I lift my pack up onto my knee and then heave it around onto my back, it weighs down on my shoulders but it’s not too heavy. I reach for the waist strap and go to clip it up but it doesn’t reach, I mutter “who’s been wearing my pack”, I loosen it and then loosen it again when I realise it’s me who’s been wearing my pack, ten years and three babies ago. The rain has stopped briefly as me and our ten year old son start off down the fire trail on his first overnight hike, we’re excited and happy and animated and moving at a cracking pace. I want this to be a fun adventure for him so that he’ll love it and want to do it again, I hope it’s not too long or too steep or too uncomfortable. A few hundred metres in I have to ask him to slow down, I’m puffing, he’s fine.
It rains on and off while we walk and continues to do so throughout the evening but the only thing that it dampens is our possessions. We’ve snuggled into our sleeping bags early with our hot water bottles (drink bottles full of hot water and then placed inside a sock). At this early hour sleep doesn’t come easily, I lay contently in the warmth while he lay listening to the planes fly overhead. Not just listening, he tells me that we’re under the flight path between Sydney and Melbourne, he can tell which direction each plane is headed and that with each approach the sound is so loud that he is sure that they are going to hit the escarpment. I have not heard one plane. There are two of us here in the same tent at the same time and yet our experience is completely different. How many times have I been side by side with a friend in life and not realised that they’re struggling, that they need reassurance or for me to just ask if they’re ok. How many times are the things I find easy, fearful for someone else or the other way around. I reassure him that the planes are flying high enough, it’s just the echo of the valley that’s making them seem low and loud. We’re both surprised that something that was so loud and terrifying for him, I had not noticed at all. We’re up early and approach a steep hill, he has the topographic map and understands that the closer the red lines are, the steeper the hill, he sets goals to get to each bend in the track that he can see on the map. He takes a rest when he needs to and I never have to ask him to start walking again. Sometimes I wonder if he has chosen to make a rest stop for me, so that I can take a break. He’s going to be okay, he’s wise and makes good decisions, he thinks of others, whatever he wants to do, he is capable of doing it. High up in the sky we see a plane fly over, we look at each other and smile. He asks if I will please write about our hike and then hesitates and says “oh, but it’s not about swimming”. I reply that hiking in the rain is just the same as swimming through winter.
2 Comments
Callum
12/6/2018 07:45:51 pm
Favourite one yet!👍👍😁
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Michelle
13/6/2018 02:41:28 pm
I agree Cal! Sounds like it was fun even though it was damp 😃
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AuthorKirrilee Archives
September 2018
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