It’s the summer holidays and many of us will be hitting the road and heading away for a well earned break. When I was growing up we spent most of our holidays camping. This was a great way to get away without breaking the budget, although Dad always said that he couldn’t see why he should spend his holidays as well as his working life in the heat, dust and flies! As a child I also craved life on the other side of the fence – a week or two in a swanky hotel would have done quite nicely. I was, however aware that there were two sides to the divide – some friends escaped their parents hotel to spend some nights camping with us. To them it was an exciting adventure and an experience they had never had the chance to enjoy before.
Fast forward many years (after having had my fill of hotel stays), I have once again returned to camping and have been appreciating all it has to offer. Earlier this year we set off on an adventure to the Kimberley region of Western Australia, a region both beautiful and ruggedly isolated. Camping has much to teach me and my children.
When your everyday is reduced to attempts at survival (food and water needing to be found from sometimes unreliable sources), erecting your own shelter and pitting yourself against the environment (and sometimes it is the environment that wins), other less pressing demands fade into insignificance. Your mind and body by necessity must focus on survival, thus pushing aside other worries that take up so much thought space in your other life. Very cathartic! You gain perspective as you realise that many of the things you focus on and worry about in your everyday world are not the main theme to your life.
You must also push perfectionism aside, and learn to embrace the environment of dirt, dust and insects. It is not worth fighting a battle you will surely lose! You also learn to make do with what you have, as supplies and luxuries (even sometimes neccessities) are not easy to source out here. Put in this environment people become much friendlier – you are united in a common theme of attempted triumph over the elements. Camping is the great social leveller. You also gain a small understanding of the primary producers’ battle against the environment.
Just as adults have much to learn, so too do kids. Some important lessons come from the value of team work to set up and dismantle a camp and the need to conserve resources so readily available at home, but not on tap out here in the wilderness. Adults and kids alike gain appreciation of the vastness of this great country of ours and the magnificence of the Creator.
