Move out of your comfort zone

There are those people who simply don’t understand campers and camping – maybe they had a deprived childhood; I don’t know. They just cannot understand why anybody would subject themselves to discomfort in order to experience the sort of things they could watch on TV.

Depending on the company they find themselves in, campers may be admired, politely ignored, or even ridiculed. There are those too who can extract laughs from the situation. Here are a few famous quotes that make campers the butt of humour.

Camping is nature’s way of promoting the motel business.
Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.
Camping: The art of getting closer to nature while getting farther away from the nearest cold beverage, hot shower and flush toilet.
It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.
Campers: Nature’s way of feeding mosquitoes.
How is it that one match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box of matches to start a campfire?

But then, for those who have experienced the true wilderness, the star-filled nights, the camp fires, the wet dawns, the profound silence of isolation … these people don’t need to explain it. They have a confidence and self-reliance that comes from meeting the challenge of bogged vehicles, high winds and wet firewood. What others think or say matters not to them. They recognise a different theme in famous quotations.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.

So there it is; you pays your money and you takes your choice. You will find that those things you do all your life will carry you into old age. I have one friend in his late 60s who dons lycra and races his cycle up and down a 600 metre’ mountain, and another friend in his late 80s who was really upset because bad weather forced him to give up – at 3500 metres – a trek in the Swiss Alps. Both had cycled or walked all their lives.

So it is a question of take it up, and not give it up. But it’s never too late to make modest progress and develop some activity that will give you exercise and satisfaction. I have camped all my life, have adapted with age to different ways of camping, and can still make and break a camp pretty efficiently.

But a later activity has been cycling. When, at age 70, back, knee and hip surgery began to limit my bushwalking capabilities, my thoughtful children bought me a bicycle. It was 50 years since I had ridden a bike, so this was a new challenge. I shall never race up mountains but, strangely, cycling seems to overlook my structural health problems and I can cycle all day without effort. What is more, it gives me enormous pleasure. It’s been a bit of a ramble, this post, but what I am trying to say is this: Don’t back off from life. Set challenges for yourself and meet them. Develop the quiet pride and confidence that comes from self-sufficiency. And, if you can do it, make your peace with – and in – the wilderness. You will carry it with you always.

There are moments that make all the effort worthwhile