Significance

I love camping. The simplicity of life found being lost in the middle of nowhere, surrounded in the silence nature brings, with views that embrace me in my tiny existence.

Out there I’m no one in particular. I don’t belong anywhere nor to anyone. I exist outside of time. No bills to pay, no lists, no agenda, no interruptions, unreachable with nothing to miss. “Real” life hits pause while I run around free in a parallel universe living the life that feels most real. A break from reality.

Perspective realigns with the breaths I take. Time slows down matching pace with the sun waking me just early enough with his smiling presence through my tent.

Playing hide and seek with him through the shadows he casts throughout the day as I adventure under his watchful eye. Adventuring with friends, learning to trust while facing myself. Sharing my fear, my joy, my need, my whole self with no shame cast in this precious space called friendship.

As he sets in his retirement for the night, the sun trades his watch with the moon ending the shadow games with the flashiness of royalty. Surrounding me is a sky adorned in flickering diamonds that shine brighter as darkness thickens pressing down around them making me feel whole and yet so insignificant in contrast.

Company around a campfire blankets me against the cold with shared laughter, stories and songs. Warmth spreads through my heart, loneliness can’t be seen or heard cast off to live outside the circle of fire, he is unknown here. Memories are shared and compressed, binding us together in a moment otherwise lost to time. Duplication creates a depth called history and I want to call it my future.

The day closes on itself and sleep beckons the embers to hush their crackling as we pull apart dividing from a collection of one, we multiply back into selves shuffling off to bed by the light of the moon. Solitude encases me in yellow tent fibers of color matching the sunset as I cocoon myself to sleep alone in my tent alone with the silence of night. Full and found in the middle of nowhere, content in my feelings of simple insignificance swallowed up in this life so full of significance.