Camping – Fun, Training, and Therapy

With the hot Florida weather behind us, we can now start thinking about getting outside to do more activities that benefit from not dealing with heat stress, like camping.

Living in the outdoors for days, sometimes weeks, on end make for quality time for relaxing times and good memories. They also make great opportunities for learning new skills, sharpening old ones, and de-stressing from life’s hectic pace.

We are planning several camping trips before the end of the year. There are many different levels of camping we plan on enjoying, from county parks, with water, electricity and restrooms, to primitive islands with noting but saltwater, sand, trees, and rats. LOTS of rats.

Each location offers a different set of obstacles to overcome, and each obstacle teaches us different methods of adapting, skills that have come in handy during previous hurricanes we’ve experienced.

When talking today about camping, my wife said, “It’s so nice to focus on nothing but food, shelter, and relaxing”. She loves camping. I’m grateful  because I love anything that gets me outside, and allows me to build a fire and burn some animal flesh over it.

You can take the man out of the cave…

I’m hoping for our next trip to involve fire starting for the wife and kids. The wife has gotten better than average with it, but the kids still have a ways to go. I’ll also try to do some metal detecting, folks drop some of the oddest things while camping.

I’ll also work on a few more equipment reviews, more dutch oven cooking, and some other material for posting here.

But mostly, I look forward to privately feeding my ego by spending two days in a tent, cooking over an open fire, and walking away from it no worse for the experience.

THAT is the real reason men (at least me) go camping, getting back to our beginnings  touching that little primal seed of humanity  buried deep inside us, the part of us that survived and thrived while living on the edge. Much like an adrenaline junky constantly pushing himself to try something more and more dangerous and daring to get another jolt of the thrill, camping is my way of getting a little taste of “what once was”.

It makes dealing with a Monday morning a LOT easier.

As I sit staring into the flames of the campfire each night soaking in the moment, I probably won’t be thinking of anything other than how good it feels to be that close to nature. And in the event that something catastrophic occurs some day, I’ve already been lightly tested.

And if nothing bad ever happens, at least I got out of the Rat Race for a few days. That, to me, is priceless.

 

Peace,
db

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