deer and listened to and spotted a whole host of different birds, too numerous to mention here.
Every morning, as we pack up our transient home and its basic contents, all that remains is a flattened area of grass, heather or bracken, the only evidence of our brief stay. We leave with a tinge of regret, having become familiar with and comfortable in our surroundings and knowing that we probably will not travel along this way again.
Within our small yet civilised home, our lives, however, have been enriched that little bit more by the experience, as expressed in this final word from Thoreau: “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”.
Moira Harris
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