By: Blonde Two
As well as recently discovering mindfulness in the form of a colouring book, the Two Blondes have been contemplating Feng Shui and its impact on wild-camping. Don’t laugh! Read on, you’ll be amazed you haven’t considered it in your wild-camp planning before!
The Flow of Chi
Chi is the flow of energy and it can flow up or down. Obviously flowing down a hill with a heavy rucksack on your back is more auspicious than flowing up one.
For a restful night during which chi is flowing, pitch your tent to face east and never hang a mirror up opposite your sleeping bag.
Gently flowing water creates good chi, therefore camping by a stream is to be recommended. However, pitching next to a raging torrent might not be a good idea because fast flowing water is inauspicious (especially if you haven’t packed a boat!)
Spiky things generate bad chi; we don’t recommend pitching your tent on top of a gorse bush.
Yin and Yang
Yin and Yang are opposites whose balance is essential to an enjoyable wild camping trip (and life).
Yin is cold and can be countered by:
a) A decent down sleeping bag
b) Inviting Little Miss Blonde to sleep between you
c) Selecting a red tent from your massive tent collection
Yang is hot and can be countered by:
a) Jumping in rivers
b) Only wearing two down jackets
c) Forgetting where your red tent is in the middle of the night
Feng Shui suggests that camping where the air is still and the land is boggy is not a good idea. It also suggests that blustery locations could be a problem. This could make feng shui based wild-camping on Dartmoor or in Mid-Wales a mite tricky.
If you wild camp near to trees, they should be behind your tent, this might be tricky if you are hammocking. If you want to share in the good chi of the trees, you should go for a green tent. Red and green stripy tents are available if you are also cold.
You should shine a light from the front door of your tent and never have it facing a steep slope, that would be inauspicious.
If your door is too small, your visitors will never leave. You could, of course, sew it up so that they couldn’t get in to start with.
From now on we Blondes are going to consider our chi and balance our yin and yang every time we go out camping… we promise!
For perfect balance forgo luxury of tent entirely and kip beneath the stars in a gore text bivvy.
Mind you …February by the East Dart waterfall is probs. not the best spot.
Try Summer in the Picos De Europa.
Deeply puzzled by the piccie. Where are the heads of 1. the stripy trouser and 2 the foot that looks like a masked, moustached man in a balaclava?
Re spiky things – remember to sew pockets on the tent to avoid tent peg usage and maybe put it up without its poles – some tents have lovely spikes, possibly to make lightning conductors. Camping by streams is liable to lead to extra venturing out into the cold, dark underworld in the middle of the night to rid yourself of spare cash – surely a Yin thing. I don’t know if you have noticed, but there appears to be a bicycle hunting for sundew in one piccie. It might be taking botany a little too far?
Mr B2 will have to try and control his bike’s botanist tendencies in the future!