discovering minimalism, pt 2

Beep-beep, beep-beep. Beep-beep, beep-beep. I awoke, stirred slightly, stretching an arm out to smash the snooze button, perhaps for the second time. I'm very quick to wake but very slow to start functioning again. The sun had barely risen, but today was the day. I unplugged my phone and checked the time. 6 AM - good, I'm not running late for a change! I threw the duvet away, rolled out of bed and stretched my legs and my back in turn, listening to bones pop and crunch. My body seemed to have forgotten its only 21-years-old. I took a step to my wardrobe, a vast black and silver treasure trove of literally everything I owned, consuming the entire back wall of my childhood bedroom. I stood for a moment, admiring myself in the long, mirrored, sliding doors. I'd lost a bit of weight during my time in London and had managed to keep it off, a first for me. Not that it was noticeable to anyone but me, but I felt great for it nonetheless. I slide open the wardrobe, the door rumbling like I was opening a library archive, the kind that are on rails that you crank open with a handle. I was always worried that I'd wake the whole house just for a clean pair of underwear. 

We have fast-forward 12 days. I'd been back to work, on and off, for a few days now. I had a long weekend for my 21st birthday party, then was back to work for another few days before taking the rest of the month off for the big trip of the year.

Showered, I sauntered back into my room, fresh boxers on, old boxers thrown in the washing basket as I closed the door behind me. In London, I had gotten used to not fully drying my hair, simply letting the sun dry it out for me. It made my morning routine much quicker, plus gave me some lovely beachy curls that I adored. Hair still damp, I started rummaging through my rucksack to find my toothbrush. I tend to panic-pack the night before, but to save forgetting anything, I'll pack away literally everything I need for a trip, regardless of whether I'll need it before I go. I'd rather unpack my bag, use my toothbrush and repack my bag again, than forget to take it - so I did. I'd love to be the type that just remembers to pack my shit at the last minute, but I'm just not. Even with a pad and pen, a hand-written checklist of last-minute shit I need to pack, I've still forgotten essentials in the past.

Similarly, I struggle to dress myself when I'm in a rush - especially so early in the morning! So I made sure to look out my outfit the night before. After all, there's nothing worse than throwing something on in a mad panic, realising later that it looks horrendous but that there's shit-all you can do about it! So there they were, hanging on a couple of wooden coat-hangers over the door handle. Some blue skinny jeans, a scout shirt, an under-tee (since we'd be sleeping on the bus that night), comfy trainers and my group-branded expedition hoodie. The group always do a hoodie for the international trips. They have their practical uses, we can pick our group out from a crowd more easily, for instance. But it also encourages a feeling of togetherness while we're all away, which is always nice. Plus it's become a bit of a tradition now.

Dressed, I threw my huge rucksack over one shoulder and my smaller day sack over another and thumped downstairs, trying to be as quiet as I could on the rickety old staircase. Anyone who ever used that thing can attest to how bloody noisy it was! I dumped my shit in the kitchen and bee-lined for the fridge. I had a sandwich to make and a breakfast to eat (not to mention coffee to neck) and only half an hour before I needed to leave. Might sound like plenty time, but for a whimsical saunter like me, that's a tight schedule! With my sarnie packed in my day sack and my belly full with scrambled eggs and toast, I slurped on my last few dregs of coffee.

I struggle to recall how I actually got to the pick-up point that morning. That's partly, I suspect, down to my being a zombie. But also partly because we've been on so many trips over the years, all of which had the same pick-up point. After a while, the all sort of meld into one. But typically, I'd either get a lift down from Ross's mum or dad, or jump a taxi down. I'm not a huge fan of waking someone up just for a lift. If they're already up, then that's fine chick get the car keys (jokes) but dragging some poor sod out their bed for you so early in the morning is a bit shit. 

Any-roads, I made it to the kerbside. It's my biggest fear that I'll show up to one of these trips terribly late and hold up the whole thing! Like how rotten would that be? For both parties, too! Sleeping in and holding up a whole bus versus being on the bus not knowing whether to wait, holding the whole trip up, or leave and letting that one person miss out on the trip. It gives me the fear!

On the coach and seated, the trip was about to begin. Butlin's here we come!

Jokes! I was headed to Kandersteg International Scout Centre in Switzerland with the 112th Lanarkshire Scouts. The group, excluding adult leaders, was made up of 30-odd young people aged 8-17. People ask us why we would put ourselves through that and honestly I've no idea! The drive was a long one, 18 hours to be exact. With quite so many people, with so many of them being quite young, it's the most pain-free way to travel. Not that it's much consolation when you are squirming around at 4 AM in a narrow seat of a humid and musky bus; on a darkened motorway somewhere in North East France. Save a comfort stop somewhere in England and a short ferry crossing of the channel, we'd all effectively been cohabiting in this one huge dormitory on wheels. It's moments like that in which you ask yourself what the hell you are doing there!

I woke that morning around 8 AM. I'd had three or so hours of intermittent sleep but when I suddenly realised there was movement all around me I bolted up. We were an hour away from Egerkingen, a town just south of Basel, where we'd be stopping for breakfast. All around me people were taking a Glasgow shower, a camp staple of face wipes, dry shampoo and exorbitant amounts of deodorant. I think the technical term is a fuck-tonne. Many complained about the clouds of mist these spray cans were making and some of the kids were told off for taking it too far - but that didn't stop me from de-clagging myself, I can assure you! At camp, you can always apologise round the camp fire. 

After one of those strange European breakfasts where there's mini cereal boxes and more cold meat and orange juice than you've ever seen in one place, we hit the road once more. I never regret the amount of coffee I drink in the mornings until the early afternoons! Thankfully Kandersteg was only two hours away by this point and we were all due a shower.

Pulling into the forecourt, there stood a great monument, a testament to Swiss architecture and craftsmanship. The Chalet building is the first thing you see as you enter the site and is probably the most memorable building in Scouting, as this is the home of the permanent mini-jamboree. The adjoining Old and New blocks of the Chalet sleep nearly 200 people, with plenty room to spare for a dining hall, common room, meeting rooms and a little shop!

The activities ranged from enjoyable hikes to completely ludicrous climbs that would give Lara bloody Croft a run for her money. The Snow and Ice Challenge was (thankfully) over-subscribed to the tune of one, so I volunteered to step back and let the Explorers, together with two leaders, brave the daring ascent up a great ruddy glacier. I'd been dreading it for days so I was secretly glad that I couldn't go! Other activities included climbing, zip lining, canyoning, an overnight at the Steinbock Hotel, a high ropes course... and more hikes than you would believe through the kind of beautiful scenery you only usually see on the set of Game of Thrones! We earned our visit to the Sauna, that's for sure! Oh, and the Alpine Slide! It's a toboggan, basically a load of metal barrels cut in half with a plasma cutter, welded end-to-end and dropped in the middle of a mountain range. Instructors then put me, a complete novice, in a snow sled with wheels, pushed me off and hoped for the ruddy best! Bit of a white lie of course, it was a lot more beautiful than that. And contrary to my clever-dick description it was a bloody-good laugh, even if I was going slower than Gary would have liked. Sorry! He drives a BMW now, if that's not foreshadowing then I don't know what is! The vast majority of the things I did were relatively inside my comfort zone, which is the way I like it. Sadly, the only points of the trip which had me uncomfortable all involved swim shorts. I wasn't comfortable in the water or in my own skin in those days. Something else was afoot too.

It was weird, a surreal and gawkingly beautiful privilage for sure, but nonetheless weird. Even when I was a kid, a youth member in Scouting, I always felt strange when we were away. I'd be having a great time, don't get me wrong, but that was almost the problem. All the camps, tours and trips away, even if only for the day, were usually overshadowed by a gut-wrenching feeling, the knowledge that all this awesomeness won't last long. The knowing that I would be back behind my desk one Monday in the not-too-distant future almost bummed me out. If I strayed too far from the beaten paths, too far from the group with whom I was sharing these amazing experiences with; too far inside my own head, this feeling would taint my experience. Almost as though I was living vicariously through them, a supplement for happiness, the Berocca for complete and self-actuating contentment. I was happy by proxy. None of it would have been nearly as fun on my own. But Kandersteg was somehow different.

It was a good different, I'll make that plain. But I couldn't quite put my finger on what had changed. Maybe I was still riding the wave from my trip to London, my 21st birthday bash, or perhaps a combination of both. All I was certain about was that I didn't want it to stop, so I kept doing what I had been doing since I arrived.

I'd wake early, setting my alarm to ring just before the sun rose, perhaps 6 or 7 AM. I still wasn't a morning person, that kind of thing doesn't change in a matter of days! Strangely though, people who don't seem to mind getting up early in the mornings tend to be dubbed morning people, despite that it may be just as difficult for them to wake. For me, it's not really about being a morning person as it is being the kind of person that can't get back to sleep. In truth, the time of day has nothing to do with it. So for me, getting up that early was all about being able to go about my morning ablutions before anyone else in the room (and in fact the floor) were up. I've never been a body confident guy. I spend a lot of time actively avoiding the need to change in front of others. 

So I'd throw on some clothes and creep down from the bunk. I never once ran into another soul that early in the morning but I still got fully dressed to walk all of 15 feet down the hall to the shower block, just to take them all off again. Yeah, nervous wreck. But by the age of 21 I'd stopped thinking about it, at least consciously anyway, it was just how I did things. Who'd have known that just a year later, that same guy would go to a festival, take his daily morning shower naked in a communal shower block, then walk nearly a kilometre back to his tent wearing nothing but Calvins round his waist and a towel over his shoulder. God I miss holidays. Turns out 40-degree heat and still being drunk from the night before is a great cocktail for not giving a fuck!

Anyway, I'd scoot out the dorm with my toilet bag in one hand, a towel in the other and a change of underwear concealed beneath the towel. I'd take my shower, dry off and reassemble my apparel from the top down. It's always been the top half of my body that I dislike the most, so it's usually the end that is naked for the least amount of time as is possible. Except of course when I need to shave. I'm not the tidiest sword-smith so trust me, it's better that way! One morning, someone did walk in while I was shaving, scaring me half to death - although bless him I don't think he even noticed!

Back to the room, I'd slip on some shoes and head downstairs. I'd have been wearing either a pair of gym shorts or my joggies, teamed with a tee. The weather had been scorching since we arrived. I'd head out into the morning sun, cross the gravel path and into the grass to sit cross-legged by the water's edge of a river that flows past the chalet. I often picture the exact scene in my minds eye when I need a to calm myself down. In an hour or so, the whole site would be teaming with people, walking, running, laughing, adventuring. But for now, there was serenity. I hadn't really meditated before the trip but there was just something about that place, something in the air that made it seem like the perfect way to start the day. So there I'd sit for half an hour or so, not really keeping a count on it. The only person that ever noticed was one of the kids, Ross, who asked if I was okay. Strange really, isn't it? Of course, he was being nice, but how strange it is that we assume there is something wrong when we see someone sitting calmly and alone. I reassured him I was fine and he ran along. In hindsight, I probably should have asked where he was going, but when you are there these things kind of skate past you in the moment. It's like a scene from a fairytale where nothing can go wrong.

I think it was this, the daily dose of pausing and listening, that helped me best understand the feeling I'd been experiencing for a while now. A deep-rooted inner calm and happiness, born from a life of simplicity and filled with lots of people, not things.

In London, I was living in a tent, dressing and self-caring from a single rucksack and working together with a team of strangers that quickly became friends. My 21st birthday party, though it was a night of opulence, was spent surrounded by the people in my life that mean the most to me. Never before had I been in a single room and surrounded with every chapter, every faction of my vast and complicated, self-written, work in progress novel I call my life. It was surreal. Not that the splendour of the occasion helps me any in recalling a word of my inaugural cutting of the cake speech. I don't remember a word, but I do remember walking away thinking I'd nailed it. That means it was either amazing, or fucking dreadful! And lastly in Kandersteg, I was once again living from the bag upon my back, hiking soaring mountains and plunging deep into ice-cold gorges with some of the best of friends that life and sheer chance has thrown my way. I was eating three basic but hearty meals per day and doing more daily exercise than I'd done since high school, following the simplest of diet plans there is: eat less, move more. In fact, I lost so much weight during the summer of 2018, that one morning while shaving I caught sight of a hint of abs poking through my beer belly. The first and last time, let me assure you! But it was at least the start of something, new and positive. I had started to appreciate the benefit and the joy of simple living.

~ Aedan.