I absolutely adore camping. Staying up all night, drinking, singing, talking and going for drunken walks in the bush is my kind of fun. You know you are only gonna get 2 hours of sleep a night, because by 7am your tent is as hot as the depths of Hell, but it's all good and fine, because leftover hotdogs and breakfast beers await you when you crawl out of that oven on your hands and knees.
The smell of the campfire on my clothes and the bug spray on my skin makes me feel closer to nature somehow, and for just a few days a year, nothing about the way I look bothers me. My hair is messy and knotted under my drinking hat, I wear my bathing suit with confidence all day long, and wear mismatched clothes at night or whatever is necessary to keep the soul sucking mosquitos off of me. I chop wood and light fires and don't care if the boys think I'm doing it wrong. I brush my teeth and wash my face like a pioneer, with the help of a wash basin or a lonely blue water tap on the side of the road. I eat more meat in one weekend of camping than I do all year, and my body hates me by the end of it, but I know my digestive system will recover.
This is the first year, in all my years of going camping, with pretty much the same group of people, that I actually feel prepared. We have food, not just booze. We have a tarp and towels, and I found the rain cover for my tent. We have utensils and plates and bowls, so we won't have to eat like cavemen. We have many different fire accessories, so if the wood is wet, we can still make fire. We will even have more than one axe, instead of just a tiny hatchet, a butter knife and our fingernails to make kindling. for the first time in my life, I have a sleeping bag, so I won't have to ruin my bedding and pillows from home. Just like the Scouts, we are prepared. Finally. Only took about 10 years to get our shit together, but hey, at least we got it all figured out eventually. Trial and error people, trial and error.
It's going to be an amazingly good time.
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