While the family swallows the remains of the turkey from the day before yesterday, suffers the bitter hangover from the many toasts to the good old man from Lapland, and gossips via WhatsApp about the annual party with the brother-in-law and the pavé’s indefectible uncle, some weirdos and others find ourselves thinking that it would be So, so much better to be enjoying canned noodles and sausage in some lost corner of this world of gods. From the bottom of the trunk, we can even hear the backpack huffing with impatience for the next trail. In the closet, the worn-out boots look crookedly at the high-heeled shoes that made my supper hell. On the top shelf, the sleeping bag threatens to give nightmares to the half-hearted hiker, almost an impostor who makes a living by focusing on other people’s exploits.
For ordinary mortals, who dream of every long holiday to sprawl out on the hottest beach, full of little speakers, buckets of sand and grilled cheese curds, or whose ideal holiday is to board a massive ocean liner full of with perrengues, all-inclusive and lots of engov, dreaming about wild animals may sound like the purest manifestation of masochism.
But the fact is, if you’ve already…
…woke up in the middle of the night in a cold cave to see that his arm had been bitten by a bat, forcing him to run for the anti-rabies vaccine;
…he lay down in the middle of the dusty trail swearing that he would never get into this trouble again, and then he continued forward, defying the back pain, the cramps and the lice in the hostels on the Camino de Santiago;
…spent a sleepless night in the rain in the middle of the Amazon forest, cursing by the light of his Kindle the howler monkeys that never stopped howling from the top of the trees, bothered by the alien creatures wrapped in their mosquito nets;
…she shivered from the cold all night in the Salar de Uyuni, bundled up with all the clothes in her luggage because outside the unheated salt hotel it was -15° and the Bolivian agency had rented a sleeping bag that wasn’t even half useful from that;
…climbed to the top of Mount Roraima and bounced between the white parts of the lunar landscape trying to convince himself that that rock formation up ahead really looks like a monkey sucking ice cream…
…the bottle of sparkling wine hanging from a string in the freezing water of a deserted beach froze, to toast the New Year in style…
…you can tell you have stories to tell. And to you, reader, I can only say that, in this coming year, I hope to hear (and spread) many of your perrengues. Because a good deal of respect is one that we share laughing with friends around a campfire. So, let 2025 come and let all the troubles be just those worthy of nostalgia, sighs and laughter.
See you next year!
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