This was the first BASIC I’ve endeavoured to run in the bush, and, well, it can be done. We did run into some trouble towards the end, but it worked out really well, so I don’t know if it was God encouraging us to do something in particular, or if he was exploiting something the enemy meant for evil and discouragement. Either way, it worked out really well.

There were six of us: me, my brother, our two oldest sons, and two other guys from my church. We weren’t really sure about the weather, since unusually, it had been raining a bit. Quite a bit. I consulted with my wife, and she offered to spend time at a hotel or resort for a few days if we thought the rain was going to be excessive, and wanted to use the house. If I recall correctly, the prediction was a 20% chance of up to 8mm of rain, so I made the call, and told everyone that we were going camping.

My brother and I arranged to meet up at around midday on Thursday, and that went well. Unfortunately, my work suddenly ramped up (duh), and because my customers have government contracts and there were sudden hard deadlines on delivering reports (under penalty of non-compliance), I had to remain in contact with the office until everyone was settled. It’s (kinda) good that I’d just recently changed carriers, and I had reception for the day and a half that I needed it.

We set up the big 4m x 4m canopy, and then the tents, and then the rain started in earnest. We had to dig some trenches around the big canopy to stop the whole thing being washed away, but after half an hour, it stopped. The sun came out, and the entire forest resumed whatever it had been doing with an innocent “what, who me?” kind of feeling to it. I didn’t get any photos, but it was truly wet. Dealing with it was a bit of an adventure, but that was pretty much all of the rain we had. There were a couple of showers, but really, we could walk around in them with no worries at all.

I set up the media centre so we could watch the content, and this time, I’d remembered everything I needed. The dry run I went through with my brother started with me realising that I’d left the remote behind. Sheesh.

The media centre consists of the following items:

  • An Engel battery box.
  • A 65 Ah deep cycle marine battery for the box.
  • A Digitech 4K Android media player. I’m seriously considering replacing this with one of the new Google Chromecast devices.
  • A 23 inch computer monitor.
  • A JBL Charge 4 speaker.

Everyone was there by 7.30 pm, and we got the first session started. I have to say, watching the trailer for Man of Steel always pulls me right in.

Most of us ate really bad yummy food, while a very few of us ate sensibly. There were fires every night … I’d brought a couple of bags of firewood and kindling with me, and others foraged for fallen wood. It all burnt well 🙂

Everything proceeded well until Saturday afternoon. For some unknown reason, the battery suddenly went from 52% charge to about 5% charge between lunch and the start of the “Rescue the Beauty” session. It might be because I left the speaker plugged in, but I can’t imagine that it would draw that much current. Fortunately, I’d brought a laptop, and was able to play the “Beauty” session using that. Then we had dinner, and lined up for the “Conversation with the Team”, and found that over the course of about 5 minutes, the laptop dropped from half charge to nothing, and it turned itself off. Huh.

We made the decision that we’d stay the night, and then return to my house for the last two sessions. Then one of the guys came up with the brilliant idea of streaming the “Conversation” through a tablet that someone had brought (must have been accidentally, because I’m sure we were all unplugged…), and putting the sound through the speaker via Bluetooth. Well, that was just perfect. We sat around the fire and listened to the team, and toasted marshmallows. It was a much better way of doing it than just sitting around under the canopy.

We slept well, then packed up first thing. It was a 45 minute drive back to my place, and we stopped off on the way for a fast-food breakfast. When we were all there and ready, we watched the “Sonship” and “Where to go from here” sessions. My wife, bless her wonderful heart, stopped off on the way home from church, and picked up a whole lot of hot chips for the perfect lunch to finish the weekend.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Thank you, John Eldredge and the Wild at Heart team, who have been faithful with the message … in both walking in it, and in packaging it up for the rest of the world.

Here’s some video footage of the walk from the … uh … “facilities” to the camp site. It’s deliberately slow, so take your time and enjoy the forest like we did.