Weekend before Easter I got roped into hiking with school. I say ‘roped’; I mentioned at the start of the year to the coordinator that I was interested in doing some hiking this year, and then the female teacher for this hike had to pull out, and so I got about 10 days’ warning.
Wow am I unfit.
I mean, my lungs survived; I was never really puffed or out of breath, except for the half hour after breakfast when my stomach was busy taking up all my abdominal/chest space with its protest over the concept of me daring to put food in it (yay food intolerances!). But my HIPS. Good golly, my poor lil hips muscles. Flat was great, downhill was fine, but uphill? Ouch. I really need to work on my stairclimbs at the gym or something 😛 😀
Still, I survived, and a good time was had by all, and it was super pretty, even on the day we had horizontal rain for an hour or so and I discovered that the raincoat I’d borrowed was, uh, a little past its use-by date. (Read: I was soaked.) And we woke up to snow on the final day, and that was super pretty (just a light dusting, but enough to make the world glitter and the little seed fronds of the grasses look like chandeliers). And I have some great fodder for a particular set of stories I have in mind (set in the same world as How Not To Take Over The World, actually), particularly the bit where I woke up in the middle of the last night and had to go outside to try to find the drop toilet and the fog had come in so there was only about 15m visibility, even though the wind was howling across the mountains, and the fog was all silvery and bright but you couldn’t see a thing, and WOW was it entirely creepy and I was low-key terrified 😛 😀
So there you go. Hiking.
(And for those who note, as Twitter did, that I am barefoot at one point in the Australian wilderness, first, this was an alpine region and the max temp on the final day was 4C/39F so I am PRETTY CONFIDENT that all sensible spiders and snakes were SLEEPING, and second, look, as long as you’re not actually hiking around barefoot… Eh? Like, I used to hike quite a bit in my teens/20s, and I’ve seen a snake in the wild ONCE. Which does not mean you have to be careful – wear long pants, sturdy boots, and stomp/talk loudly if ever you *are* out and about in the bush in Australia, and hey, my mum had a snake in her back yard that came in for the mice who were eating the chicken feed, and about a month after we moved out of one house someone took photos of a brown snake and a red-bellied black duking it out at the pond half a block down the road, so you know, DO BE CAREFUL… But taking your shoes off to wade across the stream? You’re good. Honestly. It’s okay. :D)
(PS Photos are weird shapes/sizes because I cropped students out of them 😉 :D)
 
PS Even though the hike was super hard for me (embarrassing, really, since it was actually quite an easy hike, but there you have it), and I was absolutely spent on the first day and nearly so on the final day (turns out 15km with a 13kg pack over undulating hills is my maximum limit these days), the forced disconnect from everyday life was the best possible thing. Anxiety levels SO much lower since the hike, even though I’m pretty stressed as I’m writing this (on Monday) since I have a crap-tonne of marking to do and lost three days to the hike. So you know: hiking = A++ recommendation for soothing mental angst.