Time for some wilderness therapy

In the interests of honesty, dear reader, I’m going to fess up…  It’s been a ‘challenging’ year.

It’s not just the massive Trip Task List that’s been keeping me awake in the middle of the night as I weigh up the merits of one camp stove over another, or wonder how the heck you upload maps and waypoints on the new GPS, or whether my clothing system is going to be warm enough for us in the anything-can-happen-at-any-time New Zealand climate.  And it’s not just the roller-coaster ‘knee-improvement program’ that I’ve been working on with my physio since February (Yeah they’re getting stronger!  Wait a minute, that hurt… Okay, that’s working now!), or the devastation at discovering Belle might not be well enough to do this long planned for trip.  And its not just the bad relationship that finished earlier in the year, leaving me completely drained and broken.   

The final challenge for me is an ongoing struggle with Melbourne Mayhem.

With stress levels already sky high, I now find myself seriously struggling with the additional challenges that come with inner city living…  Squashed into crowded trams with someone’s armpit in my face, music spilling from earphones, the tapping of fingernails on ipads, tooting horns from drivers on a mission, jack hammering from roadworks, pollution pumping out of exhaust pipes and filling my lungs, hordes of people walking as though in a daze with eyes locked on smartphone screens….  

Friends also suffer disconcerting symptoms…  Crazy workload?  Permanent headache?   No time to exercise or eat properly?  Sure.  Apparently that’s ‘normal’, and we accept it as so.

I am surrounded by so much grey and so little natural landscape, and I feel the disconnect between where I am and where I want to be.  My body screams its message loud and clear, insisting on my attention. I feel as though someone is squeezing my heart in their fist.  My breathing is shallow and I’m overwhelmed.  My over stimulated brain struggles to process the glut of information I am bombarded with daily and I yearn for the peace and quiet that I know I will find in the wilderness.

Four weeks to go

Bring it on…

Laura

Nearly over before it began !!

In less than seven weeks our epic journey begins and the preparation process has not been without it's hiccups. After three months surfing the tropical warm waters in Indonesia a tiny microscopic parasite had buried its way into my ear and began eating away at my ear drum. I would awake each day to a pounding in my head akin to the morning after a night of downing 15 shots of nasty tequila similar to what you might find in a cheap run down back alley bar.  My head cloudy and filled with fog so thick I could not think or undertake even the simplest of tasks. The anxiety crept up on me at alarming rates, millions of marching ants crawled through every vain, cell, muscle and atom in my body threatening to cripple me at any moment. Fear leaped deep from the dark of my soul lurching at me with alarming bells the sound of high pitched sirens deafening what was left of my numb cloudy mind. My head constantly spinning with the ferocity of 10 years spent inside the graviton, that nasty childhood ride available at any show for a cheap thrill. Only my thrill never went away, I spun and I spun and I spun. Disaster loomed inside of me.

Adding to this the constant nagging from friends and family that I just simply could not do this trek, I was not well enough, not up to it, in to deep and it was way too long to be away. The pressure slowly boiled, bubbling away quietly until it finally burst, exploding with the sudden realisation and utter disappointment that I had failed myself, my body had failed, I was simply not up to it. Much to the complete and utter devastation and disappointment of Laura. There was not a hole in the universe large enough to swallow me up and eat me alive, I had to live with it.

To my defence at this point I still did not know that this tiny microscopic dot quietly having the feast of its life inside my ear was there eating away a piece of my sanity bit by bit. Fears of insanity clouded my every thought, move and decision. I was simply, just not my self.

The eureka moment came when someone suggested that whats going on must be deep inside my inner ear, which seemed baffling to me considering my ears did not hurt. But alas that tiny piece of insight was a gift sent from the universe as this was indeed the case. Medication and treatment began immediately and like a jigsaw my sanity slowly returned piece by piece.

As the cloud slowly lifted from inside my head clarity once again lured me in the right direction, nature beckoned me into the wilderness, the place I feel most comfortable. The whisper of giant trees calling for me to embrace them, to feel their spirit and enrich my soul. Te Araroa has called and I have heard. The Long Path Way is in my reach. 7 weeks and counting.

Belle