Travel Through Time on a Winter Camping Adventure

  • 24th Jan 2018

They often say that the past is a different country, and not one that we can truly visit. But on a winter camping adventure, it is easy to imagine that we have gone backwards in time to a simpler and less complicated age. In an unspoiled natural environment, we are often seeing a scene very similar to that which would have been known to those in the pre-industrial era.

We can imagine a simple agrarian lifestyle, or, stretching even further back, can imagine a nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence. There is more than just whimsy to this. A camping holiday can be a way to reconnect with our common ancestors and a way to plug back into a core idea of humanity, stripped of modern trappings. Rediscovering, in a very basic way, what being human is all about can help us to put everything into perspective and feel calmer and more rooted in our everyday lives.

Travelling back through time to revisit an age of natural connection and simplicity can be an important flight of fancy on a winter camping trip. But this imaginative endeavour is not true time travel, of course. Yet in a sense, we are all time travellers. We just travel forwards through time at 1 second per second.

Winter is most definitely a time for introspection. It is time to take stock and check in on your more spiritual self. Whether or not you are religious, there is something rich and deep to be felt in engaging with being yourself. Who are you? Why are you? What does it mean to be you? These philosophical questions are the kind that often spring to mind when you really begin to think about our true time travel. Sitting round a fire or snuggled up warm on a winter camping trip gazing at the stars, you may well begin to relax into each moment and consider the meaning of self.

You may think that time travel and philosophy have little bearing on the practicalities of a winter camping trip, and you may be right. But one of the joys of a winter camping trip is that it gives us time to ponder some of life's glorious mysteries, and the time and space to become the best people we can be.