Choosing the Challenge

A few conversations last year with a friend got me thinking about life a little differently.

We'd been talking after a camp, and something about those conversations stayed with me. I started thinking about how I wanted to engage more fully with life. About doing things I might not ordinarily consider. About getting out there and actually participating, rather than just thinking about the things I might like to do. Me being me, I started researching.

I looked at pack hikes around Australia. Made a spreadsheet shortlisting providers, contacted people, got information, compared prices, distances and itineraries. I also wanted to know the rough age range of the people on the hikes. I wasn't particularly keen on finding myself on a trek with a group of 80-year-olds (not that there is anything wrong with being 80!).

Some of the walks didn't seem long enough. Larapinta felt a bit too ambitious, but I came across Cape to Cape in Western Australia. I had a friend who lived over there, so I thought I could hit two birds with one stone.

Done!

I booked Cape to Cape in January, knowing I was choosing something that was well outside my previous experience. I'd done day hikes. I'd done a few overnight pack hikes.

Seven days carrying everything I needed was different.

And then there was Marysville, my first practice overnight expedition in March. Despite my best efforts, I ended up with a blister that left me unable to bear weight for weeks. Given this, I sent the organisers one of my many emails.

Among the many questions I had managed to come up with, there was one particularly practical one.

What happened if I physically couldn't continue? Was there a way out?

Let me be honest, I wasn't exactly approaching Cape to Cape with an unwavering belief that everything would be fine! In fact, the weeks before leaving produced something of a cavalcade of things to worry about.

Blisters. Sand. River crossings. Weather.

Would I have enough food? Would I have enough water that was safe enough to drink? Would I get too cold at night?

Whether my pack was too heavy. Whether I had packed enough. Whether I had packed too much. Whether I would be cold, hungry or thirsty. Whether I would be so sore I couldn't continue.

Whether I had actually packed the thing I was sure I had packed, but couldn't remember where I'd put it.

At one point, I was checking my bags so often that I was fairly certain I was just moving the same items around.

I had trained with 20 kilograms on my back. I'd walked 40 kilometres carrying it. I'd done a longer practice walk and felt surprisingly good at the end.

And still my brain had a fairly impressive ability to add a “yes, but...” to every piece of evidence.

I had walked 40 kilometres, but it was flat.

I'd carried 20 kilograms over two days, but Cape to Cape was seven days.

My body had felt good, but I'd also had blisters.

I usually sleep well with my sleep system, unless I'm too cold.

There was always another “yes, but...”.

I think this is partly what uncertainty does. We want enough information to make the unknown feel known. Safe. Certain.

But there was no way I could rehearse seven days of Cape to Cape from my living room. At some point, I was going to have to find out what it was actually like by being there.

I'd done pack hikes before, and I'd enjoyed the physical challenge. I wanted something that would stretch me a little further. Something I could train for, prepare for and work towards. Something outside my comfort zone.

I wasn't looking for an easy experience. I wanted to find out what it would be like to do something that I hadn't done before.

There is a difference between choosing something difficult because you think you should prove something, and choosing something difficult because you actually want the experience of finding out what you can do.

For me, it was the second one.

It didn't make me fearless. It didn't even make me particularly confident. In fact, I very much lacked it, despite my training.

I was concerned about my feet. I was concerned about the possibility of being cold, or being so sore or physically unwell that I couldn't continue. I had no particular certainty about how the seven days would unfold.

But I never seriously considered not going. Once I'd booked it, I was going to do it. The whole point was to walk from Cape to Cape.

I didn't need to know exactly how I'd feel at the lighthouse. The experience itself was what appealed to me. I wanted to do the hike. I wanted to be out there, carrying my pack, walking through a part of the country I hadn't experienced in that way before. I wanted to see what happened when I took on something that would ask a bit more of me.

There were moments when other people told me, “You'll be fine.”

I know it was meant kindly and sometimes reassurance is comforting, but there were times when I wanted something slightly different. I'd done the training and despite this, it might still be hard. Both things could be true.

As it turned out, both were true. There were blistered feet and raw, swollen hips. There was sand that seemed determined to make every kilometre feel longer. There were mornings when getting dressed inside a tiny tent felt like an exercise in spatial reasoning. There was rain, wind, heat, wet clothes, bugs that flew into my mouth and a head torch that eventually decided it had done enough.

There were also days when I looked around and thought, Oh. This is actually easier than I thought it would be.

Not a walk in the park. There was a lot of huffing and puffing at times. But a hike that was just challenging enough.

The training had paid off.

That wasn't proof that I had been silly to worry. It was simply new information. I didn't need to have known before I started that I could do it. I just needed to be willing to find out.

And perhaps that's one of the things I am learning about choosing challenges. Sometimes we don't choose them because we know we'll succeed, or because we know exactly what we'll get out of them. Sometimes we choose them because we want to participate in something that asks something of us.

A couple of years ago, I would not have considered a seven-day pack hike. I barely had my head around camping!!

This time, I found one, did the research, made a plan, booked it and trained for it.

I didn't suddenly become someone who wasn't worried about the unknown.

I just found something I wanted to do enough that the uncertainty wasn't going to make the decision for me.

And maybe that's what I was learning. I didn't need to know exactly how it was going to go. I just had to show up and see what happened.

This reflection shares a personal experience and general observations about human behaviour. It is not intended as psychological advice.