How quick can a microadventure be? Is 8 hours enough, if it includes bivvying on the edge of a wood, going to sleep listening to owls, waking to a beautiful morning, cooking breakfast on a fire and wandering home in the solitude and peace of an early autumn morning? If that is enough, then I just had a great microadventure!
I got home after dark last night to an empty house, after a day of helping out at a Scout camp in the New Forest. I had been pondering bivvying in the New Forest. It somehow hadn't felt right, but the hankering was still there. The night was still and warm, and the wild was still calling!
I stuffed my quilt into a bivvy bag and shoved that into my rucksack along with a Kelly Kettle (already filled with water), thermarest, waterbottle, jacket and lighter. Chopped up some bacon and mushrooms and put them, with an egg, into a small pan, and added that to my bag.
Ready!
I stepped out of the back door and locked the dark house behind me. The security light momentarily blinded me, but a few steps later I was walking up the lane out of the village, headed for the woods. My eyes soon got accustomed to the darkness, and I was reluctant to spoil the feeling by using my headtorch. I switched it on sparingly, using the red light from time to time to spot the path I was after. I wandered for a bit. My initial idea for a bivvy spot was marred by the bright security lights of a local farm, so I went to the other side of the woods and found a spot in the long grass, set back from the path and just under the overhanging trees.
It only takes a couple of minutes to inflate my mat and slip in into my bivvy bag, and my bed was ready. Before settling in for the night I went into the woods and broke enough sticks off a dead branch for fuel for breakfast. Then I was into my bag, under my quilt and lying looking at the stars and listening to nearby tawny owls "towhit"ing in the trees. Sleep soon drifted in.
I woke a couple of times in the night, looking up to see the Pleiades clearly above me before drifting off again.
Then it was daylight, with sun on the distant treetops.
Still in my bag, I lit the fire in the base of the Kelly Kettle and found my mug and some coffee cubes. I had forgotten how quickly a Kelly Kettle boils water, and soon had a big mug of steaming coffee, and the pan was on the embers, bacon sizzling. Once the bacon and mushrooms were done I broke the egg into the pan and gave it all a quick scramble. Breakfast in bed, all without leaving my cozy bivvy bag.
Happy my solitude hadn't been disturbed by early dog walkers, I finished my coffee, and stuffed everything back in my bag. I tidied up my pitch and checked I had everything. Not quite "Leave No Trace", as there was some scorched grass where the fire had stood, but nothing that wouldn't regenerate quickly.
Wandering home I savoured the peace and quiet of the early morning, sunlight filtering through the trees and lighting paths in dramatic busts of colour.
Walking back across the fields I could see the village in the distance, seemingly nestled in the woods.
That may be my last bivvy of the summer, who knows? It was quick (8 hours from setting out to getting home again) but I felt I had had a whole day's worth of experience and peace by the time I unlocked the back door, before most of the world was awake.
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