Camping on hard ground

The very first hard ground? It could have been in the Peak District, as a child. But I was resilient and didn’t have bones then, obviously. Could have been in the Lakes, school trip. No, that was YHA and raining a lot, and we were all trying to smoke Consulate.

No, it had to be New Mexico, January 2001, at umpteen thousand feet on the Colorado Plateau and we were definitely mad. Three weeks of travelling and unravelling from Denver up through Colorado, turn left into Utah, down into Arizona (snow in the desert and stars above – stunningly beautiful) and across into NM, staying all the way in Holiday Inns and Best Westerns and what have you, and head for Chaco Canyon, site of ancient peoples and fascinating empty villages. And kivas, and places where the energy was definitely doing something else.    (Don’t ask – I still don’t know! but something was going on.)

To reach Chaco from the north, you head down what they call a washboard ‘road’ – because you are (even in the back of a very smart Cadillac with good suspension) being bumped down this rutted road so exactly like a washboard and so precisely designed to rattle every molecule in your body that you can’t believe it’s not on purpose.

And you arrive, thank god, at Chaco Canyon.

You check in at the building where you are allocated a campsite. You find yours and every one has its own big sandpit (where the tent goes) and its bonfire pit for cooking with steel racks over it, and its tarmac parking place, all very civilised. Near the loos, naturally. You open the boot and a flock of big pigeon things fly straight into it and march around over your packing. You take a second look. They are chaffinches. HUGE chaffinches. American chaffinches. Same colour, same basic arrangement, same silly male head feathers. And they want food. They might as well have guns, they’re so up front.

So E & J get their tent up. Big tent, lots of padding, done it all before. Akin to bedouin tent, soft furnishings, central heating (did I make that up?). Owners of Cadillac. Then me and W get ours sorted next door – small tent, but I HAVE MY FOAM THINGY (see four–pawed endorphin maker). Then the snow starts. Big snow. We decide the only sensible place to cook dinner is in the ladies’ loo block, where there is a gas fire permanently on. (There’s also a gas fire in the gents’ but not much room to gad about.) And we have Space Food – noodles packets (various, take your pick of just–about–nice to awful to inedible) made with boiling water, then biscuits, tea etc and go to bed.

Two hours later I am still awake and frozen stiff. Literally. Fully dressed, three sweaters, woolly tights under trousers, extra socks and all. A trip to the loo to thaw is out of the question. It is blowing a proper blizzard alright. Minus 25ºF = minus 31ºC. A cuddle would be nice but suggestion is met with grunt. Another suggestion, hours later, that my sleeping bag doesn’t seem to be very warm and might we possibly swop, or could he spare a blanket or his overcoat, doesn’t even merit a grunt. He is deeply, utterly, asleep. Why didn't I go to sleep in the loo? I have no idea. Too hypothermic and insensible, probably.

It’s only later that I discover what a half–season sleeping bag actually means. It’s for a summer night in Menorca.   Wally.