Breaking: Camp
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Some of my earliest childhood memories involve camping. My family has engaged in this activity for decades, in the UK (where I was born), Rhodesia as it was, and Canada. But my nomadic and rather more financially constrained life since leaving the latter at age 22 has given precious few opportunities to continue in the same vein. A few times in Russia with American and Russian friends, north of St Petersburg. And only a couple more in Georgia, despite living here for nearly 21 years now. That changes in 2020!
We had it down to a fine art. All tents initially: a huge heavy canvas affair with solid steel poles for my parents, bending into an arch shape. Smaller, lighter ones for us children. An all-mesh dining tent to keep the ever-present mosquitoes and biting blackflies at bay. A trailer base on which my father built wooden sides, topped with a pair of covers with legs which folded and cotter-pinned into place. My parents derived much pleasure from designing furniture together, and my father then built it in his basement workshop.
Two canoes joined the fun. The first they bought was a very wide red wooden one which could take all 5 of us and lots of gear. The second my father built: a cedar frame with bent cedar strips over it. He then covered this with a single sheet of thick white woven fiberglass. And this, under a painted-on layer of tough clear epoxy-resin glue, simply disappeared completely, letting the beauty of the wood show through everything. Sheer magic. These two vessels, propelled initially only by paddles and then by small outboard motors, carried us across many of the thousands and thousands of Ontario’s lakes to totally isolated places; or we used the many provincial or national parks’ campsites.
Every weekend, from Victoria Day (mid-May) until the end of August, we camped. This time also included a longer, 2-3-week trek farther afield, when my father took his main holiday from managing power station construction. We camped and drove to the west coast twice and east coast once, for example. It was a wonderful, carefree life. My parents and older sister fished at every opportunity; my younger sister and I were both fair bookworms, and not much into either cleaning the catch or eating it, so, in those pre-internet and cell phone years of the 1970s and 1980s, read books to our hearts’ content.
We cooked on a fire, heating our water similarly, and rigged up a tarpaulin-and-pole shower with buckets for pouring on water. Dad usually tackled breakfast, an all-fried affair featuring sausages, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs, potatoes and toast: a cholesterol bomb by today’s standards, but always delicious in our youth.
My recent walk all around Svaneti with a young American friend, camping almost every night, was the catalyst. I went and bought a new two-person tent in Tbilisi and used that, while he hammocked by choice. And I realized then that my wife and I could simply drive off with our 4x4 full of everything we’d need, and camp along the Black Sea coast, for example, in hundreds of places. We’re doing it now (more details to follow), with no guests to care for at home in the Viral period, school not yet starting, and every opportunity. So far we’ve joined friends near Ureki and then been by ourselves in Gonio. Georgia, while not having many official campsites, nonetheless has myriads of available areas for the asking or, in the absence of any obvious patron, for the borrowing. Enjoy!
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
By Tony Hanmer