DISCLAMER: The following text contains drug use. If this is something you are averse to, then it may be best to not read this section and skip to the next one.
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I pulled out the joint, lit it, took a puff and passed it to Ewe.
We were mellowing out at this point. It was nice and relaxing but I didn’t feel stoned.
“Yeah, I’m not going to wear pants too”, said Ewe in a matter-of-fact tone.
It took me a moment to work out what Ewe meant.
It clicked when he quickly followed up with “Continuing from the conversation earlier. Wow. That sounds really bad out of context”.
There was more laughing, then a bit of quiet whilst staring into the fire.
We kept passing the joint between each other, slowly whittling it away whilst the natural sounds of nature continued their soundtrack around us.
Ewe offered some paw paw cream as it had been a few hours since we last applied some and, probably due to not hydrating enough, our lips were dry.
I took the offer, he told me not to eat it (as I had accidentally done so earlier in the day), and in my attempt to put it on my lips I ended up smearing it both on my lips and the area around them. I also ended up licking a good part of it off of my face.
After a while, I asked Ewe if he wanted to finish off the last of the joint. There wasn’t much left and it was getting cold enough to warrant getting into the tent to sleep. I also figured that I’d had enough of the joint at that point.
Ewe responded with “Wait a minute”, then used the lighter to check the joint.
There was still half of it remaining.
We decided to go to sleep as it was getting late into the evening.
The fire was dying but we wanted to make sure it was out before we went into the tent, so I picked up a bottle of water and started pouring it over the shrinking flames, as well as the large log we had in the fire that was still burning.
That dealt with most of it and there was still some water to spare. We then began stamping out anything that was remaining which was just embers.
There were some that kept on flaring up so we had to keep on stamping and smearing them out.
Once we were done, we rolled the log over to see if there were any more embers. There were, so we then worked on putting on those ones.
We saw a few more flare up, so there was more stamping.
We then rolled the log over again just to make sure and once again there were more embers to put out.
When it began to look like there were no embers left we switched off the torches.
There were more embers on the log.
We put those ones out, then rolled the log over again and found more embers.
When the torches were off, they stared back at us like bright eyes in the night, letting us shoo them away only to reappear elsewhere.
I was getting worried about the chance of one of those embers flaring up and leaving to the fire starting again, possibly growing out of control and burning down the bush around us. Of course this feeling passed.
“Hey man, can I clarify something?” I said to Ewe.
“What is it?”
“So we’ve been stomping on this log for ten minutes to put out the fire”.
“Yeah.”
“We’re really stoned”.
“…Let’s go into the tent”.
And with that, we quickly made our way into the tent.
So it was now time to go to sleep and Ewe was having trouble with his sleeping bag in that he unzipped it and then couldn’t zip it back up. He asked for my help and then I attempted to help him out.
As I moved a zip, I would discover another zip. I kept on finding more and more zips after struggling to move one further than as far as it could move. The more I worked, the more zippers were revealed.
I was growing tired of not being able to zip up the sleeping bag due to all the zippers that kept on appearing, so I turned on my torch to work out what was going on and quickly solved the issue when I saw that there was only two / three zippers to zip.
Ewe got into his sleeping bag, turned around and lay down. I got into mine and also lay down.
With the torch off we talked for a little bit before I felt the need to go to the bathroom, which lead to me saying as such. This lead to Ewe and I needing to get out of the tent (partly due to needing to go outside and do my business, partly due to needing to get out of the tent due to being unable to handle being in the tent).
Ewe was fumbling about for a short bit and I asked him what was going on. He said that he couldn’t find the way out. I told him where the door was and Ewe searched for the zipper to open the door. After another short period of time and growing tension, Ewe finally got the zipper open and the internal fly screen was open.
I got up at this point and it was not long before the tent door was open and we were once more outside. It was cold and all that there was around us was the dark of the night.
I went to the bathroom and then went back inside as quickly as possible as it was a little too cold for me to be outside in my underpants.
Ewe was back in soon enough and then partly zipped the tent door back. I told him to zip it further.
There was a bit of a back and forth regarding how open the tent door should be but it wasn’t long before we reached a comfortable position.
We went back to attempting to get to sleep. I would do my best to try and get to sleep but I would start talking after some silence. Ewe was quite curt in his responses and it was clear that he just wanted to sleep at this point.
I tried to calm myself down by breathing slowly and deeply, but this made me laugh very quickly. Still, it helped to an extent and I found myself calming down. There was a slight bit of fear that something was going to happen to us as there were some sounds outside that I could not completely discern the source of, but otherwise I was becoming more relaxed.
However, despite my moving into a more relaxed state, I found that I needed to blow it as it felt like it was going to start running. Perhaps it was the cold.
I fumbled around with my hand but I was unable to feel anything that felt like my handkerchief, so I searched for a torch.
One of the torches that we had is also the front light for my bike. It works well as a torch but sometimes I think it’s a bit too bright on the highest setting due to it being four-hundred-and-fifty lumens. This was something that I reminded myself of when I found it, switched it on and moved the light around randomly, shining it right into my face and all over the tent.
I shined it into Ewe’s face as well, which was revealed to me when he said in an angry and frustrated tone “What are you doing?”.
“I’m looking for my hanky.”
“Well is it really that important?”
“Yes.”
Ewe then mumbled something that I couldn’t quite make out and still sounded angry. I soon found my handkerchief, switched off the torch, blew my nose and went to sleep.



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