Constraint

At the beginning of December I went camping for a couple of nights with my friend and our children, four under-8s. We stayed in a Swedish Kata, more or less a tarpaulin over sticks with a wood-burning stove inside and a chimney

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Our focus shrank to the lamplight. What we could do was circumscribed by when darkness fell, light, how cold it was. For us, used to central heating in Scotland in December, it was very cold. -4 at 8AM and a lot colder before that.

During the first night our stove went out and we had insufficient layers to keep warm. We quickly tripled our layers, and learned how to keep our stove going for longer through the night, stacking it full of logs.

But late on the second night, just as my friend and I were falling asleep, we realised we were breathing more smoke than air.  

"Do you think it's safe to sleep with this much smoke," I whispered to her, looking at our four sleeping children and wondering if this was a silent killer or whether if the smoke became too much it would wake us.

"I was just wondering the same", she replied.

I opened the kata door for air. "Oh, come and see the valley", I said. "It's full of mist".

"Are you sure that's mist she said?" pointing to the "mist" emanating from our own chimney.

We left the stove door open trying to burn up the heavily stoked logs in the stove in an attempt to reduce the smoke in the tent. I remember neither of us slept much for the rest of the night.

The experience overall meant we were forced to adapt & become creative with food, heat, time and light.  The simplicity of our most useful and necessary things surprised me:  light, water, fuel, a gas stove, basic cooking and eating utensils. A wooden stool or bench was useful. Hot water bottles! There was nothing simple about our stew but then we had a lot of time to cut up the vegetables!

Entertainment was easy, involving exploratory walks and a rope swing.  After the early dark the children rolled around on the sleeping platform or played games.

I realised we were lucky we were only playing at living like this. We had those basic things and good medical aid within an hour if we needed it. It was a good lesson that way.

In the ronda you are also forced to adapt to the limitations - principally of space.  Your focus shrinks to what is immediately around you - the couples in front, behind, and to the side of you and the people sitting. This has two effects.  You are rapidly forced to improvise and become creative in what you can do within the available constraints.  Both of you need to keep movement small.  And you become very aware of other people - not to use their space or collide with them, or cut them up in the dancing traffic. If you are passing the floor you become aware  of priorities - that the dancers have it.

Limitation makes us more aware of possibilities, because there is less choice, less freedom. We become both less and more aware, differently aware and more creative within the constraints.