Cape Town - It’s Sunday morning and this is what I have achieved today: walked 500m along a beach and then lay down; swam in the sea and then lay down; watched a pair of oystercatchers admiring each other’s legs, and then lay down; walked the 500m back along the beach and then lay down; ate four crackers with brie and then lay down; covered myself with a blanket and heard the ocean’s endless timpani, and then lay down (quite a lot); woke up and walked with the dogs and saw a snake, and then lay down; found a sheltered spot between the braai and the dune vegetation, and then lay down; ate two slices of date and nut loaf, and then lay down.
Now, as I type this sitting up, I feel sunburnt, salty and I’m leaning to one side.
Writer and adventurer Alastair Humphreys has come up with the concept of microadventures. These are short trips or activities that help one to squeeze more juice out of life.
His thinking is that because most of us are enslaved by work, grinding out the nine-to-five, what we do with the hours between five and nine is crucial in order to reclaim those parts of ourselves that get mashed up in the cogs. Watching 15 episodes of The Walking Dead while drinking cheap wine until 2am doesn’t count, and nor does lying on the lounge floor pulling fleas off the dog.
The juice-adding stuff has to be active – something that gets you out of your comfort zone and into the world to engage with art, music, nature, whales, history, fleas in the wild, tides, weather, calf muscles, stars and the sun. Ideally, it should be a night away.
So here I am, in a safari tent up the West Coast, with 40km of beach to myself. I currently work two jobs, one at night, so this isn’t strictly a microadventure as it’s on the weekend. And it’s also work, as I’m reviewing accommodation for a travel magazine. But it qualifies in that it’s a short in-and-out; a night away in a foreign bed.
Initially, I hadn’t wanted to come. After a punishing week at work, which had bequeathed me repetitive strain injury and racoon eyes, all I wanted to do was stay at home watching 15 episodes of The Walking Dead, and pick fleas off the dogs. Packing seemed like such a schlep: would I need a jersey?
Oh god, there’d be weather. And food: all those cold items that require a cooler box, and having to remember the salt and pepper and the tea and the dishwashing liquid and the oil. By the time I hit the N7 for the three-hour drive, I was ratty and tired and the clouds threw down rain.
But when I arrived in the evening, the sun was mining gold from the sea. I sat on the sand and watched a young whale trying out its tail. Seagulls drifted like paper along the dunes, a seal twirled in the shallows and the dogs chased each other along the sand. I stripped off my clothes and dived naked into the waves.
During the night, the dogs nudged me awake to be let out. I stood on the deck watching them snuffle through the veld. There were stars everywhere. The only sound was waves.
Doing a microadventure doesn’t have to involve trekking off into the middle of nowhere. And it doesn’t require money. With its longer summer days and accessible nature spots, Cape Town is perfect for pre- and post-work experiences – a hike on the mountain, a dip in the ocean, a spot of spelunking, a ramble along the promenade, a sunset picnic in a park.
As I sit here next to my tent, the sun warming my back and my eyelids heavy with fresh air, I realise how seldom I truly relax. Work chews up so much of my energy that by the time I get home, I’m restless, pale and anxious, trapped in a cycle that goes round and round and round, catching me in its teeth.
I’m also lazy – it’s so much easier to sink onto the couch and get zombied by zombies than make the effort to engage with my life. But this night away has taught me what it feels like to enter my own skin and take charge of my time, even when lying down.
Because the truth is, a lot of the everyday is pretty meaningless: working for money to pay for oven cleaner and milk; driving cars to get somewhere; washing all our silly clothes. And if we don’t use the gaps in between for adventure and sun, we’ll dribble on until we’re old and wearing nappies, and then we’ll die.
And we’ll never know that stars are really, really bright, and there are a lot of them. They go on and on to infinity.
Cape Argus