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Why do people pack gear into station wagons and drive down dusty roads for hundreds of kilometres just for the pleasure of pitching a tent in the wind and rain ?
Why do they carry packs and trudge up steep, zigzag trails just to sleep on the cold damp ground by a sputtering camp fire?
Why do campers aside, the
hundred lie beside lakes like Eildon and Eppalock and long rivers such
as the murray and darling looking up at the stars,
listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the wilderness, scratching at
their mosquito bites and nettle stings, or nursing their cuts and bruises?
many of them have left their air conditioners and dish-washers, their
designer clothes, their accountants, lawyers and paperwork behind.
In return, they have found that relaxation - which can be so difficult at home - is a natural accompaniment to roughing it in the bush. they have also discovered that hiking, riding or just setting up camp leads to the soprt of exhaustion that is baisic to real relaxation. It is distinct from mental tiredness, which is often accompanied by tension, agrivation and even sleepless nights.
Because there is little conscious thought behind it, the physical exhaustion of camping liberates the mind and provides the foundation for that pleasant kind of reverie that leaves a person unaware of the passage hours.
You too can enjoy the relaxation along with thrills with the help of getting to places with cheap travel insurance. always look for the best deals that would best suit you.
Many who rough it are answering the call for breathing space and for a more deliberate rhythm: they are answering the call for a time of renewal.
There are other advantages to roughing it. there is more oppurtunity the feeling of shared experience and of comradeship in encountering the raw elements of nature with others.
Whether rafting down the franklin river
with a group of companions, training with a group of fellow climbers
for an assult mount bogong or simply
camping in the bush with family, new bonds emerge. or rater the old
bonds - the primitive connections between people - are renewed and rediscovered.
When working as part of a group united for a common purpose, the individual
becoms one with the group.
The members of the group must rely on one another to gather wood for the fire, to go down to the river for water, to pitch or to fold the tent. For many people, surrounded daily with cold design concepts, the sight of a tree only triggers a mental notation of the world rather than a feeling for the thing itself. Roughing it reclaims the feelings and allows for sensuous moments; it permits one to touch some important essance hidden below our daily experance.
Campers, hikers, climbers and every sort of nature person knows those moments of poetry, of what the english romantics of the 19th century called, simply and perfectly, 'the sublime'.
These are the times when all surroundings seem to gain a new clarity, a refreshed perspective; when single leaves become visible and their form becoms important, or when the break of a bird rusteling up from a bush becoms as audible as the crash of a cymbal. In such moments, the individual alone in the forest is not really alone, but is part of the larger family of all living things.
It is for revelations of this kind that people like roughing it. There is the appeal everyone remembers from child. hood of playing in the dirt and splashing through puddles, of getting all grubby and not caring how you look. Camping out satisfies those feelings.
Suddenly not not having to shave, shower or comb your hair for a few days- smelling sweaty and feeling earthy - can be liberating for many men and women. for a week, 10 days or a month, the camper is beyond the cosmetic advertisements, beyond a social sence of chic.
For some, roughing
it means a return to the first fishing or camping trip with their perants.
for others, it is a way to 'prove' them selves physically, to show
that they can take a pounding and still get up, or to remember their
careers
as scouts or guides.
Perhaps because of the directness and simplicity of
insight in the bush, or because life seems easier or less cluttered,
a great many childhood
memories seem to return during encounters with nature.
to many people, the trail through the bush also becomes somewhat like
a half-known, badly understood inner surch for an important memory
of the past.
Some people harbour a secret suspicion that civilisation is a veneer and that some day they mat be called upon to be rough and hardy, just like their forefathers.
This doubt about the permanence of mechanised lives is about as close as most ever get to challenging the reality of the factory or office, the dishwasher or the tv.
So instead these modern pioneers meet the challenge by shedding the sophistication and returning to that animal body that is the basis of all a person can ever know or do. their answer to these doupts about civilisation is to 'rough it'.
Also, few holidays are as gratifying as those devoted to
self-improvement. Accommodations at Hervey Bay is an all year excellent choice for any traveler. With the amount of out door activities that will keep you busy and of course have you enjoying it. for an increasing number of people, the condition of their bodies
has become a major concern.
Municipal tennis courts used to stand empty most of the time. now they
have become so overcrowded that people have to queue up or book in
to be able to play.
It even seems possible that the traditional image of australians grouped around the tv sets watching football, cricket or tennis may some day give way to the sight of both sexes spending the day together on the tennis courts.Cruise holidays are another type of holiday that is gaining appeal not just with the older set but with the twenties and thirties as well.Combining stucture social and sporting activities, it ticks most peoples boxes for what they are looking for in a holiday and cruise deals are tagetting this market
Already, the trend from sports spectator to participant
is becoming evident.
the recreation and sporting goods industry, as an obvious example,
is one of the largest and fastest growing in the country, and there
are
shelves of books on every thing from improving your golf game to becoming
a better crosscountry-skier.
Nor has the mind been left behind the body in the quest for self-improvement. encounter weekends, retreats, art and film seminars have all given to many a sence of having expanded their emotional range or broadended their intellectual horizions. This increase in both interest and participation in all possible areas of self-improvement has naturally spilled over into using holiday and leasure to polish and perfect these interests.
People are discovering that a well-structured and organised week or two devoted to tennis, skiing or ever weight reduction - if handled properly - can be one of the most rewarding and truely satisfying experiences of the year. Moreover, it can satisfy in ways that are individually valuable and not merely the result of social pressures or conditioning. Yet one should always be cautious since there are some potential dangers in undertaking such a vacation.
For most people, athletic activities are
psychologically gratifying because they appeal to the almost universal
need and desire to feel good physically.
They allow one to participate in a process that affords rapid gratification
from concrete effort. rarely is the entire process of effort and gratification
made so clear and straightforward.
Since self-improvement camps are usually highly involving and exhausting, both physically and emotionally, the participants can come away at the end of each day with a feeling othat they really tried, of having given as much as possible and still being happy - even if the sport is not yet mastered, the weight is not yet lost or the problems are not yet solved. there was, after all, the honest attempt, and there is probably nothing that is quite so gratifying as being able to say truthfully: "I really tried, I gave it all I could."
Another advantage of this type
of holiday is its high degree of structure.
At a tennis camp, for example, there is a predetermined schedule for
each day. even the evenings are structured, since that is when people
get together for a review of the day, with a view to a brighter tomorrow.
Little is left to chance at such places, and the problem of what to
do about the unexpected, how to deal with the unplanned, is obviated
-
it just never comes up.
for many people, the meaning of these weeks is the great weight that
has been pressuring down all year is (briefly) lifted. their sence
of relief is almost plapable.
Few holiday-makers returning from one of these
back-to-school experences are ever disappointed.
yet, because not everyone can be wholly satisfied all of the time,
because not everyone is happy doing what everone else is happy doing,
there is,
inevitably, a measure of discontent.
There are those, for example, who
should never attempt one of these self-improvement holidays.
someone leading a rigid, highly regimented life my be more in need
of a much less structured holiday, even if they do feel slightly uncomfortable
at evn the thought of being soomewhere without organisation.
Possibly, such a person should look for a vacation in which the boundries are less defined than in a formal self-improvement setting - tennis or skiing without the rigid demands of daily instruction, for instance.
Another type of person who might consider avoiding these sorts of situation - at least for the time being - is the person who has just suffered a particually deflating personal experience and whos self-esteem is at a low ebb. often she feels that she could not cope with another failure. No inflexible rules can be applied.Overseas holidays could be the best holiday for them.New horizons and new stimuli but without the demand of unused to challenges.Armed with nothing more than travel insurance that covers adventures abroad a exotic holiday overseas could just be the thing to boost the self confidence and prepare oneself to face the challenges at home.
A self-improvement that makes few demands and is only mildly challenging can, at this point, prove just the thing for helping close the wounds and improve self-confidence. The decision must be an individual one based on your own experence.
How
you have been feeling before the holiday, how you regulated your day-to-day
activities are and how to tolerate a regimented holiday must
all be considered. so must your need for freedom from scheduling and,
most of all, your ability to weave your own needs into the fabric of
the holiday.
This last point is essential. a self-improvement holiday is still a
holiday - a time to recover your energies, a time to follow your own
desires.
If your holiday begins to look just like you work week, then watch out, for that kind of "improvement" can not be for the self.
