Camping Tales | Janetti Spaghetti

The husbear and I have just come back from a three day getaway in our motorhome.

As always, it was an awesome opportunity to disconnect from our devices and regular routines, and to reconnect with our senses, our surroundings, and each other (I wrote about my love of motorhoming here).

The first (unwritten) rule of our camping trips is that the husbear becomes chief cook and bottle washer, something we both relish!

Plus, food always seems to taste so much better when cooked and enjoyed in the great outdoors. I’ve noticed we only eat when we are actually hungry when we are away, rather than at specific meal times, so we seem to eat less. As a result we always seem to take heaps of food away – and then bring most of it home again!

Getting Back to Nature

I love how our camping trips help me tune into nature.

Instead of watching the weather report on TV, I actually looked at the sky for clues. I noticed the fog first thing in the morning, and when the wind picked up, as well as what time the sun set, and the path the moon took through the night sky. There were so many more stars visible away from the light pollution of the city – the husbear joked that he had ordered them all just for me. What a romantic!

The birdsong was literally music to our ears; and again, the husbear tried to take the credit 😉 . When some kookaburras started cackling in the afternoon, he looked at his watch and said “They’re one minute late – I told them 3pm and it’s now 3.01!”

We splashed in the creek and spotted tadpoles.

I always thought river pebbles were brown and boring, but as I was paddling I noticed so many colours I was inspired to gather them together – blues, reds, apricot, pink, yellow, tan, grey, white, green – pretty much every colour of the rainbow!

The flicker and crackle of our campfire had a strangely hypnotic effect and at night I slept like the proverbial log!

Speaking of logs reminds me … the husbear and I have a habit of making up silly songs, or rather, silly words to well known songs. On the weekend just gone, for example, the husbear set up the awning while singing “awning has broken” to the tune of “Morning has Broken”.

My contribution was to sing “Put another dog on the fire” (we could hear dogs barking on a farm in the distance).

Lame, but it made us giggle.

Great Conversations

What is it about getting away that seems to open the door to deep and meaningful conversations?

I know that I have a habit of keeping my work stresses bottled up inside. I’m not sure why that is, probably a combination of reasons. When faced with tough situations, I like to mull things over in my own mind; it takes me a while to think things through. Possibly there is also some embarrassment or shame there that I’m not as together as I might look! Also, I don’t think anybody else (even my beloved husbear) is really going to be that interested, or that they will understand. But when I do open up, like I did on the weekend, I am often pleasantly surprised at how the husbear truly listens, and how it really eases my burden.

We also talked about the husbear’s work situation, and how much it has improved since he changed jobs in July.

Then we got into the nitty gritty of how we keep track of all the steps of the many projects that might be on our plate at one time, and how we both want to be more “across” our work. One of the major stresses for both of us is making sure that we progress each project in a timely manner, and don’t lose track!

From there we moved on to talk about our potential retirement plans, what we hope to achieve over the rest of our working lives, and how we will know when it’s time to retire.

The Things You Learn

The husbear taught me how to make a campfire – apparently it’s not just a matter of striking a match and chucking it on a pile of wood. Who knew?!

I made a couple of clover chains and the husbear was intrigued – he’d never seen it done before. As I told him, making clover chains is what school girls do when they’re sitting around on the oval, bored, during sports days and the like!