It’s been a long winter. We’ve been sick, then sick, then sick again. Our world started to close in, to become confined to the house and the workplace. Which is ok for me – I enjoy routine, I like doing the same thing over and over again, and I have a couple of different workplaces and daily travel from our little township to work in the ‘big city’ of Hobart, through the bush and over the mountain. But DH thrives on variety, and our home and his workplace are a ten minute walk apart. Even church is a five minute walk from our place. He’s started feeling a little antsy, a little in need of adventure.
But if you read my blog at all, you’ll know that we lead pretty busy lives with many commitments, and finding time for an adventure can be difficult. So we decided instead to have a mini adventure day. I organised for him to go out on a friend’s boat in the afternoon and we decided to have a little bush walk in the morning.
Living in Tasmania as we do, there are gorgeous little bush walks to be had all around us. Today, we decided to go up the mountain. It’s a cloudy day and it looked like it might be miserable up there but we had been looking forward to the walk all week and we decided to go anyway. It should be alright, we thought, we can see the organ pipes. That’s where we headed.
We rugged up, packed a picnic and some just-in-case bad weather gear, and set off up the mountain (by car for the first bit, of course). It wasn’t raining when we got there, and we actually got too warm, walking up the steps and up the side of the mountain. We stopped again and again, looking out at the view, and up at bulk of the mountain above us.
One place we just had to stop was the place where the massive (absolutely huge!) boulder had broken free a couple of years ago and rolled down the side of the mountain, leaving a trail of wreckage in its wake. It stopped rolling just below the path. You could look down at the boulder, and look up at the path that it had left as it broke through the trees. It was a reminder of the power of nature. One doesn’t necessarily need to be looking into the mouth of a volcano, or watching the power of a tsunami. Even on our own benign mountain, safety can’t be taken for granted.
Then as we walked up further, patches of snow started to appear. Little pockets on the side of the track, reminders of the winter we have had. Then, the path started to be covered with snow, we were walking through snow! I got very excited, DH started talking about his childhood snow experiences (not that great, actually) and we both remembered our lack of success at skiing. As the snow patches got more frequent the muddy path turned to rocks as we walked on the scree, (DH says scree with a Scottish accent. ‘It’s a Scottish word!’ he says) and the view got better.We looked up and there were the organ pipes. Huge cliffs, reaching up above. They were so awesome to see, again we kept stopping and stopping to look up and wonder. Our run keeper app told us that we were walking at a wonderfully slow 30 minutes per kilometre. Ah well, it wasn’t ever about speed today.
After a while we found a nice flat rock and stopped to have a picnic morning tea. We had brought a thermos flask and some munchies (I had – wait for it – bread and an egg! So exciting (not)!) and turned to look at the view as it slowly disappeared from sight. All through the walk we had been sprinkled lightly with little drops of ice, and as we watched, the weather closed in from the south and the whole city disappeared beneath a blanket of cloud. We felt totally alone. We could hear the hum of the traffic drifting up, we pretended it was the sound of waves crashing on the beach. It was like being out in a yacht. Still, serene, alone, but in no way lonely.
I tried to imagine how it would be to live in the wilderness – to live out of sight of any other human beings, just alone in the bush. You know, I would hate it! But it was fun to imagine for a while.
In the end we felt a bit cold, and the little flecks of ice got heavier and more frequent and more rain-like so we decided to head back. And as we walked, the ice turned to snow. Beautiful large flakes floating down. It was so gorgeous! Very Narnia-like with the narrow track and the trees meeting over head and the snow drifting down. Of course, as we went down the mountainside the snow turned to rain. But it was so much fun to walk through the snow.
So we had our little adventure, our little break from routine, our refreshing jump into nature. And the cloud and the snow made it feel like so much more of a break. A step outside of reality. A break from absolutely everything.
And then home again for a hot drink and some lunch. My kind of adventure.