We lug backpacks up the hill, overheavy and silly for just one night but you need the basic kit. Choose a spot at random that falls away beneath us, the coast just visible on one side, steep valley edge on the other. We’ll sleep here. It’s all we’ve come for, this mini pilgrimage on a whim.
Pad softly to the nearby trees for sunset ablutions, bare feet finding thistles. Cringe and laugh when twilight brings fat drone July bugs out of hiding and straight into our hair. Play dodgems for 10 mins, ’til it’s the bugs’ bedtime too and the buzz melts away. Gone suddenly as they came, and now only the odd satellite ticks across the sky.
I brought a torch, but the full moon blazes across the grass. Slide a bivvy bag over my sleeping bag and mat. Get annoyed at the narrowness of the bottom. Resolve yet again to get something roomier. Shut eyes against the midnight flare.
Feel the weirdly reassuring, weirdly familiar, breeze on my face as I drift. As though I always slept under the open sky and just forgot ’til now.
daysofcreature 