May and June 2023: My first solo overnight camp
“If it’s right, it happens. The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”
I made a ‘wild’ salad of wood sorrel, common mallow, nasturtium, pine needles and wild strawberry leaves with 5-minute vegan salad dressing that left me buzzing, and the most delicious fizzy, alcoholic grapefruit and kiwi, and rhubarb and pineapple kombuchas. Adding mint to these gives them a floral-tasting note.
On stepping out of my front door into Planet Massive Combative Car I increasingly want to turn around and go straight back in. Listening to the book, The Gentle Art of Tramping by Stephen Graham that’s approximately 100 years old, though, I felt my heart fit over Graham’s like a jigsaw piece because like me he appreciates gentleness, magic, and how being a poet, artist and naturist are all profoundly interconnected.
One day I terrifyingly became barely able to walk and experienced palpitations, so had no choice but to respect my body and just stop moving around for a month.
Eventually I was able to feel bliss in my whole body doing some vinyasa and kundalini yoga, and ventured out to the hill of my local forest to admire the layered greens of early summer foliage where I ate a wonderful almond and coconut curry by Tent Meals High Energy Health, then boiled water from a nearby stream for a hot chocolate - that didn’t kill me!
At the back of the garden using a table, chair and metal tray from my old allotment, it took five hours to cook in a too-big frying pan a woodsmokey vegetable mixture over a twig-burning stove using dry, rotten decking.
It was unspeakably delightful that the cream rose with pink spots cutting which had struggled with fungal attacks all winter, was the first of my rose cuttings to flower (it had been the last plant I’d thanked and said goodbye to when I let go of my allotments last year).
Luminosity by Gemma Boyd
Two litres of water were sufficient for me to take on my premiere overnight camp accomplished in Claybury Woods in June. During 2016 my OCD / CPTSD didn’t allow me to pass a man in the street without needing to seek reassurance that he hadn’t raped me, so now being able to sleep solo, unafraid in the woods has been a massive step towards reclaiming my right to personal freedom. The birds all returned to the trees and grew quiet as it got dark, and I played my mouth organ before spending a comfortable night staring up into canopies of grey leaves. No psychological demons visited - but mosquitos did, which was just as bad! As soon as I got home we had a burst of torrential rain and I discovered I’d got my third subscriber to my Incest Survivor’s Roar YouTube channel.
I firmly believe that at key times, life puts in front of us people and objects we are meant to encounter: On selling my organic food, drinks and plants at Forest Farm car boot sale, I bought a Falcon guitar from the father of a girl called Crystal who gave up the guitar for university. It has a gorgeous, full tone and noodling on it has calloused the fingertips on my left hand again ready for when I want to resume my double bass practice. I also met fellow gardening lover, Sylvia, from whom I bought for £10 a Keumer (whose slogan is, “LOOKING FOR THE DIRECTION OF NEW FREEDOM”) automatic beach tent with windows. I made it into a four-door with a tent footprint - perfect for swiftly protecting me against mosquitos and the wind while bivvying. Sylvia’s husband had recently died and they’d bought the tent to go with their beach hut in Bournmouth.
Poppies by Gemma Boyd
I love performers Harriet Thorpe and Tish Tindall’s perspectives on how being in the inclusive arts can imbue one with a special strength of character.
Buddy in Paris by Gemma Boyd