20 Things I Learned Living in a Tent for Six Weeks

1. If you’re going to live in a tent, try to get one you can stand up in. After six weeks of crouching you’ll likely resemble Quasimodo and getting pants on is hard when you can’t stand up. ‘Bigger is better’ does apply to tents.
2. While ‘bigger is better’ does apply to tents, ‘more is better’ does not apply to living in one.
3. When life gives you lemons, save them. They will come in handy when you need something to throw at the screeching possum who thinks 2 a.m. is the best time to court his mate or send death threats to his possum enemies or whatever it is that he’s doing.
4. Dedicate at least a quarter of your storage space to spare torch batteries. Neglecting to do so can lead to disastrous middle-of-the-night toilet trips.
5. If you plan to live in a tent for an extended period of time, look at the long-range weather forecast first. If torrential rain and floods are expected, maybe give it a miss.
6. There is no such thing as a waterproof tent.
7. Choose your location(s) wisely. Wildlife can enhance the experience, but try to find an area where the wildlife isn’t mostly deadly and looking for a warm, dry place to snuggle up in.
8. Indoor toilets put the convenience in ‘modern convenience’ — not to be taken for granted.
9. If your intention is to share your tent-living adventure with a significant other, make sure your relationship is on a solid footing first (especially if you have failed to do number 5). When you live in a tiny, tiny room surrounded by wilderness in the rain there is no slamming a door and going into another room.
10. With regard to sharing the experience with your significant other, camping together for more than a week cannot properly be described as ‘romantic’. Ever.
11. You can’t fight mud or sand. Don’t bother. Just learn to embrace living in your own filth.
12. If you have no option but to live in a tent, be sure to have friends and family close by — when living in a tent, your support network is only as good as their hot water supply and television subscription.
13. Leeches are pure fucking evil.
14. If you don’t heed number 5 and 7— because you’re crazy and free-spirited and thumb your nose at danger — try to choose a location that doesn’t get cut off form the rest of civilisation (including all emergency medical care) with the first 20mm rain dump.
15. Owls are very, very loud when you only have a thin sheet of nylon separating you from their incessant hoots.
16. Living in a tent is not for the faint of heart or the weak of bladder. Especially if you have failed to implement 4.
17. An extended period of tent-living is ‘character building’ if you consider the ability to tolerate the gritty feeling of grit in your bed night after night after night a valuable component of ‘character’.
18. If you have a dog who feels it necessary to mark your tent on a regular basis, give him up for adoption before you make that tent your home.
19. The inside of a tent is the holy land of the invertebrate world; many-legged pilgrims will trek great distances and go to great lengths to get there.
20. Houses are good.

Emily Friedel is a freelance writer who did live in a tent once and didn’t much care for it. You can follow her on Twitter via @ej_friedel

This post was originally published on my Medium account.