The outdoors has always provided a certain clarity and wholesomeness unavailable to us when locked up under a roof with our cell phones glued to our hands. For this reason and myriad others, our most recent family trip involved almost a dozen camping tents, and tons of water. From the moment we arrived and began organising the layout of our camp site, I had already realised that we were creating memories which made me believe in something brighter than ordinary.
For five days we were allowed to savour a venture uninterrupted by inhibition. Showers became optional due to the sheer hours spent in shimmering swimming pools. Hair remained unkempt and unbrushed, but laughter wildly framed our faces better than any hair-iron curls could. Makeup brushes lay forgotten at home, but sun-kissed cheeks and healthy glows were genuine and unfettered by artifice. Dresses became shorter as we braved the heat, and slowly but surely our tan lines began to appear, defining physically what we could only feel. In the almost unbearably languid wind in scorching afternoons, feet pattered back and forth on muddy ground carrying overflowing buckets to fill water guns, flushing the laziness away.
Soon the Camper’s Code became self-evident. Keep your swimming costumes close at hand in case of spontaneous swimming pool cravings. Never, and I mean never, leave your camping chair unsupervised for danger of another eager camper stealing your spot while you are seeking out an evening snack. Towels are not necessary since air-drying requires minimum effort and does a more thorough job. Eventually our habits blended together and at the end of each day we crawled into our tents with our batteries flat, but bursting with eagerness to begin the next day.
So our days were inhabited with unexpected water wars and unplanned ice-cream endeavours, although it does bear mentioning that horrid taste of sunblock in our mouths. Under the gorgeous shade of our acacia trees (which we really lucked out on), we napped the afternoons away, restlessly attempting to find comfortable positions on our deck chairs which we learned to be unsuited for sleep. The fears that our childhood vacations there would be unhinged by mediocre experiences were shattered. It was the type of joy which made you forget pain exists. High on Vitamin D and a legal but exclusive kind of ecstasy, we manifested dreams and created memories which are tattooed on our hearts like tan lines.
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Blue-Eyed Mutant
Laila Manack 