In winter, I always remember summer, because I can’t add myself to winter sports and pastime. And life for me freezes in anticipation of warmth. Continuing to indulge in memories (last time I wrote about my first hike in rubber slippers), I want to tell you how I once managed to live in a tent for 3 months.
Back in 2005, I left for the Caucasus in Revival, so that you can spend as much time there as you like. Is it bad, warmth, fruit, the sea is not far ... Therefore, I took a vacation at my own expense at work (I wanted to quit, but gave a long vacation) and we drove off there together with a friend.
The content of the article
3 months in a tent
Why did we go? Probably everyone had a period of youthful maximalism. For me personally, it consisted in the denial of all the benefits of civilization. And the fix idea was that a person is self-sufficient and does not need anything. That's how it is, I still think so, but how much it suits me specifically at this stage of life, you can find out only by checking. No sooner said than done. However, I'm not a fool to go to the taiga, so I chose the Caucasus, summer, sea, mountains. Nevertheless, this experience turned out to be indicative..
We arrived at the Renaissance
We arrived, pitched a tent among the same informals like us. Subsequently, we also built a film shed for ourselves so that we would not sit in the tent in the rain. In the summer, a whole tent city is formed there. And the real hippie life began. In the morning you get up, go to the river, plunge into its invigorating bowels, cook food on the fire, go to visit and communicate, sit and meditate by the dolmens, in the evening there are songs by the fire and tea in a circle. Then the Renaissance had some amazing atmosphere of goodness and positiveness. We lived on a hill, and from it we could see all the glades in the area, which, with the onset of darkness, were illuminated by the flame of a fire and enlivened by the sounds of guitars, violins and flutes. Guests were welcomed everywhere. If you watched the movie about Robin Hood, then Sherwood Forest is very similar to what we saw that year..
Our film canopy in the Renaissance
Hippie aborigines
Walking along the river Janet
Ice waterfall every day
View from our tent
When we were tired of thinking, we tried to cut spoons, knit, learn notes on the flute or new chords on the guitar. Or we just went to the sea to swim, since it was only an hour to get there. Once we even had to put out a fire in Dzhanhot - in swimming trunks and barefoot, we ran along the slopes and dug ditches, cleared the area of pine needles and let fire towards each other (this is me in the book «Prairie» Fenimore Cooper was read in childhood and remembered). As a result, our parking lot did not burn down and it was not necessary to evacuate. For all my life I remembered how terrible this element is - a wall of fire coming at you ...
I pick pine needles from my feet after a fire
A week after the fire against the background of burnt pine trees
Over the summer, we climbed the entire Gelendzhik region, went by accident on a hike to Semiglavaya, visited the campsite in Asha and the Sochi arboretum, met a bunch of people, mastered hitchhiking, tempered so that the sea became unpleasantly warm, threw off all the fat, even the one that was not, and realized that it was time to go home.
Dawn on Mount Nexis
On the mountain Nexis Leha tries to wake me up
On Mount Nexis
Sochi arboretum
We went to Mount Tsygankov and got caught in a 5-hour downpour, raincoats did not save
Dolmen near Pshada
Return to Moscow
After 3 months, it became clear that the money was running out, the summer too, and it was probably time to go home towards the goals set. As practice has shown, life in the forest did not suit me, I already wanted to the benefits of civilization in the form of a shower, toilet, bed, as well as a computer and the Internet (hikers will understand me). Although the bed was not perceived for two weeks and I slept in a sleeping bag and without a pillow. It was no less difficult to get used to the constant noise on the street and the bustle, as a wild man shied away from everything in a row 🙂
And then there was work as an engineer in various specialties, finding myself, getting married, traveling, and finally it all came down to this blog, making money on the Internet and the decision to leave Moscow for a quieter place. It will probably be even more interesting further..
Savages before leaving for Moscow
Home to Moscow
The moral of this fable
Those feelings, that freedom and joy that one gets from little things - daily swimming in an icy river, good conversations by the fire, stunning sunsets, the sea to the horizon - cannot be forgotten, they changed my system of values and philosophy of life. Having once felt the taste of real life, then it is very difficult to perceive surrogate pleasures. Who wants to eat «plastic» a tomato from the supermarket after a tomato from the garden? Only those who have not tried, or those who have not seen the difference ... It is clear that this is an allegory, and situations are different, but I am still inclined to believe that real joys are intangible.
I sometimes remember my childhood. How little it was necessary to be happy: to stomp in a puddle, get a radio receiver under the tree, ride a bike in the country house all day, build a hut in the forest. Have I forgotten how to rejoice? Or there are objective reasons why an adult needs to take a series of actions to get the same sensations - to ride a yacht, buy a car, rent a luxury cottage for the New Year. A bit strange 🙂
No, no, don't think that I am campaigning for life in a tent. I also need things, a house and so on, otherwise I would not have returned to Moscow and now perhaps I would have written these lines from some dugout, and the photographs would still be from some soap dish (although I do not exclude that there is people who can live like this). It's just that after that tent life, my priorities shifted, it became easier to separate the grains from the chaff - to understand what is really needed and what is not. It became obvious that the cage, no matter how golden it may be, can never replace the blue sky and forest for me. No matter how utopian it may sound, earning money has faded into the background in the name of activities that bring satisfaction and in the hope that sooner or later, like a puzzle, earnings and self-realization will coincide.
P.S. With memories finished, so in the following articles about Kaluga and Kharkov, and I also rummaged through the Thai photo archive and I want to share some interesting photos in my opinion 🙂
