I’ve been eating a lot of ice cream while here at Berkeley.
I justify it by saying that I don’t eat that much so I need the calories but it’s
getting to a point where even I feel I need to stop. And when I start to feel I
need to take a break from ice cream then I know there’s a problem.
Barring my ice cream misadventures, two important holidays
went by in the past week and a half, one in my birth country and one in my
adopted country. So I like to think that I celebrated both over this weekend
when I went camping for the first time (one of those days was one of my few
no-ice-cream days for the past two weeks). In some ways, camping combined
Finnishness and Americanness into one wonderful experience: being out in nature
as the Finns do in Midsummer and eating a lot of puppy chow and banana muffins
for the American side.
Though you can’t compare the two, camping had a different
kind of uplifting effect than staying in a summer cottage. Something about
making a fire and cooking over it, waking up under the stars and peeing in the
forest is profoundly spiritual as well as calming.
Admittedly, I did not feel at all so positive before the
trip, or even on the first day. The idea of living out in the woods without
running water, having to cook over a fire and being dirty for two days while
hiking with people much more outdoorsy than I have ever thought myself to be
was nerve-racking.
In some ways, this trip tested my boundaries. It tested my
boundaries for pain when I slipped and fell squarely on my bottom, leading to a
spectacularly purple bruise that is still painful four days later. My
boundaries for acceptable levels of cleanliness were tested since I did not
shower for two days and was forced to wear the wet, sandy socks on one of them.
It tested my boundaries for new situations. Besides my friend and her husband,
both of whom I adore, one of his friends and his cousin went with us, neither
of whom I had met before and who were both camping pros.
It was this boundary that was tested the most. The boundary
that makes us want to save face in front of strangers; to appear more put
together than we feel. It put a strain on me for the first part of the trip
that made enjoying the beauty around difficult, though not impossible.
I still loved sleeping under the stars on the first night on
a picnic table. It wasn’t the most conventional of places to sleep but it felt
amazing to have the universe and trees as a canopy above me. I loved hearing
the sound of the river next to our campsite, the waters roaring as they attempted
to drown out the sound of the campers next to us. I loved watching my friend’s
husband and his cousin coax the fire out from the wood and then tracking its
progression as it slowly engulfed the logs.
Fortunately, I came to realize that even though I felt like
the weakest link of our small group, this was more of a figment of my imagination
than a reality. And therein lay the spirituality of the camping. Out in nature,
where we were stripped of many, though definitely not all, of our modern
comforts, reality was easier to find. I will definitely be going camping again,
holiday or no holiday.
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